[Buffalo Head]

"Then people in the Third World should be happy. How come they're not?"

I believe that most folks happiness is in direct proportion to the amount of happieness they create for others.

[BigBobber]

Here's my point. Western materialism is much maligned by those who have a position of relative comfort - created by western materialism and capitalism. If you are starving, live in a hovel, or are afraid some government thugs will drag you away in the middle of the night, then you don't have the luxury of pondering whether materialism is "toxic" to happiness.

The materialistic drive that allowed the western world to rise up from the gutter, and leave the rest of the world far behind, is hard to turn off once you have achieved a level of comfort. This drive may become a source of envy and disappointment, since someone will always have something you don't have. But we should never forget the positive effects that materialism has on our world.