I start by recognizing that conspicuous consumption, buying to show off not to meet needs, is the result of the "dominator paradigm" on which EuroAmerican cultures are built. It is almost unknown in other cultures that were based on 'reciprocity' and not 'money' or 'exchange.'
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The "Dominator Paradigm" was inherent in the Jewish creation myth. It holds that the Earth was made for the use of man (and I do mean "man"). The man centered philosophy was emphasized by the Greeks in the tenet that "man is the measure of all things." The early Christian church amplified the belief that man is the purpose of the Earth, and the Earth is the center of the universe. Following Aquinas, the Church taught the "chain of being." Man is at the top of the chain with only a few celestial being above. Below man in decending order are woman, children, other races, animals, plants and the Earth itself. The purpose of each rung in the chain is to serve, and be dominated by, the ones above.
This dominator paradigm was made the law of Europe by the Inquisition and the burning at the stake of over one million so called heretics, mostly women, who worshiped the Earth. It was spread world wide by the sword (technology), the flag (nationalism), and the cross (Christianity). The right to dominate all other people, cultures, and land was inherent in the divine right of Christian kings, and the power of the church. The Age of Discovery and Colonization not only made Europe dominant throughout the world, but also carried the doctrine of the dominator paradigm to all other countries.
The final control of EuroAmerican dominator paradigm was voiced in Adam Smith's economic theory. The anointing of "self-Interest" as a logical, if not necessary, extention of the religious concept moved the dominator paradigm beyond the church and into the hands of government, the capitalistic elite, and secular society. With this birth of "homo econimicus" material accumulation in self-interest became a new morality that put competition and personal greed above all other human moral attributes. The measure of EuroAmerican man is what he has, not what he is.
Consumption is thereby not immoral within the norms of the EuroAmerican Cultures.
HUMAN NATURE & CULTURAL NORMS
Anthropological, social, psychological, biological and other sciences are showing that there is nothing natural about the EuroAmerican socioeconomic system. Most other cultures were based on the understanding that humans and all of Gaia (the Earth and all its life forms) are interdependent. Most cultures recognized that only cooperation for the good of the whole could provide good for the individual. They existed on "reciprocity economics." That is, by the religious. if not common sense, belief that each individual should produced for and serve the good of society. The more one gave to others the more others gave to the giver. Owning anything that someone else needed more was taboo. Many cultures had now word for "ownership." Self-poverty rather than self-interest was the rule.
This concept of cooperation is built into our genes. When humanids first came down from the trees they were small, weak and without tools or fire. For some 5 million years they were the prey of hyenas, saber tooth tigers, and other large carnivors including some primates. There defense was cooperation. They lived in large communities. They used their larger brains to manage to exist. Only with in the last few hundred thousand years did they invent tools and discover the use of fire and become hunters themselves. By then the basic human need for "belonging" and "community" were built into their genes. The niche into which they evolved was one in which most cooperative individuals survived. This basic human nature has been overridden in the EuroAmerican cultures by the unnatural values of competition, violence, greed, and material ownership, exemplified by immoral consumption. The key value of these culture is what you have not what you are or what you contribute to society.
Of course, other cultures were not immune for the evils of self-interest even before the advent of the EuroAmerican dominator paradigm. But violence, robbery and warfare in other cultures was primarily confined to struggles between cultures it was not a norm of the internal cultural relationships as it is now. Few cultures, as Margaret Mead, Malinowski, Boas and others have shown, taught their children competition, self-interest, and greed.
THE GAIAN PARADIGM
In the last few decades Chaos, Complexity, and Gaian theories and other scientific research have brought humanity most radical new and different understanding of the cosmos and of human nature. These theories, in different ways, show that the cosmos is one and evolves as a unity. It is composed of whole systems embedded in whole systems, and composed of whose systems, or holons all the way up and all the way down -- atoms to molecules to cells, to life-forms, to humans. to social systems. All thins from quarks to are interlocked and interdependent. The whole holonistic system evolves as a unit. Nor part can change without all others being involved.
Gaia (the Earth and all of life) is a prime example. All the physical attributes that make life possible, the amount of oxygen in the air -- the temperature of the planet, the salt in the ocean, the radiation reaching the earth, and others -- are kept within life supporting bounds by biological processes. Life makes life possible. Gaia is like a living system itself. Applied to humanity and its societies Gaia suggests that no individual can exist without the support of all others. Self-interest, competition, and material consumption are self-defeating.
------------------
Bill Ellis, of Rangely, ME retired early from his working life
as a science policy consultant in agencies such as the National
Science Foundation, Unesco and The World Bank. For the last
30 years he has work voluntarily to promote the broad range of
social innovations that empower people at the grass roots and
promote community self-reliance. One of these is as General
Coordinator, of 'A Coalition for Self-Learning. With which he
facilitated the drafting an online book, "Creating Learning
Communities," and, the White Paper, "Life-Long Self-Learning,"
that promotes the recognition of the vast array of learning
modalities in addition to public schooling -- e.g. learning
co-ops, public schools, private schools, unschooling, charter
schools. His mantra is "everyone should have the right, the
freedom, the resources and the opportunity to learn what
they want, when they want and how they want.