We are dominantly materialistic in our new age. Observed in consumer society, overproduction, and wasteful wealth, we prioritize our immediate materialistic needs over anything beyond. The problems with material abundance have beset humanity since our most ancient epochs and are a part of our absence from paradise, since civilization is based on stored surplus,enduring both its vice and virtue. Moreover, historically, there has been an abiding parallel to material abundance everywhere humans existed: The immaterial, which can be observed as magic, miracles, spirituality, religion, but at its core is the enshrined mysteries of human life. 

The result of the dynamic between both immaterial and material wealth has played an integral role in the creation of philosophies, religions, wars, as well as political and dialectical movements, clashing and diffusing in a constant motion to synthesize new ideas, and push the dialogue of humanity further.

The level of contemporary materialism has congealed into the core of modern society, and to fully break from it would be modern heresy. Multiple factors have led to this, but here I will reveal how the lack of the immaterial, the Romantic, and in a sense, the spiritual, has resulted in profound dissatisfaction and alienation.  

This motion of history moving upon a linear progression towards greater enlightenment is a large oversimplification of Hegelian Dialectics. However, in its sum, Hegelian Dialectics is the idea that history moves upon the resolution of conflicting ideas, which in the end, results in a conclusion that gets challenged again and synthesised, and in the end results in constant progress based on ideas. In this respect, history has progressed. Progress has been achieved technologically, in philosophical aspects, and has grown in scale, due to the extreme jump in the size of the population, far greater than that of Hegel’s generation. Yet even in our own relatively enlightened era, a portion of the wisdom of the past has been shed, and we have, if not forgotten, disregarded, the real power found in the immaterial.

Circling back to Modern life, modern beliefs and dogmas, like a tainted water supply, affect those consciously or not, and embed philosophy deep in the roots of our personal belief systems. We live in a world based on material. This is fundamental to the doctrines of scientific theories, which rule out the “impractical” ideas of the immaterial, based on their unobservable qualities. ​ The scientific method can scope the unfathomably minute quarks embedded in the atom and scale the universe to 46.5 billion light-years. Freudian philosophy seeks to explain what was once attributed to the unknowable and undiscoverable soul. Dawarianism offers a life without the creation of God. These scientists were the prophets who tore down the ways of the old and gave us revelation into the mechanisms of the universe. This has led to the victory of the material over the immaterial, to the brink where people believe in a universe only consisting of material and observable phenomena.

After the enlightenment and scientific revolution, they sowed seeds for this new religion of the material, and a god named Abundance. Not to say that the scientific method is false, but what has not been scrutinized is the effects on the individual, and on society, and of viewing the world in a fervently materialistic manner.

By living in a world dominated by materialism, people become obsessed with only aspects of the material. They focus on wealth, comfort, progress, and conformity. Not saying that greed is a new phenomenon, but the lack of an offered alternative to practical materialism brews great dissatisfaction.

Across the world, and even today, there is a constant ebb and flow of what is perceived and what is felt. The immaterial compared to the material world is fundamentally beyond our understanding. In a modern context, some atheists may consider religions to be equated to myths; they claim religion is just to serve practical purposes to explain why natural phenomena occur (like rain, the stars, and where we come from). Yet the core of religious doctrines is not decapitated by the revelations of science, because most often the questions posed by Jesus, by Gautama Buddha, and pondered by prophets, acolytes, monks, and priests alike, ascend the observable universe. Questions as to what is good and evil, why must we suffer, and what good does it do? Why do we live and why do we die? What occurs after death?

These are all questions that, no matter how much science we discover, we will never be able to answer. Dear reader, this is because the immaterial can not be observed, no matter how far or wide one looks into the material.

To go back to the ideas of Hegel, in an age largely contending itself with the material, one needs an antithesis in the form of contending itself with the immaterial. Much like how the Romantic movement sprang in opposition to the advent of industry, does the theology of the scientific revolution need a counter force? In this way, I argue to at least pay some heed to the past, to the immaterial, in hopes of synthesizing a rounder worldview and advancing the dialectic of humanity.