askchapo

Just to add so it's more than just a truism: yeah obviously when you go and explain the basic idea of materialism you often get objections from religious or pseudo-religious people about how the theory that the world only works based on material things denies the role of the divine, or something like that. This is kinda hard to argue against without invalidating their beliefs, so it's naturally not gonna work in all cases and there's a reason why religion and socialism have had such enormous tensions historically.

But if you can sell them on the idea that materialism doesn't have to be 100% correct, maybe they can believe that some things are a bit supernatural or magic or whatever (e.g. Cartesian Dualism), but the most important factors for what moves history are material conditions, then that's good enough really. That enables you to explain why they should be very concerned about genocides even when they're far away, why it matters that billionaires are getting so much wealth and power, why they should join a union, have a gun, and get more organized. These things are all pretty accessible points once you get someone to accept that making people "better" or having better "values" etc will not fix society, but instead material conditions must be tackled and transformed for problems to be solved.