From my POV the main reason why our society is so obsessed with material stuff is due to the lack of access to alternative holographic realities. We are imprisoned in one hologram. Only about 2% of the world population can break through despite massive efforts of mind-control from the ruling powers.
Deliberately making people afraid of experiencing parallel realities (ASC) and disencouraging scientists from serious research, the ruling powers keep their populations firmly ‘locked’ in material paradigm (hologram).
As soon as they stop ‘their war on drugs’, there will be a cultural explosion empowered by emergence of radically new technologies that will unlock human latent psychic abilities. The material paradigm won’t be dominant anymore. The society will become more happy and less greedy.