Consumed offers a disturbing and thought-provoking look into the consumer capitalist system that dominates American society. In bold brush strokes, Barber paints a global economy that is oversaturated with goods and must, therefore, have as its primary goal the manufacturing of needs as opposed to goods. After all, there have to be enough shoppers to… Continue reading Recommended Reading: Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
Category: Retail Psychology
Recommended Reading Green with Envy: Why Keeping Up With The Joneses is Keeping Us In Debt
Haven’t we been taught to believe that envy, the only vice warned against in both the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins, is a seriously destructive emotion? There are exceptions. Shira Boss’s envy of her neighbors in the apartment next door was the productive seed that grew into this unusual look at an aspect… Continue reading Recommended Reading Green with Envy: Why Keeping Up With The Joneses is Keeping Us In Debt
Recommended Reading: Hooked: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume Stephanie Kaza, ed. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005)
Buddhism contains some wonderfully apt messages that concern “affluenza” and “luxury fever,” our modern day plagues of materialism and overconsump-tion, and reading this extraordinary and diverse collection is a very inviting way to access those messages. Compiled by Stephanie Kaza at the Univer-sity of Vermont, these essays sharply challenge today’s ingrained cultural assumption that what’s… Continue reading Recommended Reading: Hooked: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume Stephanie Kaza, ed. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005)
Consumer Monster Mockumentary
Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Lutter has nearly finished shooting Not For$ale, a mockumentary about overconsumption. Styled after Michael Moore’s work, the film follows the picaresque journey of a Cookie Monsterish yellow puppet. At home in Canada, he meets a variety of people who teach him about the growing movement to scale back our consumption. His addiction… Continue reading Consumer Monster Mockumentary