ABSTRACT MATERIALISM by F. KONG

Though we claim to be a country that is struggling with poverty the Filipino will always be updated as far as the latest fashion is concerned.

We read the latest fashion magazines watch amazed at the world’s prettiest men and women donning their designer clothes in Fashion cable channels and we pick them up.

The amazing thing is to realize that in a very materialistic 21st century world we are in today, rather than fashion imitating life, life is imitating fashion.

Bordering on confusion, human beings behave in very strange ways.

Consider the following:

• We wear Safari clothes and we’ve never been to a jungle.
• We wear Aerobic footwear and we never set foot in an aerobics class.
• We wear a deep sea dive watch and we never get wet.
• Those beautiful and expensive pilot’s watch we buy yet we do not know how to fly a plane.
• We drive a 4 wheel drive truck in the middle of manila traffic.
• We have architectural magazines we don’t read filled with pictures of furniture we don’t like.
• We have financial strategy software installed in a computer we don’t know how to work.
• We have art poster for an exhibit we never went to of an artist we never heard of.

This is called abstract materialism.

One day a young executive got into an accident in his brand new Jaguar after having too many drinks in their office Christmas party.

As he made a turn he missed it and went straight into a tree suffering from a serious crash. It was a wonder he got out of the debris alive but did found one of his arms missing.

People milled around the wreck and heard him saying, “Oh no. Look what happened to my Jaguar. My beautiful Jaguar.”

One of the spectators was amazed and said, “Hey mister. You’re still worried about your car you should be glad to be alive. Don’t you know that you’ve lost an arm?

The executive quickly turned to see that one of his arms was indeed missing. And so he cried out loud saying: “Oh no. My Rolex too. I lost my Rolex too!”

Understand this.

The more you have to live for, the less you need to live on. Those who make acquisition their goal never have enough.