I think you're both wrong. Or right. Figures. I always wind up in some weird middle ground where everybody can find a common enemy for arguments.

If a new iPod makes your life more pleasurable and does not impact it in any other way, your life is made better. Darien's right about the weird semantic hoops you're trying to leap through. But I think there are hidden costs to recreational items like this that we tend not to think about. Recreational material gain, I think, distances us a little more from our understanding of the things that matter in life. If we're excited about something new, pretty much by definition that means we are not excited about something else, and that something else just may be something more important. Is the life of someone holed up in a recreational resort home, with all the latest entertainment gadgets, "better" than that of someone who, instead, volunteers down at the local soup kitchen? Hard to argue the point either way, since we've not defined what "better" entails, but even without nailing that down, I don't think the concept I'm trying to convey is unclear.

That said, there's no reason our lives can't have a balance of both, either. But I do think that most things in our lives have pros and cons, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. It's a mistake to think of a new iPod as new memory for a computer, which only impacts a computer in one particular, identifiable way. Of course, sometimes it's the gains that are hidden, rather than the costs, and sometimes they don't balance out in the way you'd expect.

However, m_d, you might consider that "material objects" also include things like clothing, blankets, shelter, and even food. As much as simplistic spirituality would like to argue otherwise, material goods do matter. Without them, we're starving in the cold, or maybe burning and dehydrating in the desert. If you have absolutely nothing, material goods certainly improve your life, by enabling you to live it at all. This is what you would classify as a "need" instead of a "want," but I'm not sure the line in the middle is all that clear. Just about anything can be more than a trifle. Entertainment can be entertainment, but it can also be art, which can have the potential to enrich and enlighten. Computers and email and video cell phones and webcams might be gadget toys to some; or, alternately, they can be the way in which loved ones can keep in touch with each other over long distances more intimately than phone calls and letters allow, which are also material items and work to preserve human relationships a heck of a lot better than no contact at all.

It's how we use material objects and how we focus on them that matters. I have to agree with m_d that there is a lot of materialism in the world. I have to agree that people are so wrapped up in the latest gadgets and toys that they're missing what life should be about. But I don't think material possessions *cause* materialism, either. I don't think you have to spurn them to recognize the important things in life. For that matter, I don't think spurning them means you *do* get it, either. And I don't think that perfectly good items left in the trash *necessarily* means anything bad at all. Darien listed a few good reasons why you might throw something away, and I can think of many more. I'd rather see that stuff donated, though. Clothes should go to the Salvation Army or something, and there are programs for exchanging old but working electronics, etc. Furniture is probably too unwieldy to do that with much of the time, though.

I don't know if my thoughts are coherent or complete, but the summation is that I think when people take some side like this, some particular judgment of society as a whole, they're hitting on a genuine issue but blinding themselves to the complexities of the bigger picture.

Yeah, materialism is a problem, and I do think that affluent societies such as our own do skew too much in a materialistic direction. But in taking a strong stance with that kind of focus, we miss the subtleties in the issue, like how a new iPod *could* actually make someone's life better.