Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? ~Isaiah 55:2
We, we know the individuality that isolates the man from other men, the either/or, the lonely-one that leads the flesh to clothing, jewelry, and land, the solitude of sight that separates the people from the people, flesh from flesh, that jams material between the spirit and the spirit. We have suffered witness to these pitiful, and murdering, masquerade extensions of the self. Instead, we choose a real, a living enlargement of our only life. We choose community. ~ June Jordan

Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.

Quotes

  • Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?

  • We, we know the individuality that isolates the man from other men, the either/or, the lonely-one that leads the flesh to clothing, jewelry, and land, the solitude of sight that separates the people from the people, flesh from flesh, that jams material between the spirit and the spirit. We have suffered witness to these pitiful, and murdering, masquerade extensions of the self.

    Instead, we choose a real, a living enlargement of our only life. We choose community.

    • June Jordan, "Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person" (1969), in Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America (1981), p. 47
  • Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system.
  • Eat and drink, but waste not by excess; verily He loves not the excessive.
  • … the consumerist pornography of advertising
    • Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, (2004) Chapter 5, note 68.
  • He who knows he has enough is rich
    • Tao Te Ching Chapter 33
  • Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV?
  • Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

See also

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