Post²-Materialism: The Sucking Social Undertow of America's Decline

Post-materialism, a theory developed by political scientist Ronald Inglehart in 1977, proposes that a hierarchy exists in the social wants and needs of a population – that the opinions and tolerances of a society are regulated by the material welfare of that group at large. As a concept, it is inherently based on an easy-to-grasp principle: if a population is worried about food security or the safety of their neighborhoods, their ability to find worthwhile and meaningful work to barter for those things, those people will have little energy to devote to secondary injustices and quality-of-life improvements.

After all, what time does a peer realistically have to support a general cause that doesn't directly affect them when they are struggling already themselves to make ends meet? Does the straight ally have time for the gay protest when all are under the same economic and material constraints together? Do you have the time to get educated and involved, the ability to materialize hours from thin air to pursue your niche social cause?

And this is not by any means a smear against the LGBTQ+ community. Rather, it is this community that I have spent my entire life experiencing, its own social evolution from a joke in Comedy Central bits from The Man Show (1999) to simply normal, mirroring my own personal journey.

What I am simply pointing out is that within a group, any group, we have our values and needs. All of it must be prioritized and acted upon as needed, but what happens when we are forced to reshuffle? If the idea of post-materialism is that we must meet our basic needs as a society before we can attend to those which make life more bearable for increasingly smaller groups of the population, what happens when those materialist needs begin to be unmet?

That is what has burrowed into my brain today: does society become apathetic to the "secondary" concerns as they de-materialize? Are we entering an era of post-post-materialism in the United States? What does that mean for those marginalized groups which often reach deaf ears as the government increasingly adopts anti-ally views towards neighbors and friends?

The Crumbling Foundation

There is no denying that we are in a prime state of material deprivation across the country. Looking to food security, the formation of food deserts scattered across our cities shows how inaccessible good, affordable meals can be for any individual, let alone family. What happens when the few accessible – though not necessarily valuable or affordable – food sources are subject to sudden shocks in supply? What happens when the continuing economic stagnation in the United States begins to turn into something much worse?

The same goes for housing. I don't think I know a single person who isn't currently living in month-to-month leases or attached to long-term bank contracts to secure the roof over their head. Across the US, we have seen the prices of even the modest "starter" home skyrocket under the grasping hands of acquisition groups and investment firms.

Today the dream of a home to protect you and yours across generations and without undue burden is little more than a figment for hundreds of great multitudes of workers trapped in cycles of low-wage, disposable jobs and increasing costs across the board. The natural question which arises is how far can we backslide under negligent government and degrading material realities?

The Gilded Farce

As the government consolidates power for itself, the GOP, and the coming Trump aristocracy, the welfare of the general people has fallen into a state of such disrepair that it exists as little more than shredded wisps of what once was. My own generation – raised as we were on picket ideals and universal justice and perpetual prosperity for all – saw but a glimpse of what was once within reach for all in our nation regardless of race, orientation, identity, or creed. Today, a near half-century of austerity has finally crept from its deregulatory cocoon in the form of inequality and impoverishment for all.

Indeed, the brutal realities of economic unsustainability and rampant corruption in the highest ranks of society have laid bare what the most marginalized have always known as fact in our country: you pay to play – with mind, body, and soul. There is no open social path to an educated mind, no opportunity to grow wealth independent of the grasping hands of consolidated banking, insurance, and rental lobbies. Much as at the turn of the last century, there is a conspicuous monopolization of wealth and power at every corner, awaiting the moment you miss one too many payments.

It's a techno-feudalist hellscape (Varoufakis, 2024) in which power is stripped away for access rather than abundance, creating what can only be described as a Gilded farce for our time – an aristocracy built on the industry of information technology rather than steel, oil, and steam. We are sold sham solutions for manufactured problems in society while tangible reality becomes less livable for marginalized peers with each new ordinance or executive order. At the end of the day, the material reality is clear: we are no longer secure in our primary needs as a society.

The March Backward

What Inglehart called the Silent Revolution was just that, a conspicuous shift from the old primary values of making ends meet and having a safe place to lie your head towards active dreaming of how to use that little extra you now had. A short-lived period in which social concerns which had always been pressing before now became preeminent in the minds of those with time to look beyond their own limited lived experiences.

Today, we march forward toward the time before, ambling blindly behind the Liberal inclination to always beg for time and negotiation while simultaneously tying the bootstrings crushing necks across the streets of US populations.

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