Word: materialist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...student of society, Marx had a fatal limitation: his central insistence that all history and all human motivation could be reduced to materialist factors. Modern sociology, psychology and history have a more sophisticated view. Indeed, Marx's theory of man-as-economic-animal is regularly disproved by countless eruptions of nationalism, tribalism and just plain human cussedness that can hardly be explained through economic motives. It is a striking irony that the New Left, which often uses Marxist sticks to belabor capitalist society, tries to reach beyond Marx for spiritual values and a kind of community (neo-tribalism) that...
...blacks and the young could still fragment American society beyond anything now imagined possible. The end result will more likely be a heightening consciousness, a raising of national sights. The new challenging target will be progress, understood in a broader and more sophisticated way to include not only materialist means but also the will and perception to put them to more moral and more civilizing ends...
...also possible to see in this endeavor the crucial gifts for organization and cooperation that alone will make survival in the post-industrial age feasible. It is possible to look at the moon flight and be dismayed at the crass expenditure of money, sweat and time, the sheer materialist effort, the ultimate triumph of gadgetry, the unabashed hubris of technique. But it is also possible to see in it the genius that is providing the abundance to end poverty, and the order and precision that may yet bring peace -or at least bring it somewhat nearer...
Whether or not that analysis is correct or fair, commercials obviously represent the American materialist vision of the good life all the shiny possessions and luxuries that people want, or are supposed to want...
...most cases, he has earned his position, not through family or friends, but through traditional hard work. However, when he winces at the proposals of increased taxes on his property and income to meet the demands of the unemployed and underemployed, he is variously pegged as racist or materialist. Robin Hood politics creates only dependency and defeatism within the rank and file...