In January 1848, James Marshall was building a sawmill by a waterway close to introducing day Sacramento when he found a piece of shining metal on the floor, which turned out to be gold. When gossips had spread within a few weeks, a huge number of individuals were running to the territory, struck by “gold fever”.

Ships were abandoned everywhere on the California coast, organizations shut down, and entire towns became deserted. In a year, San Francisco developed from a shanty town of 79 structures to a city of many thousands. Over the next few years at least 300,000 gold-searchers came to California.

The impact on the Native Americans of California was disastrous. They have driven off their traditional hunting and gathering grounds, and their rivers were polluted by gravel and harmful synthetic substances from the new mines. Some Indian gatherings used force to attempt to protect their territories, however, were massacred by the miners. The individuals who weren’t murdered by the diggers gradually starved to death, or died from infections passed on by the outsiders. Others were kept as slaves, while young ladies were carried off to be sold. Accordingly, the Californian Native American populace fell from around 150,000 in 1845 to 30,000 in 1870.

This savage materialism was ordinary of European immigrants’ attitude to the “New World” of America. They considered it to be a treasury of resources of ransacking and considered the native population as an awkward obstruction to be destroyed.

A few clans were so confused by the settlers’ desire for gold that they accepted that the metal should be a sort of divinity with extraordinary forces. For what other reason would they go to such lengths to get hold of it? At the point when an Indian boss in Cuba discovered that Spanish sailors were going to attack his island, he began to pray to a chest full of gold, engaging the “gold spirit”. However, the gold soul didn’t show him any mercy — the mariners attacked the island and burned the chief alive.

The gold-diggers wild realism was understandable, large numbers of them gold digging appeared to offer an escape from starvation. In any case, most of us in the western, industrialized world don’t have that excuse. Our appetite for wealth and material goods isn’t driven by hardship, by our inner discontent. We’re persuaded that we can buy our way to satisfaction. We measure success in terms of the quality and cost of the material products we can buy or in the size of our salaries.

Our materialism would be more trivial if there was proof that material goods and abundance lead to prompt bliss. Nevertheless, many examinations by clinicians have indicated that there is no correlation between wealth and satisfaction. The special case is in instances of neediness when extra income does relieve suffering. However, when our fundamental material necessities are fulfilled, our level of income has little effect on our degree of joy.

Research has shown, for instance, that incredibly rich individuals, for example, tycoons are not essentially more joyful than individuals with an average income. Researchers in positive psychology concluded that prosperity doesn’t come from wealth but different factors, for example, relationships, significant and challenging occupations.

Numerous market analysts and politicians accept that acquisitiveness — the motivation to buy and have things — is normal to people. This appears to make sense in terms of Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution: Since natural resources are limited, people need to compete over them and attempt to claim as large a piece of them as could be expected.

One of the issues with this theory is that there is nothing “normal” about the desire to accumulate wealth. This desire would have been appalling for earlier people. For most of our experience on this planet, people have lived as hunter-gatherers — little clans who might typically move to a different site at regular intervals. As we can see from modern hunter-gatherers, this lifestyle must be non-materialistic, because individuals can’t afford to be overloaded with pointless products. Since they moved, pointless goods would just be an obstacle to them, making it harder for them to move.

Another hypothesis is that the eagerness and steady needing which fuels our realism is a sort of developmental instrument which keeps us in a condition of alertness. Creatures keeping watch for methods of improving their chances of survival;

In any case, there is no proof that different creatures live in a condition of fretful disappointment. Many animals seem to have static lives. What’s more, if this is the thing that drives our materialism, we would likely accept that different creatures should be rapacious as well. Yet, once more, there is no proof — aside from some food-accumulating for the cold weather months — that different creatures share our materialistic motivations. It was fundamental for creatures to constantly want then evolution would surely have ground to a halt millions of years ago.

In my view, greed is perceived in mental terms. Our materialism is halfway a response to inner discontent. It’s typical for us to encounter fundamental mental discontent, brought about by the unending jabbering of our minds, which makes an unsettling influence inside us and frequently triggers negative contemplations. Another wellspring of mental discord is the feeling of separateness.

We look to outer things to attempt to reduce our inward discontent. Materialism surely can give us a sort of — the thrill of buying something new, and the conscious expanding rush of claiming it a while later. Furthermore, we use this sort of bliss to attempt to supersede, or make up for, the basic despondency inside us.

Also, our craving for abundance is a response to the feeling of need and weakness produced by our feeling of partition. This produces a longing to make ourselves all the more entire. We attempt to support our delicate inner selves and cause ourselves to feel more finished by aggregating riches and assets.

It just works for an extremely brief timeframe. The satisfaction of buying or owning another thing once in a while endures longer than two or three days. The feeling of personality swelling created by riches or costly belongings can be all the more suffering, yet it’s delicate as well. It relies on comparing yourself with others who aren’t as well as you and evaporates if you compare yourself to someone wealthier than you. Also, regardless of the amount we attempt to complete or bolster our ego, our inward discontent reappears, producing new cravings. Regardless of the amount we get, it’s rarely enough. As Buddhism educates, wants are unlimited. The fulfillment of one longing simply makes new cravings, similar to a cell duplicating.