Materialism, Secularism And Resulting Meaningless Life

A Meaningless Life

Todd Hayen

In Dr. Mattias Desmet’s insightful book The Psychology of Totalitarianism he posits that one of the primary problems of today’s culture is that many people believe they are living meaningless lives. He also cites rampant materialism as the reason. A quote from his book:

Man may not realize it, but his humanity does not really matter, it is nothing essential. His whole existence, his longing and his lust, his romantic lamentations and his most superficial needs, his joy and his sorrow, his doubt and his choices, his anger and unreasonableness, his pleasure and his suffering, his deepest aversion and his most lofty aesthetic appreciations, in short, the entire drama of his existence, can ultimately be reduced to elementary particles that interact according to the laws of mechanics.

This is what materialism does. A material-only universe means that matter is king, and matter is made up of tiny particles that bounce off of each other in a random way and basically are responsible for everything. EVERYTHING.

And through their random and mindless bouncing they mean nothing. If you live a life where everything that “matters” to you is matter, then you are probably missing the point of life.

I agree with Desmet, and he goes into quite a bit of detail about this idea in his book. I will expound on this concept a bit and say there are basically three things that make human beings believe their life is ultimately, on the whole, meaningless.

1. Materialism
2. Instant Gratification
3. Secularism (or atheism)

Usually, or typically, materialism is focused upon in a person’s work life. The purpose of a life’s work then nearly completely entails the acquisition of “things” in the most efficient manner possible, i.e., the least amount of work for the highest monetary reward. This is not 100% true, but frequently is true in the beginning of a person’s work life.

It seems, from my observation as a psychotherapist working with young adults, that people moving into the work force, or even in University working toward a degree, focus almost entirely on what will get the most money with the least amount of effort, all the way from choosing “bird courses” in school, to picking the work environment they want to enter. Of course there are exceptions to this, i.e., young people who actually do have a passion for a particular field, but often that is not the rule.

The reason the focus is on money is obvious. We all live in a world where value, almost exclusively, is placed on the acquisition of material objects—houses, cars, phones, clothes, jewelry, food, vacations (although vacations are not entirely a material pursuit), high quality medical care, investments, sports, things for the kids (sports, art, camps, lessons) etc.

People do find all these things to be comforting, for a while at least. Of course it is obvious our entire existence, at least in the opulent West, is based on this idea (money to buy things—our culture is ruled by consumerism). All we seem to do is buy things. The more things we have, the better, and the more money we have to buy the things we want, the better.

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