What We Lose When We Spend to Feel Better | Atmos
“Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly asks, ‘What more can we take from the Earth?’ This worldview of unbridled exploitation is to my mind the greatest threat to the life that surrounds us. Even our definitions of sustainability revolve around trying to find the formul
... See moreThe cultural emphasis on endless consumption deflects attention from spiritual hunger. We are endlessly bombarded by messages telling us that our every need can be satisfied by material increase. Artist Barbara Kruger created a work proclaiming “I shop therefore I am” to show the way consumerism has taken over mass consciousness, making people thin
... See morebell hooks • All About Love: New Visions (Love Song to the Nation Book 1)
By our immersion in this liturgy of consumption, we are being trained to both overvalue and undervalue things: we’re being trained to invest them with a meaning and significance as objects of love and desire in which we place disproportionate hopes (Augustine would say we are hoping to enjoy them when we should only be using them) while at the same
... See moreJames K. A. Smith • You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
In one sense, the shopping itself is construed as a kind of therapy, a healing activity, a way of dealing with the sadness and frustrations of our broken world. The mall offers a sanctuary and a respite that—at least for a time—cover over the doldrums of our workaday existence. So the very activity of shopping is idealized as a means of quasi redem
... See moreJames K. A. Smith • You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
From this point on, growth was not just good, but the primary aim of political and social systems. We all know now where that has taken us, but some saw it early, including the economist and retail analyst Victor Lebow in 1955: Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of
... See moreJon Alexander • Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us
Same day shipping. Buy it without seeing it in person first. Free returns. The speed of commerce quickening at the same pace the cost and quality of the goods are decreasing. And the amount of things we keep buying shows no sign of abating. Amazon is on its way to selling half a trillion dollars worth of goods in America this year. And with new bar
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