Stuffism!

As I said, I think that the basic premise of human societies is to "acquire stuff".

I think this has been true throughout the ages and even with other titles, such as socialism or communism etc, what has really been going on is basically "Getting more stuff for us - the guys in charge, and taking it away from them - the other guys!"
It seems that peoples status has more or less always been determined by how much stuff they have... Even when people have prioritized status or "personal power", it invariably ends up being directed toward the accumulation of stuff - look at the Catholic church for an example.

This is true from the Egyptians and Greeks, and Romans and Russians and French and Germans and Americans... and everyone I can think of from my limited knowledge of human history.

The problem is, that it doesn't work in any long term fashion! What happens is that we get bored or dissatisfied with the stuff we have very quickly and our simple little minds figure that, well, Id be happy again if I had just a little more stuff, or if my stuff was just a little better!... and so we find that we are on an endless treadmill of acquisition... and sooner or later it all falls over and fails!

Its interesting to note, that I think it is fundamentally part of human nature to always get bored and always want more - Its why we are no longer banging rocks together on the plains of Africa (well, for the most part anyway).
It also fits perfectly with my current view that the universe is constantly changing and absolutely nothing is fixed and permanent - We are in fact perfectly evolved and aligned with that aspect of the universe!
The trouble though is that people want the changes they desire and don't want the other stuff to change - But that's generally not how things work.... One of the little sayings that rang true to me in the past goes "Everything I want to change is staying the same, and everything that I want to stay the same is changing!" - This comes from the problem most people have with "acceptance" as Ive already talked about.
Another term Ive heard used for it is "Change Readiness". - Yes, we all think we are ready for change, but that's just the changes that we want to make. Its a completely different story when changes we don't want and are not expecting are forced onto us by the outside world - We're not so "Ready" for those!
And, that fits very nicely with the Freeway metaphor - fast and clean and safe and predictable; no surprises... Even the places where we do get off the freeway for a break or fuel are all the same - all the same fast food outlets, all the same fuel stations, all the same advertising - Its all just a massive homogenization that keeps everyone safely within their "comfort zone".
And, sadly its not satisfying, and we are looking for more, but we direct that energy at wanting more stuff instead of facing up to our fears and looking for diversity instead of uniformity.

Now, just so I don't get misconstrued here, I'm not saying that stuff is inherently bad. I'm just saying that focusing on it as a means of achieving personal happiness is a VERY bad idea

Interestingly, If we accept that we as humans (as a part of our nature) will always want more; and if we accept that whenever we have something, the satisfaction from it will only ever be short lived, then its very obvious that stuffism is doomed!

However, IF its true that there is much more inside our heads than most of us currently believe; And if we focused instead on developing that area of our selves then that same innate "always wanting more" aspect of our nature would be no problem at all...
In fact it would be a benefit...
We could develop our selves as much as we liked and would not need to have any adverse impact on the world, or on those around us!...

... I think then "stuffism" might end up being replaced by a different form of human competition!
Not sure what it would look like but it would be based on competition between people about what they could achieve in that internal world... Probably not really a better outcome if we kept the current competetive attidudes!
But I suspect that attitude would also change with the inner "growth".