The Paradox of Materialistic Self-Improvement

This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. One of the deteriorative effects of the Western materialistic culture that's promoted in many Western countries, particularly The United States, is that it undermines our pursuit of genuine self improvement.

Now, know that there's a an oversaturation of sort of self help gurus out there and there's a promotion of a very superficial version of improving yourself, Maybe best expressed in slogans like be the best version of yourself or be better today than you were yesterday and all of that sort of thing. Like an Instagramable version of being better. And most of this really just sort of comes down to three basic goals, better physical fitness, better time management, and better income. Now, I'm not saying that these sorts of goals or these sorts of pursuits don't have any value, but they're not at all the classic understanding of what self improvement means, means, and it's certainly not the Islamic view. And no matter how well you may succeed at these types of pursuits, it's not really going to improve you as a person.

Now, I'm not just talking about, say, your moral or ethical character as a person and improving your moral and ethical character because, obviously, you could be very physically fit, you could be very time productive, you could be wealthy, and also be a complete sociopath. None of these best versions of you are really that much better than any other version, at least not from a moral or ethical standpoint. But that's, again, not really what I wanna talk about. That's pretty obvious. What I wanna talk about is, well, refinement.

Let me give you a hypothetical example. Let's say you work in an office and one of your coworkers, say the IT guy, he's the IT guy. That's all you know him as. He's very good at his job. He can answer all your questions.

He can solve all of the IT problems in the office. One day, he invites you to a gathering in his home. And over the course of that dinner, you discover that he also plays classical violin, and even he's a composer. One of the other guests tells you that your coworker works on a committee for the Natural History Museum where he's he's responsible for verifying the historical authenticity of artifacts. You overhear him speaking to someone, another guest, in Mandarin.

The topic of conversation turns somehow to philosophy, and the IT guy suddenly is able to recite pages and pages and pages of Immanuel Kant from memory. You overhear him talking to another guest about agricultural policy in Brazil in the nineteen fifties, and that turns into a discussion about nuanced differences between the way Portuguese is spoken in Brazil versus the way it's spoken in Portugal. In other words, you discover that this man is infinitely more than just the IT guy, and he becomes instantly much more impressive in your eyes. Now none of these aspects of his life earn him any extra money. They don't make him more money.

They don't increase his social standing. They don't give him more social capital. They don't make him famous. These are all things that he just pursued for his own internal enrichment and refinement because internal human potential is a vast field of cultivatable growth of incalculable depth, breadth, and variety. But materialistic culture does not promote its nourishment.

Now we all value it when we see it in someone. We can't help but be impressed. But the culture does not encourage us to pursue refinement and internal development for its own sake. We are encouraged to pursue monetizable skills, marketable talents, educations that can give us an edge in our careers, and this is criminally negligent towards the cultivation of the inner wealth that we have the potential to attain. What a human being is or can be, should not be, cannot really be reduced simply to market value.

We are not commodities. This is not civilization. It's the opposite. A civilized society produces people who create, cultivate, and appreciate excellence and refinement, sophistication and erudition for their own sakes because that makes every individual in the society a higher quality person, which in turn adds richness to the culture, to the society, and to the overall tapestry of life. I remember Sahabi commenting on the meticulous and disciplined manners with which Amr ibn al Khattab used to eat his food, even if it was just bread and olive oil.

This is emblematic of the high degree of culture and refinement among the early Muslims. Amr ibn al Khattab was a connoisseur of perfumes, and the Muslim respect and regard for poetry is well known. This is a civilization. It's a civilization because it civilized people. There used to be a much higher expectation about the level of competence and fluency that a person should have in a multitude of areas, areas that have nothing to do with money or business or being popular or what have you.

There was just a much higher, lowest common denominator of what would make you regarded as a mature adult, a whole person, and we are seriously shortchanging ourselves in this regard. Materialism hollows out culture and bankrupts society, leaving individuals with stunted growth, internal growth, and their human potential is left derelict. I mean, you see ads on YouTube about how to make money as an author without ever even writing a book for crying out loud, as if that's not something disgraceful. So learn things because knowing them makes you a more well rounded person. Do things because doing them makes you a more capable and more skilled person.

Gain knowledge and develop talents for the sake of your own upliftment, not just to compete in the marketplace.