Things

When things become more important than living beings, there will always be unhappiness. Poverty is hard. Poverty with a sense of ignorant entitlement is worse. The worst poverty is poverty of the mind.

The sports or music celebrity with gaudy jewelry and difficulty stringing several words together into a coherent sentence is a clear example of poverty of the mind with material wealth. The fact that supposedly intelligent human beings adulate these creatures of mad materialism speaks to a flaw in the human social fabric. It also speaks to exploitation of that flaw by advertisers and greedy capitalists.

There are those who defend materialism as a way of raising all economic boats. However, the simple mathematical reality of resources divided by population readily exposes this hypothesis as childish wishful thinking. Creating equity for all would be extremely hard work and would entail great sacrifice by those most invested in materialism and hedonism. I see no evidence of this in the world. What I do see confirms my opinion that those who have much want more.

A dead body is a thing. It is an inanimate compilation of extremely commonplace elements with the exception of the occasional gold crown or titanium hip. Yes, ultimately, we are all just things. As long as we live our lives running away from this fact, we will be unable to accept our true nature, our true commonality with all living beings. We will rush to accumulate things or the experience of things in a delusional attempt to achieve a permanent pleasure or security that cannot exist. This is not the path to true peace and happiness.