I consider this mighty structure (the pyramid) as a monument to the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a Pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of […]
Consumers - Consumption Quotes
It (the pyramids) seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use till use is supplied, must begin to […]
No matter what their income, a depressing number of Americans believe that if only they had twice as much, they would inherit the estate of happiness promised them in the Declaration on Independence. The man who receives $15,000 a year is sure that he could relieve his sorrow if he had only $30,000 a year; […]
Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.
Everybody’s got more jet skis and Dustbusters now and sneakers with lights in them. They’ve got more cheese on their thing that they buy. They get double helpings. See, Americans measure all their progress in the wrong way. They measure by quantity and by gizmos and toys. And not by quality and by things that […]
The consumer’s side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious.
Measured in constant dollars, the world’s people have consumed as many goods and services since 1950 (1996) as all previous generations put together. Since 1940, Americans alone have used up as large a share of the Earth’s mineral resources as did everyone before them combined. Yet this historical epoch of titanic consumption appears to have […]
So the wearing of wild beasts’ skins has gone out of fashion… Skins yesterday, purple and gold today – such are the baubles that embitter human life with resentment.
But somehow, the First World has managed to give it all a happy spin. We have decided not to avoid decadence but to embrace it. Crave it. Buy it. Sell it. What’s decadent? Ice cream with the density of plutonium, a bubblebath with a barley-flour chaser, that great new Gucci scent called “Envy.” Decadence is […]
Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.
