How Influencers Are Lying to You: A Scientific & Philosophical Critique of Materialism

You open your phone and start scrolling. What do you see? In music, media, and adverts what is it that people keep talking about? Foreign cars, designer brands, and cash; but why? Materialism is the belief that wealth and conspicuous consumption (i.e. buying things so other people can see them) will make people think better of you- and that it'll make you happy. The flipside is that people who don't do this aren't worth listening to and can be dismissed. Materialism, in short, is the advocation of making and spending money not to meet basic needs, but as an end in itself. It is the view that an individual's social status and sense of worth is contingent on material accumulation.Materialism is presented by people on your screen and in the music you listen to as beyond question. But we don't need to take randos' word for it: there's a massive body of scientific evidence on what ACTUALLY makes us happy and increases our social status. If we want to think freely and critically, we should turn to the scientific method rather than blindly absorbing what others preach.The overwhelming weight of genuine, quality-assessed, evidence-based scholarship tells us that in reality, materialism is one of the most self-defeating views out there. It is directly antagonistic to achieving happiness, and will not bring you friends or respect. In any case, when you see a luxury car driving past you, do you think 'wow, what a cool person?' or 'wow, what a cool car?'And this scientific consensus is validated by thousands of years of philosophy. Across continents and centuries, humanity's wisest repeatedly come to the conclusion that spending money for the sake of it will not improve your life. Real happiness comes from dropping out of the rat race and focusing on the meaningful things in life.In this video, I present both the scientific and philosophical consensuses on materialism. Rather than giving you an unfiltered opinion- which gives me no more credibility than materialist influencers- I draw together the combined findings of science and philosophy to relay to you what people significantly smarter than me have figured out. Enjoy!