Every product that human beings ever use or consume, requires the use of the planet’s land, and precious natural resources, to allow it to be produced, transported, stored, retailed, maintained and, eventually, disposed of. Consequently, Natural Humanists believe that consuming any product, is only morally-acceptable, if it’s essential, or if natural resources can be replaced, to compensate for those taken, without damaging the environment or causing harm to any living creature.
They also believe that as many possessions as possible, should be shared and communally-owned, to reduce the total number of products required, and that as many privately-owned possessions as possible, should be re-used by other people, when no longer required, for example, via second-hand or charity shops.
They recognise that many people justify living in properties that are far too large to meet their true needs, because they believe they ‘need’ space to house one or more cars, or to store collectibles, or items they choose to ‘bulk-buy’ to save money, or to house, display and occasionally use the huge amounts of tech and other possessions they choose to own.
They acknowledge that, the more possessions we own, the more land we steal from other inhabitants of the Earth, to manufacture, retail or house this meaningless ‘stuff’. Nobody needs a ‘house’ for their car, for example, but most homes today, misuse land for a garage for their car, and an increasing number of new homes have double or even triple garages, which in some places are a legal requirement in new homes of a certain size.
Natural Humanists believe that all use of land, to create space for non-essential possessions to be stored, displayed or used, is morally unacceptable, as is the misuse of large properties, which could better be utilised by a larger family, or a group of friends, who actually need that space.
Natural Humanists believe that owning ‘stuff’ does not lead to any meaningful happiness, and recognise that, according to research, as long as human beings have security, and can meet their essential needs reliably, and can have meaningful lives over which they have control, they’re capable of being just as happy as those with very high incomes and huge accrued wealth[i],[ii]. They also believe that the time taken for people to earn the money to buy these unnecessary items, is a waste of their own lives, and denies them the ability to use their limited time on Earth in more meaningful ways.
They recognise that research has proved, that a high income does not improve a person’s ‘emotional well-being’, which includes how often and how intensely they have positive experiences and emotions, like joy and affection, how little they experience negative emotions, like sadness, anger and stress, and to what extent these things balance to make their life pleasant or unpleasant[iii].
They also recognise that it’s been proved, that being on a high income, reduces people’s ability to value and enjoy life’s small pleasures[iv], making them incapable of appreciating that ‘the best things in life are free’.
They acknowledge that research demonstrates that emotional well-being only seems to increase, until we reach an income similar to the UK’s basic ‘Living Wage’ or, according to other researchers, an income of around £60,000,[v] so earning above this amount makes little difference to our true happiness.
Natural Humanists believe that the income necessary to achieve this highest level of emotional well-being, is likely to be significantly less for non-materialists, and for people who are less competitive, and who live communally, with people who value them for who they are, rather than for how much they earn or own, and who happily share possessions, and have a full social life, and meaningful work life, which fits closely with their beliefs and values, like with any Natural Humanists, who choose to live and work in a Natural Humanist Community.
They believe that materialism is ‘toxic’ and harmful, and that unnecessary possessions and products, including unnecessary ‘throwaway fashion’, and food and drink that doesn’t meet our nutritional needs, effectively ‘enslaves’ other human beings in capitalist businesses, to produce, transport, store and retail both these products, and the raw materials from which they’re made, and often also to maintain and eventually dispose of this unnecessary ‘stuff’. This also prevents these workers from making a far more meaningful use of their lives, for example, by raising a family, or doing work which improves the planet, or other people’s lives.
Unnecessary products and possessions also increase global warming, waste the Earth’s natural resources, waste land, which could otherwise become wild, natural, biodiverse environments, and cause significant unnecessary pollution, including micro-plastic pollution, and toxins released into the air, rivers and the sea, both by the products themselves and by the factories and lorries in which they’re manufactured or transported.
Product manufacturing also, irresponsibly, reduces the amount of water that’s available for other human beings, and other species, to use or consume. For example, the Aral Sea, which used to cover 8,000 km2, nearly dried-up completely, due to the amount of water used by the textile industry[vi], which turned part of it into a desert, devastated wildlife and the local human population, whose lives and livelihoods relied upon it, and left the whole area highly polluted, creating one of the planet’s worst human-made environmental disasters[vii].
Natural Humanists believe that possessions are incapable of significantly increasing happiness, but they also believe that financial wealth is incapable of doing so as well. For example, in many countries, people’s levels of perceived happiness have been found to reduce, as these countries have become wealthier[viii], suggesting that unhappiness is the price that we all pay for wealth.
Natural Humanists recognise thatmaterialistsvalue their possessions highly, considering them to be at the centre of their lives, their main source of satisfaction, and physical evidence of their ‘success’.[ix]
Materialists often feel that their possessions, and their own comfort, are more important than their values and beliefs[x], and they may even depend on their possessions to ‘give’ them self-esteem[xi]. Consequently, they may value themselves more, and expect others to value them more, because they have these possessions[xii], but also, they may feel more and more worthless, the less money and possessions they have, and they may never be able to feel fully satisfied with their possessions, because capitalism ensures that there are constantly new and ‘better’ alternatives available for them to consume and acquire[xiii].
Research suggests that materialists have unrealistically high expectations of how much satisfaction they’ll get from material goods, so their new possessions are never able to meet their high expectations[xiv]. Consequently, they feel the need to continue buying even more new things, all of which continue to make them feel dissatisfied with their lives[xv].
Materialists’ possessions may include their home, their car, their mobile phone and their clothes, and they often consider the brand, and social-standing and wealth associated with a brand, or a particular possession, to be more important than its function.
In contrast to this, Natural Humanists, and other non-materialists, value possessions only for their ability to perform their required function, not for their appearance or how ‘cool’ or ‘fancy’ they are, or for what brand they are, or whether they’re ‘limited editions’. Clothes just need to keep them warm and dry, and a house just needs to give shelter from the elements and to be somewhere to live, sleep and eat.
Materialists will value things that have no useful function, such as a 10 bedroom house, when only 2 bedrooms are needed, or unnecessarily large rooms, or having as many en-suite bathrooms as bedrooms, when 1 bathroom is perfectly adequate, or having every latest gadget, or every kitchen appliance, even if they can cook perfectly tasty meals with the appliances they already have.
They will always want to ‘upgrade’ to the newest version of technology and the latest model of car, and they’ll constantly want to move to bigger and fancier homes in ‘better’ neighbourhoods, even if this has little positive impact on their life.
They’ll want to own a ‘holiday home’ or ‘mobile home’ or ‘motorhome’, or possibly all three, rather than using house-swap holiday services, or will want to temporarily ‘own’ a hotel room, while also owning a home which is empty and unused while they’re on holiday.
They’ll want to own a car, or numerous cars, instead of walking, cycling, or using public transport. They’ll also value having their own items, rather than sharing communal items. For example, they’ll buy a book, rather than using a library, and they’ll possibly also own a ‘real’ book, rather than a ‘virtual’ digital book. They’ll also surround themselves, and fill their homes, with ‘nick-naks’, which have little functional use.
Materialism is closely linked to consumerism, and materialists will often want to consume as many things as they can, going on as many holidays per year as possible, attending as many concerts as possible, and going out for meals and drinks, when homemade meals and drinks with friends and family would meet their needs perfectly well.
Materialistic people will seek highly paid or ‘impressive’ jobs, often regardless of the quality of life they allow, and regardless of how the work involved fits in with their personal values.
Materialists may value a game or sport only if they win and may ‘collect’ achievements and experiences, as though they’re possessions, like running as many separate or consecutive marathons as possible.
Natural Humanists believe that materialists often ‘know the price of everything, but the value of nothing’, and often see their friends and partners as ‘possessions’, always wanting to ensure that they’re the most attractive available and have the highest social standing. Also, the more possessions somebody has, and the more expensive their possessions, the more they tend to distance themselves from their fellow human beings.
They also often value friends and partners less, if their looks fade, for example due to age, or illness, and they may want to ‘own’ their partner, through marriage, or by fiercely ensuring their partner’s monogamy, or will want to ‘bed’ as many people as possible, with the number, the attractiveness and the social standing of their partners all affecting their own ‘value’, rather than living a Natural Humanist polyamorous lifestyle, of meaningful and loving, mutually-pleasurable, long-term relationships and friendships, based on equality and mutual happiness and pleasure.
On social media, materialists may seek to gain as many social media ‘friends’ as possible, including as many ‘important’, ‘attractive’ and ‘influential’ people as possible, and they may seek to avoid the ‘wrong kinds’ of people ‘friending’ them online at all.
Materialistic parents may also seek to ensure that their children only befriend, socialise with, date, mate with, and marry people with wealth, power, physical attraction and social-standing.
Materialism has been found to be potentially harmful to people’s emotional well-being and relationships, increasing the risk of depression and anxiety[xvi], and often resulting in problems with people’s self-esteem, which is linked to what they own, rather than to who they are[xvii].
According to research by Dr Jason Carroll, a professor at Brigham Young University, 1 in 5 couples have a strong love of money[xviii], but money is also their main source of conflict, and materialistic couples argue more, are less happy, have less stability in their relationships, are less responsive to their partner, are less focused on their relationship, are more likely to seek happiness through their possessions, rather than through relationships, and are more likely to have financial problems, because they’re more focussed on saving than on spending, and are more interested in acquiring possessions, than in maintaining financial stability[xix].
According to research[xx], materialistic people tend to be more concerned about what they don’t have, than what they do have, such as security, a home, a family and a job. They’re also more likely to be depressed, with the most materialistic people of all being the most depressed, the least grateful, the least satisfied, and the most self-centred, focusing on physical rewards and helping themselves, rather than spending time and energy on supporting other people[xxi].
Research suggests that materialistic people are more likely to be competitive, and to have little or no interest in spending their time on pro-social activities, like working for a good cause, and also, people who place a high value on wealth and status, tend to be more anxious and depressed, and less sociable[xxii].
Despite all of their possessions, materialists are more likely to be dissatisfied with their standard of living, with how much fun they have in their lives, and with the relationships they have with friends, and are also more likely to suffer with depression, anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem and substance abuse than non-materialists[xxiii].
Natural Humanists believe that materialism, vanity and arrogance are toxic to humanity and to the planet, and they believe that they should all encourage and support each other to permanently eliminate these toxic traits from their lives, and should value and celebrate each other’s efforts and successes in trying to do so, while also raising their children, and encouraging their friends and wider family, to do the same.
They believe strongly in human equality and that, ideally, all human beings should have a similar level of wealth and possessions, which, wherever appropriate, should be communally owned, for the benefit of everybody concerned.
In short, Natural Humanists believe strongly in the motto, ‘More Love, Less Stuff’.
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References
[i] Kahneman, D. & Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (38) (2010): 16489-16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
[ii] Kahneman, D. & Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (38) (2010): 16489-16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
[iii] Kahneman, D. & Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (38) (2010): 16489-16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
[iv] Quoidbach, J., Dunn, EW., Petrides, KV., Mikolajczak, M. “Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness”. Psychol Sci 21 (2010): 759–763. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107#core-r21
[v] Kahneman, D. & Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (38) (2010): 16489-16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
[vi] Wikipedia contributors. “Aral Sea.” 24 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 May 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
[vii] The Daily Telegraph. “Aral Sea ‘one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters'”. The Daily Telegraph. London. May 2010. Archived from the original on 8 April 2010. Cited on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea#cite_note-13
[viii] Altin, H. “Does wealth bring happiness?”. Cogent Economics & Finance 11(2) (2023). https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2023.2268804. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322039.2023.2268804#d1e538
[ix] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[x] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xi] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xii] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xiii] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xiv] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xv] Tsang, Jo-Ann, Carpenter, Thomas P., Roberts, James A., Frisch, Michael B., Carlisle, Robert D.
“Why are materialists less happy? The role of gratitude and need satisfaction in the relationship between materialism and life satisfaction”. Personality and Individual Differences, 64 (2014): 62-66. ISSN 0191-8869. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.02.009. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914001019 or:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914001019
[xvi] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xvii] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1
[xviii] Carroll, Dr. Jason (Professor of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah). Cited on: Ryan Jaslow. “Materialism makes for rocky relationships, study suggests”. October 14 2011, CBS News. 27 May 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/materialism-makes-for-rocky-relationships-study-suggests/
[xix] Carroll, Dr. Jason, Professor of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Cited on: Ryan Jaslow. “Materialism makes for rocky relationships, study suggests”. October 14 2011, CBS News. 27 May 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/materialism-makes-for-rocky-relationships-study-suggests/
[xx] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” Personality and Individual Differences. November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429579. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1 (research by Baylor University)
[xxi] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “The Problem of Materialism.” Personality and Individual Differences. November 2018. ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429579. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php?vref=1 (research by Baylor University)
[xxii] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “Cuing Consumerism: Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being”. www.ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429579. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php
[xxiii] Bodenhausen, Galen V., Bauer, Monika A., Wilkie, James E.B. and Kim, Jung K. “Cuing Consumerism: Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being”. www.ukessays.com. 6 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429579. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/society/the-problem-of-materialism.php