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eb51692
|
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 of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
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life
wisdom
inspirational
tv
culture
consumerism
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Terence McKenna |
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ce3b242
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Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?
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want
more
palahniuk
dissatisfaction
lullaby
consumerism
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Chuck Palahniuk |
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7a18a65
|
Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.
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free-will
god
p20
greek
goddess
consumerism
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Chuck Palahniuk |
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8155511
|
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent -- people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
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philosophy
economics-philosophy
modern-society
consumerism
psychology
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Erich Fromm |
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c232494
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You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.
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loss
individuality
memories
change
mom-and-pop-stores
retail
modern-society
transience
neighborhoods
new-york-city
consumerism
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Colson Whitehead |
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e91b59f
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Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of -5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card.
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humour
cult-of-jobs
d-d
d20
roleplaying-games
saving-throw
shiny
rpg
saving
geek
consumerism
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Charles Stross |
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f4b276e
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"With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly on
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freedom
education
false-reality
public-schools
political-parties
democrats
republicans
government
power
consumerism
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Gore Vidal |
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a5c72d5
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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
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curiosity
consumerism
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Pat Conroy |
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44fef85
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When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.
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destiny
art
consumerism
soul
creativity
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Steven Pressfield |
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377697b
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That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to anybody, and with which nothing can be done).
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consumerism
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Leo Tolstoy |
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438b0b3
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According lecture, entire effort United States to incite desire, inflict want, inspire demand.
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american-society
wanting
consumerism
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Chuck Palahniuk |
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c7c6b69
|
I've bought these peanuts before. They're round, cubical, pock-marked, seamed. Broken peanuts. A lot of dust at the bottom of the jar. But they taste good. Most of all I like the packages themselves. You were right, Jack. This is the last avant-garde. Bold new forms. The power to shock.
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consumerism
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Don DeLillo |
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4b8f0a4
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This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience.
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capitalist-market
consumerism
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Cornel West |
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53019c7
|
It's simple,' Kat told them. 'You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You're working with the gap between reality and perception. That's why you have to hit them with something new, something they've never seen before, something they aren't. Nothing sells like anxiety.
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fashion-industry
magazines
fashion
consumerism
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Margaret Atwood |
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10054a5
|
"I've just been thinking it would be a lot of fun to live in a defunct shopping mall! Totally abandoned, Yet still frozen in time, Bright white lights shining, Artificial turquoise fountains spewing out clear water, Eerie eighties elevator music drifting by... Dancing erratically, shouting to the top, Because it's sad to see these places die. They're a testament to the hubris of modern America, which is dying in and of itself. Let's face it. We know we can't compete with Online shopping And Made-in-China products And eBay And Amazon. Those of us who spent our High school And college days Being wage slaves to these dying malls, We'll be old and nostalgic someday, Telling our grandkids about these wonderful buildings! They housed sets of trendy clothes Which nobody was rich enough to afford Or thin enough to fit in. We'll tell them about the first time We were almost trampled in a Black Friday stampede. The first time we saw a kid Vomit in the ugly rainbow ball pit At the children's play area, Dumped by babysitters to grow up there, Spending their childhood draped in neon. The first time eating greasy pad-thai And hamburgers At the food court. The first time falling in love In the dark movie theatre That charges too much for stale popcorn. Holding hands in the sunlit rays Of the dusty projector... Totally lost in moments. What is the meaning of this voyage? Our grandkids, Who will probably have Smartphones Surgically implanted to their brains And identical glass condominiums by then, They'll gasp in shock and say, "Wow, that sounds SO cool!"
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life
love
dead-mall
mall
shopping
eerie
childhood
consumerism
nostalgia
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Rebecca McNutt |
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33b77c7
|
"writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an "urban Thoreau") set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume..."
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beats
kerouac
culture
consumerism
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9d06f09
|
Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is.
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work
inspirational
consumerism
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David Graeber |
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171d8a3
|
In a lot of ways that poor little potato' - Evan pointed directly at Jade's French fries - 'symbolizes the reckless consumerism that plagues America.
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french-fries
sweet-valley
potatoes
consumerism
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Francine Pascal |
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a392c7e
|
Escape is a commodity like anything else.
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consumerism
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Iain M. Banks |
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63e2ae0
|
The small family living unit lacks space, Earth, other animals, seasons, natural temperatures, and so on. The pet is either sterilized or sexually isolated, extremely limited in his exercise, deprived of almost all other animal contact, and fed with artificial foods. This is the material process which lies behind the truism the pets come to resemble their masters or mistresses. They are creatures of their owners way of life.
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capitalism
consumerism
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John Berger |
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2e22af9
|
There is something self-destructive about Western technology and distribution. Whenever any consumer object is so excellent that it attracts a devoted following, some of the slide rule and computer types come in on their twinkle toes and take over the store, and in a trice they figure out just how far they can cut quality and still increase market penetration. Their reasoning is that it is idiotic to make and sell a hundred thousand units of something and make 30 cents a unit when you can increase the advertising, sell five million units, and make a nickel profit a unit. Thus, the very good things of the world go down the drain, from honest turkey to honest eggs to honest tomatoes. And gin.
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capitalism
consumerism
technology
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John D. MacDonald |
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d16df32
|
"... I was disturbed by how many of my classmates disliked Thoreau, railed against him even, as if he (who claimed never to have learned anything of value from an old person) was an enemy and not a friend. His scorn of commerce--invigorating to me--nettled a lot of the more vocal kids in Honors English. "Yeah, right," shouted an obnoxious boy whose hair was gelled and combed stiff like a Dragon Ball Z character--"some kind of world it would be if every-body just dropped out and moped around in the woods--"
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dragon-ball-z
english-class
thoreau
consumerism
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Donna Tartt |