I always say money isn’t everything, and I hope to maintain this conviction.
It’s a mantra that rests in a grounded belief that nothing is worth the
monetization of one’s soul, and is solidified by either one’s experience or
vividly imagining how it would feel to relinquish one’s dignity in exchange for
money or another externality.
Some learn this through experience, while others hold this belief through
an intuitive understanding of priceless character built from a centeredness of
self and principled teachings, leading to moral insight that one’s worth and
dignity are sufficient and do not
require an abundance of materialistic
consumption to artifice one’s worth, as seen by excessive materialism, which
has become the zeitgeist of American culture.
In the film, Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important
Things, this concept of extreme
consumption is addressed with simulations of consumer mania driven by an
insatiable need to fill the voided self with an illusion of self-esteem that’s
never captured in pursuing material goods to the extent that things have become
a deity, alienating one from one’s authentic self.
Closing the documentary with footage from Carter’s “Crisis of
Confidence” speech, the film makes a prevailing argument on misplaced values
with a prophetic warning that has come to fruition.
