Our loves, aspirations to heroism, moral judgments, attempts at creativity and even individuality become suspect, having no ultimate value. Because of this view of reality, people seek meaning in the accumulation of material things, in the continual stimulation of the senses and emotions, and in techniques which are supposed to condition them to change. This materialism has brought about a terrible poverty of human experience in our culture. The old are disregarded because they don't produce sufficiently to make themselves worthwhile units of society. As the spiritual ties which unite families are discarded, the family decays.
People increasingly try to find meaning by satisfying their physical and sensual needs.
But pleasure and material wealth do not produce happiness or meaning. The stimulation of the senses leads only to the need for greater and greater stimulation till the senses are jaded and unable to appreciate anything. In this vacuum of human experience people look desperately for something that will inject meaning into reality. They turn to experience, to the East, to the occult, to the multitude of new religions and new psychology's which spring up day by day. The materialistic view has rubbed off on the church.