Has there ever been a more soulless, culturally vapid time in western society or even world history?

So should people just sit on a pile of the money they earn and live ascetically instead of enjoying lifestyles that make kings of the past look like bums?

Great thread. You seriously sizzled my steak.

That quote is fake

>So should people just sit on a pile of the money they earn and live ascetically instead of enjoying lifestyles that make kings of the past look like bums?
That would probably be better, yes.

I'll take soullessness over starvation or getting shot because I coughed in the wrong direction.Besides, if people spending their money how they want to bothers you you must not have much going on in your life

I agree with you that modern society is fucked, however you're underestimating people and forgetting that this is far from the first time in history that materialism had prevailed. This age of vice will end, and the sun will rise just as it has in every other era. Also, screens don't force men to keep their heads focused on inconsequential things (no state of technology can command a mans will, it's merely a tool that eases his choice), that's just how people substitute for the hole in the hearts left by this period when everything sacred and mysterious is done away with and when mundane law is uninformed in the higher laws that govern cosmic order.

Again, that's a matter of increased technology allowing more to do so. It doesn't dictate attitudes concerning the use of consumer goods and media. It's just stuff: stuff isn't evil, it's just not a proper end in itself that deserves the focus it has. There have been periods of wealth and prosperity which took place alongside great increases in intellectual and spiritual understanding throughout history and periods of famine and tragedy that were undercoated with the obsession with material goods. If you think just in terms of materials, don't be surprised that you find only answers that inform you on materials.

>At least in earlier times society tried to encourage him to lift his head

LEWRONGGENERASHUN LIEK IF U AGREE XDD

But in all seriousness in earlier times he would live a life of thankless and endless toil as an illiterate moron until he died of one of a million preventable diseases after siring 7 children but only seeing 3 make it to adulthood. Unless you were lucky enough to be rich your life was guaranteed to be some variation of that scenario for the better part of 5,000 years of Human history

>whig historiography

How about you give 20% of your wealth away if you are this bothered by materialism?

what, do you live under a bridge? did your family live under a bridge for all of human history?

are you the son of Diogenes?

>the human experience has been reduced to economics

Status, not economics, and it is nothing new. If normies are flaunting merchandise today, yesterday they were comparing genealogic trees and lineage rights. Same shit, different seasoning.

Nice quads.

>Man was more spiritually fulfilled in the past
>YEAH BUT BACK THEN PEEPLE HAD SMALLPOCKS DURR

This.

Man has been man since the begining of time. Australopithecus showed women their erections, Medieval knights their surname and noble parentage, modern man flashes his Samsung S8.

It's all status and signaling, no need to get upset about it. Common men, the plebs, have always been vulgar, shallow and empty. You haven't discovered anything new OP.

It is better than lower class trash today is glued to some reality show rather than joining mercenary armies to rape and loot as in Renaissance Italy.

Which is more spiritually void?

It's just one aspect of corporatism, man. It's capitalism perverted to serve the interest of the few. Capitalism enables you to carve your own destiny with your own hands, and be paid accordingly to how well you do in your life.

The only thing vapid is your head, user. Merchants always have and always will bow to priests.

Better than having the human experience revolve around open warfare and/or religious bullcrap.

Maybe? The crash consumerism and short sightedness provokes in me a sense of alienation but anyone who has read enough history will know this viewpoint was spoken about in plato's times. I think there are even Babylonian or other Mesopotamian texts that talked about these topics.

But if you took any person from any time period of ancient human history and bring them to the now, they would be flabbergasted we could eat 3 delicious and filling foods every day, enjoy hot water on demand and wearing comfortable shoes.

Do you really want to go back?

You’re an idiot or a solipsisist if you think previous generations were as pleasure seeking and materialistic as we are.

>At least in earlier times society tried to encourage him to lift his head
When exactly are you thinking about?

>implying if anyone tried to lift his head he didn't have it literally kicked down unless he was part of an existing elite, until VERY recently

Ideally they should invest or buy things they actually need.

>Merchants always have and always will bow to priests.
Care to elaborate how this pithy truism actually applies to our modern consumer capitalist society?

>sure everyone is dying in agony of the Black Death but at least we all got forced to go to church at least 3 times a week on pain of being set on fire if we didn't

They don't own me.

>all these people posting in this thread who have obviously never experienced real poverty

great post keep up the good work

Good news OP: participation in this horrid vapid society is entirely voluntary. You can go focus on spirituality right fucking now and nobody will stop you. Go on, give up your worldly possessions and become an ascetic, you'll show all of us just how fulfilled a guy can be. Of course almost nobody will pay any attention to you or respect your decision, but clearly you're far above the vain, attention-seeking materialists so that shouldn't matter to you. After all nothing demonstrates your contempt for this vain and shallow world more than dying in obscure penury.

I mean, if those people are so upset with material culture why don't they just live on a farm or go off the grid and go all Thoreau? They always seem to decry the state of things but make no change in their own lives to live to their ideal.

*flashes his 256gb iPhone X

Because they are losers. They have nothing at stake in this world or in life. If society were to revert to whatever time period they arbitrarily decided was best they would be among those with the least to lose in the transition, and therefore by their own twisted logic the most to gain. They have erroneously equated in their minds failure in this modern world with success in some older version of it. It is the last desperate attempt of a feeble ego to stave off total collapse by pretending that they could be successful and fulfilled if only they were born in another time or place. Never mind that they continually squander their current existence so shamefully, that they waste time on pointless moaning and complaining instead of living as best as possible right now. They pretend helplessness before a great evil as if that makes them martyrs to a cause, and not just another non-starter who decided that if failure was all he ever knew he might as well make it his religion.

projecting

You're right OP, you should throw away your phone or computer or tablet or whatever your posting on (all of those are really just symbols of shameless consumerism, right?) and just stop posting.

>The future-men have abandoned honor and the gods but the meat-pots are out of this world let me tell ya

The amount of sheer vitriol provoked by this type of question almost seems like a cosmic constant.

>why don't YOU go live innawoods HUH

>people used to die lmao

im sure that living as serf that relies on having no war/famine/shitty amount of crops to survive has a lot more soul huh

you have access to internet so that automatically means that you live a better life than some monarchs used to have 500-1000 years ago

APOLOGIZE

It’s herd mentality desu. Also the idea that even criticizing excess means you’re automatically done hippie

Inb4 commie but this is what you get with capitalism, even worse with it's evolution, globalism

>OH YEAH WELL DO YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA THAN CONSTANTLY BUYING THINGS?

no man
OP is right, but I won't apologize for this to another materialist

So you think that a time when forced child labor was rampant, women had very few rights, a rusty nail could kill you, and the vast majority of humanity was oppressed by industrial neo-feudalism is the golden age of mankind? Get real.

Has there ever been a time when more retards were shouting on about le hopeless society thinking they're somehow unique or clever in their unwillingness to get their hands dirty?

Failed men are the real epidemic.

>keeps arguing in 300 year old memes

>Truly, the worst time in history is not when everyone is trying to stab or rob me, but when they're trying to sell me shit!

You just want to bow to a protection racket because you can't handle the world. Failed men are the real epidemic.

retards like you who are satisfied with superficial explanations for complex topics are the real epidemic

Nope

henryflynt.org/economics/premises_for_communist_economics.htm

>"There is a side of life, of human possibility, which is not available even to the superior earner, because the mercenary imperative extinguishes it. An “authentic quest” is not possible to anyone in bourgeois society, except a person who drops out and agrees to be called a failure."

>unhappy with a superficial, hedonistic, materialistic culture
>failed man

Oh the irony. See the drone lash out at anything that breaks his narrow mold. Keep purchasing, eating, drinking, fucking. Never question anything. Pleasure is the highest good.

>liberal reading comprehension

Literally never said that; just that succeeding generations are ever more materialistic.

>caring about women’s rights

Economics has an inarguable place in society, and to not understand it is just as bad as glorifying it by itself. But I think there's more at issue here. The problem isnt one of "economics" which can impartially study what it needs, the problem is hyper-materialism. Remember kids, if you think capital and economics is what challenges your reactionary paradise, just remember the same can be said of Marx (just change the word "reactionary")

>he doesn't use adblock

>Has there ever been a more soulless, culturally vapid time in western society or even world history?
>Does anyone else not find it revolting to the pit of their stomach how the human experience has been reduced to economics?

>I promise that "spiritually fulfilled" is not an arbitrary buzz word

>Durr hurr I'm a faggot
>You're a faggot
>LUL UR PROJECTING LUL

What do you know about anything other than your meme narrative?
Write out an actual argument faggot

He probably already does via taxation to the gubmint so they can spend it on non whites, trashy losers, and their jew wars.

It's really humbling seeing that picture. I remember in high school it really got me that this is how we all end up and I started enjoying life more. How accurate is the decomposition shown?

t. failed male

T.Ego ridden idiot

Wow you look gross mr.Succesful male

Yeah, almost as if people are asking you to hold onto your words and live by them. Faggot. But keep on projecting your own apathy onto society.

>confusing corporatism with corporatocracy
>implying a corporatocracy isn't inevitable with capitalism

t. Consumerist drone

>hey guys maybe there’s more to life than consumption
>all these assblasted normies

The state of Veeky Forums

This board is >90% Americans and other angloturd pigs

@3524048
>Being this butthurt
>Being proud of not participating in society
Man, you're pathetic. No (You) today.

>doesn’t know how to reply

Sad! Back to r*ddit kid!

There's always been plebs in the world, its population has just grown is all.

seething