we care too much or not enough?

When looking at the state of the world now, the accusations of consumer culture and the complete and total excess of things that we live in. One can start to look for a cause, a reason for all of these. Certainly one can look at the industrial revolution and and the invention of the machine as the moments in time when we began to walk down this path. But that would be making an excuse for something that we shouldn't. I believe that it is more important to look at inherent human nature and try to understand why it is that we make. In her book "The Body in Pain" Elaine Scarry produces a marvelous argument that the reason that we make is because we care too much for everything. When looking at the world it is apparent that the world cares nothing for us. We as humans are susceptible to pain from everywhere. We don't have fur to keep us warm and we don't have claws to defend ourselves from other animals. And our skin is too soft so we cut ourselves on rocks and tree bark. This susceptibility to pain is what Scarry calls Sentient Awareness. It means that we know pain and that we are scared of it. And we make because we want to the world around us to be sentient also, we want to the world to understand and acknowledge our pain. Man "wishes or pretends that the inert external world had his or her own capacity for sentient awareness, civilization makes this so." (p 286) Scarry argues that the essence of being human is to acknowledge that one is in pain, but it is not enough to acknowledge that one is in pain, you must also wish for the pain to be gone. As Scarry puts it pain is "something which cannot be felt without being wished unfelt" (p 290) So we start to look at this wish of ours that others not be in pain, and we start to look at material artifacts. The blanket which acts as a second skin, is an embodiment of the human desire that we not feel cold, it is acknowledgment that our skin is not thick enough to protect us, and the delicate fibers of the woven blanket will start to mimic this. The chair is the acknowledgment that we have a problem with weight and that we want to rid ourselves of weight and it does this for us. So it becomes clear that all of the things that surround us, the fridge, the television, the bed, the doors, the laptop, are all embodiments of someone else's wish that we not be in pain. According to Scarry in their essence human beings care for one another and see one another's pain. And seeing pain means understanding it and wishing for it to be gone. So all of these material artifacts that surround us are caring for us anonymously, they know that we are in pain and they want to rid us of it, they want the world to be more loving to us, they want the world to acknowledge our pain. So it would seem that the reason that we have so many things is because we care too much for other people, we want to rid everyone of pain. But it seems to me that the desire in making all the objects around us feel our pain and trying to make them sentient is basically humanities cry that we aren't accepted, we are the black sheep of the family and through making we are trying to fit into the world, we are trying to have the world see us and to see our pain, but the funny thing is that because we try so hard to fit into the world, there is now barely any world left for us to fit into.