“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
“Our children are our signature to the roster of history; our land is merely the place our money was made. There is as yet no social stigma in the possession of a gullied farm, a wrecked forest, or a polluted stream, provided the dividends suffice to send the youngsters to college. Whatever ails the land, the government will fix it.” ChildrenMadeGovernmentSocialLandCollegeOur ChildrenPossessionForestsStreamsFarmsStigmaSignaturesYoungstersDividendsRosters Book:Round River Source: Round River
“Our vulnerability [to ressentiment] is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.” KindFactsHandsPoliticalSocialDifferencesRightsEqualPossessionGenuineEnormousVulnerabilityRelativeHand In HandSocial Equality Author:Zygmunt Bauman
“for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform.” SelfPoliticalSocialFeminismMovementToolsPossessionObligationReformRegulationSocial ReformSelf RegulationPolitical Movements Book:Essays in feminism Source: Essays in feminism
“So long as millions of human beings in every country has to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so called “equality before the law” remains a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a “right over one's own person,” for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.” IfsWayWantHumansPersonsLongDoeMadeEndsCountryLawSocialWealthHuman BeingsMillionsEconomicRemainsSellsMiseryPossessionMinoritiesLabourOwnersFraudSubmitCompelledWretchedPiousBuyersDictation Author:Rudolf Rocker