Over the past week, I have been reading The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff.  The following two paragraphs caught my attention.

Today, thanks to this rather lopsided cultural foundation, we live in what is commonly described as a Materialistic Society.  But that description is in error.  Ours is in reality an Abstract Value society - one in which things are not appreciated for what they are so much as what they represent.  If Western industrial society appreciated the Material World, there would be no junkyards, no clearcut forests, no shoddily designed and manufactured products, no poisoned water sources, no obese, fuel-guzzling automobiles, nor any of the other horrors and eyesores that haunt us at every turn.  If ours were a materialistic society, we would love the physical world - and we would know our limits within it. 

 

In truth, Western industrial society does not eve notice the Material World.  It quickly discards it, leaves it to rust in the rain.  The material world is Here and Now, and industrial society does not appreciate or pay attention to the Here and Now.  It's too busy coveting and rushing after the There and Later On.  As a result, it all too often fails to see what is right in front of it, and what’s coming from that.  It forgets were it has been; it does not know where it is going.