The True Value of Modern of Material Culture

Topic: Material Culture 

Source: A variety of discussions with friends and HSU Alumni over the last week dealing with the culmination of the Singularity event, climate change, global instability, wealth disparity, the theoretical threat of modern society failing and how these will change the value of modern material culture.  Additionally a moving Mammology lecture I attended last semester at HSU has also definitely influenced this Blog posting as it dealt with both material culture and the future.

Relation: Material culture is essentially the only physical remaining evidence of many of the extinct inhabitants of earth and these items offer a hint at what these cultures may have been like. When material culture is paired with ideas such as the aforementioned concepts its interesting to imagine how such dramatic sociological changes would affect material culture and its value in the short term and how future archaeologists may think about our American culture.  

Description: Friday the 3^rd of February about 4 of my good friends, some of which are HSU Alumni, were discussing the future of the USA, Earth and how it will change the value of material culture to us and the following generations. There were 2 main theoretical futures being passed back and forth amongst us. One is that a Singularity event happens, which in short, is a technological breakthrough so dramatic that we cannot predict the changes that will follow the discovery (Just like a black hole or singularity in space, we cannot see what is happening  on the other side of one). The other argument was one of a post-apocalyptic USA or globe in which modern society, global or national, fails due to one of the factors previously mentioned in the Source section. Either way both of these theoretical futures will cause a dramatic shift in the value of modern material culture.

Commentary & Analysis:

The value of modern material culture is one based entirely on money, items that are considered valuable cost more to purchase. While this is common practice globally these days, it is solely based on a system in which money is an integral part of the equation. Both of these theoretical futures pose a scenario in which money may become a worthless commodity and in turn the value of an item may not be inherently marked by dollar signs on a tag. In a post-modern society without money many of us argued that value will be defined by usefulness rather than this abstract concept of money. While it is hard to theorize about a post-Singularity world, it was hoped amongst us that the modern money system would be done with as it essentially has forced us into an unstable and unequal state of citizenship within our very own country. But in a post-apocalyptic scenario usefulness really means one of a few things. Among things we considered valuable out of modern material culture it ended up that only a couple were truly valuable, such items included; medicine, food and anything that helps you obtain these. Due to this true system of value we went around the room and realized we live in a culture with way too many unneeded pieces of material culture and were embarrassed at the thought of future archaeologists examining so much seemingly useless culture. In a sense many of these items are cultural texts that relate to this time and place and would be meaningless without our immaterial culture that it is paired with. But more importantly and maybe most importantly this discussion allowed us to view the culture that immerses us and see the true value of our material culture rather than the dollar signs we spent to acquire it.