“When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses. All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
- Materialism: the belief that the only realm is the material and that aims, values, satisfactions, and measures of success are located there.
- Sensualism: revelling in material satisfaction as an object in itself.
- Materialism and sensualism are a downward escalator.
- Satisfaction is fleeting and creates the next void.
- The condition is progressive.
- Eventually, greater hits are required to keep the system in equilibrium.
- Those hits accelerate the process.
- At some point, the only way to up the ante is to relapse.
- Eventually, for alcoholics / addicts, therefore, relapse occurs.
- Spirituality reverses the process:
- Aims, values, satisfactions, and measures of success are located in the realm of the spirit.
- The material is relegated to being the venue of action.
In my experience, materialism results in an increasingly claustrophobic, desperate, and frenetic life. Spirituality results in an increasingly expansive, hopeless, and poised life. The material life will often look as though it is expanding, growing, developing admirably, when what is happening is that more and spiritual capital is being hocked to buy Roulette chips that are stacked ever higher on the table, the famous ‘big life’. More and more is required, materially, to get less and less of an effect. The spiritual life will often look as though it is shrinking, stagnating, and dying back lamentably, when what is happening is that more and more spiritual capital is being built up, and all of the redundancy in the material venue is being carefully and deliberately pruned away. Less and less is required, materially, to get more and more of an effect.