Scientific/Philosophical Materialism

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I think this is where our culture, or at least those running it, really need to move to the zone of generating this content in a self-aware manner that isn't geared toward killing all of the competition but rather stabilizing and bringing as much sanity and cooperation back to what's essentially now not just western but really industrial and post-industrial culture. A good foundational myth has to be working short-hand for critical truths about human interaction with both other humans and the environment, constructed in such a way that - in narrative form - it makes things like hidden externality games or raiding the commons and the harm generated by these strategies viscerally clear. You do see some of that in movies like Pinnochio, The Lion King, and a lot of the children's moral epics but I think those stories need a 2.0 to focus more on the risks of the current information ecology.

??? What I see in the Lion King is one character destined to rule as king over everyone else, and eating antelopes is justified as 'circle of life'. I consider it a monarchistic myth.
I know Jordan Peterson likes to read all sorts of symbolism into it - but so can I.
Unlike the Buddha, who got raised to be the king, and was so horrified to learn the realities of life that he meditated until he found a way to cope with reality, Simba gets told it's okay to eat others and reign through terror because that's the natural order among naturally talking animals who live in a hereditary autocratic monarchy - and he's just satisfied with that.
No one's asking the gnus.

I remember watching so many of these movies when I was a kid - ie. Pinocchio, All Dogs Go to Heaven, 101 Dalmatians, Charlotte's Web, etc. and it seems like it's always been a thing for children's animated films to be didactic with respect to archetypal motifs. I'm not intending to say these are perfect stories or that plenty of them aren't laden with things we're trying to get rid of, in a way I think that underscores the point I was aiming for - ie. these need to be updated.

... I don't think these things should be sanitized, but pointed out and supplemented with context.

I'm perfectly fine with them as stories. They just need to be put in context and discussed.

My brother sent me a photo of a Donald Duck comic he was reading with his kids the other day. It was some retelling of how Columbus "discovered" the Americas.
The picture showed Scrooge McDuck in front of the Spanish Queen, with a black Duck in native American dress, carrying a basket full of treasures. Scrooge is telling the Queen: "don't worry, he's tame"

I commented that it's a historically somewhat accurate depiction of the actual sentiments at the time.
I don't think these things should be sanitized, but pointed out and supplemented with context.

You're both too dismissive and too lenient.
Governing myths are the foundations of social order, be it religious fairytales or the scientific myth. (Which, for example, led economists to believe that there are natural laws in economics which we can't change. As if the economy was created by physics, and not by people. It serves to argue why the economy must stay the way it is, even though 8 people own half of the world's wealth. That wasn't the case 30 years ago, why should this be a natural law? Well, because economists say they are using science)

On the other hand, myths grant a sense of superiority that has fueled colonialism over the ladt few hundred years. There's no other reason for an American to think 'america first' other than the belief that that, indeed, is the divine order.

...
You'll notice I didn't praise science in my post. Science is a limited field that only addresses phenomena that can be measured. Much of human knowledge and wisdom has very little to do with science. A lot is learned and understood through history, philosophy, the arts, etc. (And science is also very useful for the things that it does well.) And I agree with you that the concept of science can be manipulated to make certain theories seem incontrovertible. I also agree that myths are used to make certain actions seem noble rather than dastardly. Both ways are flawed, as you say. But that is the reason we need to reject myths rather than give them credit by wondering whether they are true, or entertaining the possibility that they could be true.

Okay, so we all probably know the modern paradigm predominant in today's times, or as I like to call it, the modern "worldview" of reality. Please note that what follows is not me expressing my own beliefs but rather my interpretation/understanding of this worldview. Since it is my own interpretation/understanding, it is possible that some aspects could be mistaken.

1. The universe is essentially a random accident. It began from nothingness entirely because of physical laws (be they quantum or classical) and random chance. While we may not know everything about the universe, what caused it, and what (if anything) existed before it, we can know this much. Therefore, we also know that there is no "purpose" or anything else more than what meets the eye going on with the universe other than physical laws/random chance.

2. Life is essentially the same as the universe. Random accident, no purpose other than survival and procreation. Furthermore, since they are a random accident, life and consciousness are not by any means an essential part of the universe. The universe could have existed the same way it does now without any sort of consciousness.

3. Existence is a one-time deal. When you die, that's it. There is nothing else forever and ever and ever and ever and ever...and an infinite number more of evers!. There is no heaven for any spirit/soul to go to. And as far as reincarnation? A meaningless concept without a spirit/soul or any other essential part of you that survives your death. Others may be born after you die, but they won't be "you" because "you" are dead, and existing as "you" is the only possible way to exist. Besides, the universe will eventually die too, so there will come a point when no one else will ever be born again.

4. Consciousness and everything associated with it is entirely a product of the brain. The entirety of human experience, including all of our hopes, fears, wishes, goals, and dreams can all be reduced to physical, electrical, and chemical interactions in the brain.

5. Science and its methods are the sole means of discovering truth. Individuals may have feelings and experiences, but these are pretty meaningless since science is the only possible source of objective truth. And any experience that an individual has that seems to run contrary to any of these five elements must have a materialist explanation.

So, there you have it. That's my understanding of what I call materialism (there of course is that other economic or popular meaning of the word, but that's not what I'm talking about here).

I have a couple questions. First of all, how can we be so sure that this is true?

Now, let me be honest. I'm not particularly religious, and I think it's pretty unlikely that any of the world religions have all of the answers. While I can't be sure, I also lean toward believing that it's unlikely that God in the traditional, religious type sense exists.

But other than that, I really have no idea about the true nature of reality. I definitely have no idea what happens when we die, and I'm not so sure that anybody really can. So I'm wondering, how is it that materialists can be so sure about what they believe?

As for me, I think the best thing to do is to simply embrace the mystery. I am open to any and all possibilities, both about the nature of reality and about what happens when we die. There is certainly a chance that materialism is true, and I admit that. To be sure, the pressure to believe it in today's society is immense, and folks like me who aren't so sure about it are becoming fewer and fewer in number. But to say that you know for sure it's true? That's just something I can't do.

My second question is, how do you think materialism influences the world today? I think it's pretty obvious that in most academic circles, materialism is by far the predominant worldview. And since academic circles influence all kinds of institutions within society, and the influence of those institutions eventually trickles down to individual lives, materialism does have an impact on even folks who don't necessarily agree with it.

How do you think materialism influences human happiness? Do you think it's possible that some of the societal problems we experience in today's world might be because we are constantly taught that life is a random accident with no purpose?

Well, that's why I said you're also too dismissive: human rights for example are a myth. Humanism.
Myths are, fundamentally, memes that keep our societies from falling apart, they are lofty ideals we decide to agree on, based on some story... The truth is usually very bleak.

I think the story goes no purpose at all - ie. purpose is a made-up human concept, one of those metaphorically true for fitness but literally false sorts of thing. Where I'd agree, without conscious attention you can't / won't have purpose in the way that we mean it, just results of motion.

Maybe purpose is the wrong,matter moving around surely creates purpose for humans.But the universe doesn't speak the language of purpose and knows no purpose,just the gravity controlled movement of matter that has a purpose to us humans but the universe is deaf to purpose.It just does what it does because gravity forces matter to move.

No, that's one 'correct' way to look at it.

There's another idea I've heard for biological life in terms of what drives it. The idea is that heat/radiation from the sun heats the surface of a planet, that heat creates a hard temperature gradient between the planet's surface and the space around it, thus if there's enough of the right stuff for organic chemistry it ends up acting as a heat sync in its behavior, ie. as a heat pump.

I think we have a slightly different understanding of the word "myth." I consider a myth to be a false story that is presented as true, not just true in an abstract sense but as actually true in a tangible sense. The religion myth actually posits that a God or gods really exist, not that they are merely concepts or metaphors or ideals to aspire to.

But I do see your point in a general way and I think that you make a good point.