weekly Objet library

the majority population don’t really like destructive consumerism, but have been bullied and seduced by capitalism into imagining that they like it, and therefore can perhaps be persuaded out of it again, provided that this persuasion is accompanied by sufficiently far-reaching institutional changes.

the majority population don’t really like destructive consumerism, but can’t desist from it because they have become addicted to it.

Consumer society…overwhelms us with a potentially limitless range of options…limitless possibility can be debilitating and a constant source of frustration. Simplifying choice by setting our own limits and by choosing ‘not to’…can then be liberating.

The idea that the only goal in life is to produce and consume more – an absurd, humiliating idea – must be abandoned. The capitalist imaginary of pseudo-rational pseudo-mastery, and of unlimited expansion, must be abandoned. Only men and women can do that.

The most satisfying and nourishing communities, after all, are those where people aren’t in competition, trying to sell each other things, or united around nothing beyond a common consumer desire.