“All people are materialistic to some degree,” wrote scientists in the academic textbook Consumer Behavior. “People naturally yearn for more of whatever material resources are prized within their culture.” Indeed, despite feel-good, Disney-movie ideas about our ancestors being “one” with nature, taking only what they needed, the truth is often quite the opposite. Nature was often brutal and much more like a Tarantino film. To survive, we often had to be equally brutal. And it’s nearly always been better for our survival to have too much stuff rather than too little.
