#sum

Bling" is not an indication of riches. It is a product of value-based spending, to enrich the pockets of those outside of ones sphere of influence...the haves' bleeding the have-nots'. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#consumption #have-nots #haves #influence #quotes

Kill every enemy twice, Wilky said. Better than gettin' shot by a soldier pretending to be dead. ↗

— Joseph Bruchac

#enemy #possum #pretending-death #shot-twice #twice

I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The message was that people could only be passive victims or consumers. ↗

— John Twelve Hawks

#consumer #news #television #tv #death

A scream so loud it shattered and splintered into a dreadful chorus that rattled and shook my brain and bones and cells and soul. I grabbed the telegram from Mama’s hand, threw it on the fire, ran out of the room into the hallway, and then outside into the square, and I continued running, zigzagging down streets, through mews, and on and on, as though I could escape from that moment; escape my brother’s death and run back through time. ↗

— Judith Kinghorn

#the-last-summer #death

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 revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management. ↗

— George Monbiot

#economics #environment #government #shopping #design

I vow to ingest only items that preserve well-being, peace, and joy in my body and my consciousness... Practicing a diet is the essence of this precept. Wars and bombs are the products of our consciousness individually and collectively. Our collective consciousness has so much violence, fear, craving, and hatred in it, it can manifest in wars and bombs. The bombs are the product of our fear... Removing the bombs is not enough. Even if we could transport all the bombs to a distant planet, we would still not be safe, because the roots of the wars and the bombs are still intact in our collective consciousness. Transforming the toxins in our collective consciousness is the true way to uproot war (72-73). ↗

— Thich Nhat Hanh

#mindfulness #war #diet

Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus. Now I am dead, Now I am fled, My soul is in the sky. Tongue, lose thy light. Moon take thy flight. Now die, die, die, die. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#dreams

Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be! ↗

— William Shakespeare

#puck #dreams

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#capitalism #consumerism #dfw #solipsism #dreams

Traditional hedonism...was based on the direct experience of pleasure: wine, women and song; sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; or whatever the local variant. The problem, from a capitalist perspective, is that there are inherent limits to all this. People become sated, bored...Modern self-illusory hedonism solves this dilemma because here, what one is really consuming are fantasies and day-dreams about what having a certain product would be like. ↗

— David Graeber

#capitalism #redefining-consumption #dreams