You open your phone and start scrolling. What do you see? In music, media, and adverts what is it that people keep talking about? Foreign cars, designer brands, and cash; but why?

Materialism is the belief that wealth and conspicuous consumption (i.e. buying things so other people can see them) will make people think better of you- and that it'll make you happy. The flipside is that people who don't do this aren't worth listening to and can be dismissed. Materialism, in short, is the advocation of making and spending money not to meet basic needs, but as an end in itself. It is the view that an individual's social status and sense of worth is contingent on material accumulation.

Materialism is presented by people on your screen and in the music you listen to as beyond question. But we don't need to take randos' word for it: there's a massive body of scientific evidence on what ACTUALLY makes us happy and increases our social status. If we want to think freely and critically, we should turn to the scientific method rather than blindly absorbing what others preach.

The overwhelming weight of genuine, quality-assessed, evidence-based scholarship tells us that in reality, materialism is one of the most self-defeating views out there. It is directly antagonistic to achieving happiness, and will not bring you friends or respect. In any case, when you see a luxury car driving past you, do you think 'wow, what a cool person?' or 'wow, what a cool car?'

And this scientific consensus is validated by thousands of years of philosophy. Across continents and centuries, humanity's wisest repeatedly come to the conclusion that spending money for the sake of it will not improve your life. Real happiness comes from dropping out of the rat race and focusing on the meaningful things in life.

In this video, I present both the scientific and philosophical consensuses on materialism. Rather than giving you an unfiltered opinion- which gives me no more credibility than materialist influencers- I draw together the combined findings of science and philosophy to relay to you what people significantly smarter than me have figured out.

Enjoy!

What does it mean to be an Islamist and what do they want? What distinguishes Islamism from Islam? And is Islamism violent? What is terrorism itself? Or jihadism and fundamentalism?

In this episode, we'll be answering all these questions and much more. Islamism is currently a politically charged topic, but as always on Polymath this video is free of opinions, biases, or political agendas. The only purpose of this video is to use real academic scholarship and political science to analyse this ideology in a neutral way.

For more neutral explanations of political ideologies which draw on the social sciences rather than the arbitrary opinion of the presenter, feel free to check out my channel. Either way, however, enjoy!

What 'should' the role of religion in society be?

The West and the Middle East have very different attitudes to religion and its place in society: the former generally removes it from politics, the latter doesn't. The West is more economically developed and has higher HDIs than the Middle East; despite the fact that until a few centuries ago, Western Europe was a backwater compared to the thriving and sophisticated civilisations of the Middle East.

But are these two variables- secularism and development- related? What are the consequences of religion in politics? What happens when the basis of morality comes from a religious text? And if, as in more secular countries, the basis for politics and morality isn't religion- what is it? Why is the West generally secular anyway? What's different about it? And did that difference also enable the West's economic development?

In this episode, we explore all these questions and more. Religion is a very sensitive topic. This video is not meant to attack anybody or facilitate prejudice: and this channel will never tolerate that in general. This video seeks to use sociology, political science, and history to academically examine different civilisations in more detail, based on honest analyses of different religious texts and social science methodology. There are no agendas or ulterior motives behind this video: it's just one person trying to understand the world around them using social science, and attempting to relay that understanding to you.

With that disclaimer out the way, enjoy!