| Excessive attachment to material goods and possessions; a preoccupation with material things: the belief that the highest values lie in material well-being. |
| Shoghi Effendi has stated that the world is ‘enervated by a rampant and brutal materialism'.20 ‘The materialistic civilization of our age has so much absorbed the energy and interest of mankind that people in general do no longer feel the necessity of raising themselves above the forces and conditions of their daily material existence . . . The universal crisis affecting mankind is, therefore, essentially spiritual in its causes.'21 |
| One of the primary evils of our world today is the ‘crass materialism, which lays excessive and ever-increasing emphasis on material well-being, forgetful of those things of the spirit on which alone a sure and stable foundation can be laid for human society. It is this same cancerous materialism . . . which Bahá'u'lláh in unequivocal and emphatic language denounced in His Writings, comparing it to a devouring flame ‘22 |
| [BD 152] |
|
