Manual of internal culture for external barbarians.” The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed...

Un barril de petróleo equivalía a 159 litros y se vendía en ese momento a unos 100 dólares, unas 600 coronas o unos 76 euros. Ese barril de petróleo suministraba por sí solo tanta energía...

I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class

exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.

After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and – above all – its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything – and everyone – is...

To ferment your own food is to lodge a small but eloquent protest – on behalf of the senses and the microbes – against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a...

The human animal is a beast that dies and if he’s got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back...

We believe we are the consumers, but we are the consumed.

A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.”(Analects 4.9)

The ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance —...

Don’t obsess over having the ‘latest’ version of a product. For there was a time that the previous version was the latest.

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental...

If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she extemporized, corpocracy would be finished.

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most...

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

For myself, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to own a Rolex, a pair of Nikes or a BMW Z3; in fact, I had never succeeded in identifying the slightest difference between designer goods and...

What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and...

If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year’s model. The system attempts to...

A conscience that is forbidden to operate in the choice of goals for economic activity is not conscience in the sense in which any moralist, pagan or Christian, has every understood the term. And the...

We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector...

La historia no ha cambiado. Hace mil anos ellos eran los duenos del mundo. Hoy en dia lo siguen siendo. Claro, lo tienen que compartir con los grandes magnates de la tierra, esos que controlan...

If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.

We have too quickly bought into the lie that we’ll be happier with more—and as a result, too often miss the joy that comes from owning less.

Life punishes those who have things in abundance by making them worry about petty things like: what to wear, or, which car to drive.

Evolution did not design us to believe only true facts, nor to buy only useful products, nor to say only meaningful sentences

Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many...

I own nothing, but at least nothing owns me. Well, besides the bank.

Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same...

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

Now, sorcery rules the world. Of course, most don’t call it sorcery; indeed, many would be horrified by such a notion. Instead, they use words like ideology, politics, defence, security, patriotism, commerce, industry, marketing, consumerism...

We seldom consider how much of our lives we must render in return for some object we barely want, seldom need, buy only because it was put before us…And this is understandable given the workings...

The decadent artist markets other people’s pain

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is...

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We...

The gentleman understands what is right, whereas the petty man understands profit.”(Analects 4.16)

If you are not content today, there is nothing you can buy tomorrow to change that.

I am obsessed with not being obsessed with acquiring material things.

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of...

In the marketing society, we seek fulfillment but settle for abundance. Prisoners of plenty, we have the freedom to consume in stead of our freedom to find our place in the world.

The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and...

Deciding we won’t drive to that chain grocery store and buy that imported pineapple is a path to liberation. Deciding to walk to the farmers’ market and buy fresh, local peas is like spitting in...

If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.

Whom one is speaking to – or which aspect of their character – fundamentally determines the meaning and consequences of an exhortation. ‘Indulge Your Desires’ comes across very differently on a billboard advertising SUVs than...

The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are...

It wasn’t some Puritan thing. Straight-edge was asking adherents to take control of their lives, not to be blind consumers, and not to be tricked into thinking that drinking and drugs were cool since in...

Nothing short of the end of the world would get our eco-conscious techies to toss their latest gadgets onto the street.

Little people doing little things in little places everywhere can change the world.

In a lot of ways that poor little potato’ – Evan pointed directly at Jade’s French fries – ‘symbolizes the reckless consumerism that plagues America.

It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages…. We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed… to be...

Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that’s lacking breaks – a swarm of...