Meeting Physical Need and Satisfying Human Wants

Abstract

Individuality, materialism, and limited government are deeply-rooted values in contemporary Western culture reinforced of late by the collapse of the collectivist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union. The conventional wisdom asserts that communism is dead, the cold war is a thing of the past, and all human beings are more secure. Homo economicus has engaged homo sovieticus and emerged victorious.

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward “having” rather than “being” and which wants to have more not in order to be more, but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself. It is therefore necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments.

Centesimus Annus, chapter 4.