The 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

Having substituted consumption for creativity and technical skills, shopping becomes a form of self-actualization--there's no small number of teenage girls who associate personal growth with changing their wardrobe--"retail therapy" becomes an active way of feeling good. Shopping,

In a recent newsletter, “The Shopping Cure,” Anne Helen Petersen explored the compulsion to buy and accumulate stuff that’s been fostered by technologies of frictionless consumption. Every conceivable activity or hobby one sets out to enjoy becomes an occasion to buy stuff: “They transform from sites of actual pleasure and diversion to means of