HOW BUYING & SELLING OF DIGITAL PRODUCTS UNDERCUTS MATERIALISM
(slightly shorter version forthcoming in Yoga Living Magazine, March/April, 2009)
Materialism on the Wane?
“Materialism”—getting and spending. Want not—waste a lot. Which boys have the best new toys? It’s our acquisitive, wealth-oriented drive to own physical things—the more, the bigger, the more expensive, the better. As if nothing else mattered, or even existed. But wait—there’s a ghost in the machine. From the very fountainhead of technology itself, something a lot more like spirit than matter is pouring into everyday buying and selling. It’s actually hard to own it, and there are lessons to be had—once we get past the glitter. A halfway house between material and spiritual, could that be--“digital”?
I think it was Francis Bacon who said, “speech makes a ready man, but writing a careful one.” Conversation, with it’s unpredictable ebb and flow, tends to promote quick wittedness--whereas writing a lot teaches you more about organizing thoughts carefully. Similarly, today we might say, “too much video dulls the mind, while reading enriches it.” 
