By: Ogunwale Matthew
Materialism is a constant concern for our material possessions and wealth. One can call it a great excessive regard for worldly concerns. You know, the materialism doctrine has captured the heart of people. It controls our emotions and the mental serenity. Meanwhile, its functions have not enough value compared to the lust for it.
Love for worldly wealth and desire to get riches has caught up with everybody. The corrupt practices increase on daily basis and it’s required by people of almost all spheres of life irrespective of their gender or religion.
Students nowadays are more materialistic conscious than students of the past. It is not uncommon for students to spend thousands of naira on clothes, jewelry or other material goods, in the effort to be accepted and updated about the latest trends in the campus society.
For example, the girls and guys who set the fashion trends in schools are usually those who are the most popular, because of this they are watched by their peers irrespective of their cliques and feel a very strong pressure to wear the designer labels. With this the fashion consciousness often affects student’s performance.
Expensive label brands in clothing and jewelry has represent one thing to students, any students who can’t afford to buy the latest styles will set the fashion trends. Students who their parent are not financially buoyant may use illegal means to support their costly budget, as others attempt to shoplift and these materialistic students will display their stolen merchandise to fit in for the rich group.
Materialism has affect a lot of students due to that they join the political organisation in school because of the motive of the monetary aspect rather than joining organisation that will add more value to them and knowledge like Press Council TPI, Junior Chambers Organisation (JCI), etc.
This materialism epidemic is having a serious effect on students academic work, in which students skip school to sell drugs and make more money to buy their materialistic things of their choices. Students in class and dream about the car a big hustler was driving. Students fall asleep in class because they’ve been up all night trying to sell drugs and doing illegal works on internet to buy a gold chain.
Basically, this attitude of a materialistic student is given more importance to worldly things only to acquire the unlimited material wealth. This materialism doctrine becomes reality in mind, as emotions and mental serenity are merely it’s functions or have no value.
This endless desires lead to different forms of disobediences in our campuses. The evil of materialism has degraded the educational value system in diligence, hard working, honesty, honor and integrity are no longer accorded the respect they deserve.
Wassily Kandinsky said, “the nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past, it holds the awakening soul still in its grip”. This desire to get rich quick, love for material things a captured almost all students mind. No wonder, it is said money is the root of all evil.
The root of this corrupt practices includes: readiness, murderers, robberies, kidnappings and bribery can be attributed to materialism. The motive behind all these evil is the desire for sense gratification.
Daily as student our minds are saturated on the mass media advertisements that change our orientation to desire materialistic things. If we understand life is just a test for that great and eternal life, we will not see the possession of material wealth and power as the ultimate goal of life.
To fight out the social vices associated with the high demand for material things, all hands must be on deck. We should all join hands together to curb the bane of materialistic evils. We should try living our lives by not letting our minds be ruled by materialistic gratifications.
