“Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups and makes people slaves of "possession" and immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the civilization of consumption, or "consumerism," which involves so much throwing away and waste.” PeopleStillsFormCertainSocialSidesGroupsMaterialsCivilizationWasteBenefitsMiserySlavePossessionGoodsHorizonThrowingConsumptionConsumerismGratificationOverconsumptionReplacementsAvailabilityMultiplicationThrowing AwaySocial GroupsImmediate GratificationUnderdevelopment Author:Pope John Paul II
“A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of life-styles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labeled capitalist or socialist.” IfsHandsChoicesCultureEnergySocialStylePolicyLowsRelationWideAlternativesCapitalistConsumptionSocialistDegradingLife StyleEnergy PolicyHigh EnergySocial RelationsEnergy Consumption Author:Ivan Illich
“Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel-cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.” ThinkingWayHas BeensWholeLastsOrderThreeSocialWorkEconomicCenturyWasteEconomicsProductionsEnvyConfusionConsumptionCagesTrashAvariceSquirrelsSocial Systems Author:Dorothy L. Sayers
“consumption can be very harmful to the world. I'm not a big proponent of the idea that consumption makes you morally bad, but there are consequences to our acts, and those consequences are environmental degradation and the huge social inequalities that make our standard of living in the United States possible.” WorldIdeasStatesBigsSocialUnitedUnited StatesHugeStandardsConsequenceEnvironmentalInequalityConsumptionConsumerismDegradationStandards Of LivingEnvironmental DegradationSocial Inequality Author:Judith Levine
“Consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society-one that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create community.” PeopleTogetherSocialCommunityHarderOur SocietyConsumptionDominantSocial Relationships Author:Juliet B. Schor