Wednesday, August 7, 2019
The Savage World Essay Example for Free
The Savage World Essay Thorstein B. Veblen viewed society anthropologically and utilized psychology than relying on the laws of economics. He believes that the human nature predominantly is like a beast or he lives in a savage world meaning that in order to survive one must get use into a predatory life cycle that life is the struggle of the fittest. That savagery is a death to the weakest. To support his claim that the society where man lives is a savage world, he concluded that the human nature itself is beast as he wrote in his book the Theory of the Leisure Class when he elaborated on â€Å"conspicuous consumption†(Heilbroner).            He made mentioned about the relations between the balance of expense, salary, and the return of investments with regards to hedonistic concept or the materialistic points of view of man equated in his own instinct to survive. Man adaptation to use the means for an end in his own term which he has coined evolutionary which mean that the economic life history of a person is to habitually seek realization by doing something which includes invention and use of modern technologies like for instances that businessmen are replaced by engineers.            The goods of this earth are for man’s usage but not in any circumstance should the ends will justify the means. Man can be a savage by nature but he is still a free individual who could think rationally: that the means are only to serve the end or purpose or material things are only needed by man to survive but it can never be his only reason for existence. Money makes the world go round and indeed it helps but if the means are prioritized over man and dignity of labor put aside then human existence will become a beastlike existence.            However, Veblen observes the reality of a consumerist world but again concluded that putting the material over the good of the human person depletes man’s existence to survive and perhaps jeopardize his own dignity. He believes strongly that a person do not only work to accumulate money but also to invigorate his pride. In him work has a greater dimension unseen by the barbaric man whose only pleasure is money. In his writings he identifies the leisure class as the savage of work and the consumerist class. These are the capitalists who retard and distorted the industry, whereas the middle class work for perfection and for the support of their children whom he referred to as nobler. He further mentioned that the leisure class is like parasites living by the innovativeness of other men. The aloof skeptic called them robber barons for which dishonesty became a virtue and dug further to why by nature man is selfish. He acknowledges further that it is the contemporary savage who had accumulated too much wealth and is not really proud of his work but only in the public display of his wealth.            Veblen’s pessimistic but realistic view of the world he lives in made him one of the best worldly philosophers of the twentieth century. He’s works are still read today because it warns the future from permanent depression that if man continues to tolerate inequality of labor, inequitable partitions of wealth and the tolerance of not withholding the entrepreneurs in the accumulation of too much profit then we will be doomed to live a place in which Veblen calls the savage world. Veblen a genius and nonconformist in character made him isolate himself from a drastic world of the greedy and preferred to die a simple death at his cabin.            Economic prosperity or world progress is still within the bounds of the hands that work together for a common good but not for those who seek ones own personal gratification. Works Cited Heilbroner, Robert Louis. The Worldly Philosophers. (2007). 05 December 2007 http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-Worldly-Philosophers.id-163,pageNum-3.
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