Materialism?

In Russian they call it ‘thingism’

Some of you may recall my critique of the word ’materialism’ as commonly used in the west - meaning the malignant antagonist to ‘spirituality’. The miserable modern westerner is urged to develop ‘more spirituality’ to combat this awful enemy of the same spirituality that ‘materialism’ makes every more elusive.

What a magnificent trap was laid for us by the wily promoters of a false duality…

To repeat what I have already explained elsewhere - it puts the blame for our lack/loss of ‘spirituality’ on ‘matter’, in an artificially constructed duality of spirituality-materialism that reprograms our post-religious minds into a merely modernized version of the old monotheistic duality of soul versus body. The soul, its purity tainted by sin but redeemable, is victimized by the body - i.e. flesh, matter - that is guilty of dragging the soul down, or at the very least, keeping it trapped in its (dirty, animalistic) cage of matter (meat-suit).

Plain old common sense however sees it differently. Basic rationality sees that matter is not guilty of our ‘materialism’, that it is not matter that beguiles us to forsake our souls. If we weren’t matter we wouldn’t even go exploring what we are as soul! Matter is the immensely variegated, never fixed, result of unimaginable magnitudes of cosmic alchemy striving to bring about the tangible expression of its precursors - the subtle, non material, forces, beings, realities. Matter - materialization of the non-material - is in that sense the greatest game in town, the challenge and achievement of cosmic creativity, which enables the subtle non-material entities to actually do stuff, and thus contribute to the adventure of evolution, change, discovery.

Since matter does not exist in and of itself it makes no sense to oppose it to the ‘spiritual’. Being the result of mysterious transformative processes, it is totally symbiotic with the subtle forces and beings that it expresses. In other words, the material and the spiritual are mutually dependent on each other, in full partnership in the great game of creation. You might even say that they are the other ‘version’ of each other.

‘Materialism’ in that western falsely spiritualistic sense is not much used in Russian. It has a well established and totally different pedigree in the Soviet ideology of ‘scientific materialism’ and ist-mat for istorichesky materialism or ‘historical materialism’. These disciplines cultivated in Soviet times studied and argued (passionately) the dialectics of objective reality for practical purposes, particularly in respect of the real dynamics of capitalistic exploitation, of social inequality, the mechanisms of colonialism and racism, the implementation of social justice. Materialism was a kind of ‘practical philosophy’ to pursue hard-nosed objectivity in order to reflect reality and steer it in such a way as to ensure equal dignity for all. It was materialist in the sense that it rejected the need for a supernatural power to guide human affairs - in that sense it posited human agency and responsibility. Soviet ‘materialism’ provided a concrete (pun intended) foundation for a country mired in superstition, contested orthodoxy, devastating poverty and atrocious social inequality, to tackle for good its urgent existential need for modernization. It was a useful tool for the times. It helped the Soviet Union’s metamorphosis, in a matter of a few decades, from backward agrarian to super-power.

It never erased Russia’s even more fundamental spiritual substratum (which is far more complex than orthodoxy). But it never became the modern antagonist to ‘spirituality’. Materialist Soviet discourse and practice sought to elevate everyone’s spiritual-cultural capacity - it was understood that the spiritual was part and parcel of one’s cultural depth and breadth. ‘Materialism’ did not shy away from the word ‘spiritual’ nor was it anathema. The big nuance was that ‘spirituality’ was detached from ‘religion’ and ‘church’ (at least until WW II). The lofty mission of the Soviet school was to activate the full spiritual-cultural human potential, from an early age.

But this post is not about the merits and shortcomings of Soviet materialism. We simply need to know why ‘materialism’ in Russia is not the same as in the west.

Thingism

Post-Soviet Russia has its own, down-to-earth unambiguous, spontaneously arising word for what we call ‘materialism’. Veshchism, from veshch that simply means ‘thing’. It seems to me that this notion is very helpful for the western mind.

Thing-ism. For Russians this term denotes far more explicitly than western ‘materialism’ the perils of ‘consumer culture’ that makes humans foolish with greed for things, stuff, the superfluous, ‘shopping therapy’, fashionable-glamorous things. ‘Consumerism’ is a recent phenomenon in Russia, the post-Soviet companion of Russian liberal capitalism. It exists mainly in the cities and among the affluent nouveau-riche class. Russians don’t need ‘spirituality’ to tell them that ‘thingism’ is deleterious. Their adjective for ‘consumerist’ is often derogatory.

A quick etymological comparison is enlightening. ‘To consume’ in English is the Latin and French word denoting ‘using, using up, wasting, annihilating’. In Russian we have the verb potrebliat’ the root of which, potreb, means ‘need, requirement’. The words say it all… In Russian it is my need that governs my consumption. In English I use beyond my need (wastefully)…

And it is not matter, but a certain mind-toxin that makes me addicted to ‘thingism’.