Totalitarianism, Materialism, and Spiritual Ruin – Thomas Merton

These words of Thomas Merton speak the hard truth to power.

Even where totalitarianism has not yet completely wiped out all liberty, men are still subject to the corrupting effect of materialism. The world has always been selfish: but the modern world has lost all ability to control its egoism. And yet, having acquired the power to satisfy its material needs and its desires for pleasures and comfort, it has discovered that these satisfactions are not enough. They do not bring peace, they do not bring happiness. They do not bring security either to the individual or to society. We live at the precise moment when the exorbitant optimism of the materialist world has plunged into spiritual ruin. We find ourselves living in a society of men who have discovered their own nonentity where they least expected to—in the midst of power and technological achievement. The result is an agony of ambivalence in which each man is forced to project upon his neighbors a burden of self-hatred which is too great to be tolerated by his own soul. — The Living Bread, p. 16

In a nation where politicians and oligarchs strip away rights and programs to assist the vulnerable this truth needs to be heard. As the Scrooges of this world (my apologies to old Ebenezer for using his name to describe the 1%) literally and figuratively kill the 99% in their quest for money and power, all their greed will amount to absolutely nothing. In the end, they will die just like everyone else and their money and so-called power will simply rot or be stolen.