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"This spiritual crisis is the root of environmental degradation, deteriorating health, massive consumerism, social injustice, and wanton war. It is the imperative of our time to evolve in consciousness to a level of spiritual understanding that recognizes the spirit in all life and engages in a reciprocal nurturance. RELIGIOUS OVERLAY Various religions refer to spirit as God or an aspect thereof, so many people's immediate reaction to the word "spirit" is one of religious connotation." - Pam Montgomery, Plant Spirit Healing: A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness (Get the book.)

"These lifestyle choices, encompassing diet, exercise, consumerism, and stress management, perpetuate a vicious cycle of blows to our health. It also leaves us looking older, feeling more tired, and unable to do the things we want to do in life. Which is why I'm redefining "lifestyle" with easy, practical solutions that won't require radical change. I want you to beat the odds and live the best life." - Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith, The Detox Strategy: Vibrant Health in 5 Easy Steps (Get the book.)

"There is an established historiography that sees self-help as one expression of a secular and psychologically minded "therapeutic culture" in general that first arose at the turn of the twentieth century as part of a new American culture of narcissism, consumerism, and consumption—a culture that valorized "feeling good."8 At the same time, a new generation of scholars also increasingly appreciates the extent to which many practices of modern self-help, particularly as a print culture, owe a significant debt to the religious mind-cure movements of the late nineteenth century." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"For reasons that are still not well understood, European and North American populations were growing at an unprecedented rate; and while many of these "new people" were poor, many of them were not, so that the century saw a rapid rise in consumerism, with ever-burgeoning numbers of small manufacturers turning out vast quantities of goods, especially textiles, for home consumption. Technological advances and a spirit of entrepreneurship led some countries, above all England, into the Industrial Revolution by the latter half of the century." - Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (Get the book.)

"During research for this chapter I've been shocked by the extent to which children's play and culture has been invaded by consumerism. Peer pressure, subtly directed by the forces of mass marketing, has even begun to undermine the relationship between children and the adults who care for them. Playgrounds have become places where creativity means re-enacting last night's TV show and 'cool', in the form of branded products and clothes, is the accepted route to social success. Yet we know - and psychologists continually reaffirm - that this is not the route to happiness." - Sue Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it (Get the book.)

"This was pardy because consumerism had become an end in itself. It was a new religion—a new American dream supported by an endless stream of advertiser-supported media. Almost everyone was imbued with a get-it-now, live-for-today perspective, a kind of financial hedonism enabled and repeatedly overstimulated by an aggressively competitive, rapidly innovating, but ultimately self-serving financial services sector. To that end, lenders and borrowers joined hands and helped create a massive real estate and mortgage market bubble, allowing consumers to "extract," as the euphemism went, $2." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.)

"The forces of consumerism, information management, technology and science, facilitated by the e-environment, all focus on one thing, the individual,' consultant Patricia Pesanello told a pharma conference in 2000. We suggest that these forces also point to a new healthcare vision, one that focuses on individualised health management, which in an e-environment is informed, interactive, immediate, and integrated." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"Cosmetic surgery is the exemplar of consumerism in medicine (Sullivan, 2001). Procedures from tummy tucks to liposuction to nose jobs to breast augmentation have become big medical business. The body has become a project, from minor touch-up to "extreme makeover," and medicine has become the vehicle for improvement. In a sense the whole body has become medicalized, piece by piece. To use just an example that was discussed in chapter 6, the number of breast implants continuously- increased until the silicone implant risk scare, when the market for implants plummeted." - Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Get the book.)

"Healthcare consumerism broadens the boundaries, however. And while Pfizer's trials failed, much development has been stimulated by this large and apparently unmet need. When Procter & Gamble (P&G) was in the final stages of testing its testosterone patch for women in May 2004, Mary Johnson, a P&G spokeswoman, told the Wall Street Journal, 'This isn't about oversexing women. This is about restoring something they have lost." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"NOTE This article provided strong support for the scientific basis of the 1990 European moratorium on the uses and marketing of rBGH/BST, previously dismissed by the FDA as "consumerism versus science." The article also was the key initiative for the International Milkday Convention in Bonn, Germany on May 15, 1990 demanding a ban on rBGH/BST (Int. J. Hlth. Services 20:573-582, 1990)." - Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., What's In Your Milk?: An Exposé of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking (Get the book.)

"In constraining carbon through rationing, we might soon find that we were building a different sort of society, one emphasising quality of life before the raw statistics of economic growth and relentless consumerism. I have no grand plan for how this society might look, nor do I pretend that it would be some kind of Utopia. Life would go on, with all its trials and tribulations - and that, after all, is precisely the point. Unless we do constrain carbon, life will very largely not go on at all." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.) "Currently, economic and social pressure works in the other direction: young children, for example, rather than eschewing consumerism, have to display the latest consumer fashion gear so as not to be humiliated in the playground. Their parents save up to buy the latest jeep or SUV in order to demonstrate their status and earning power to the neighbours. Television programmes like the BBC's Top Gear equate speed with virility and driving with freedom, cultural messages which are relentlessly reinforced by screen and billboard advertising." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.)

"But with the cult of consumerism crumbling, the economy in a tailspin, the nation's financial system being consumed from within, public finances in tatters, and military resources stretched to the breaking point, outsiders will no longer have an incentive to ignore the new reality: the end of American hegemony. Economic and financial shocks will reverberate back and forth between rich and poor, allies and adversaries, producers and consumers, and mature and developing nations." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.) "Even those who seemingly have plenty to spend will hold back, as a contagious wait-to-buy mind-set, one wholly at odds with the hedonistic consumerism of earlier years, begins to spread. Companies and individuals will also be hit with rising taxes and "user fees" of all kinds, because in the early stages, before hard-pressed citizens begin to aggressively fight back, state and local governments will look to fill the gaps caused by falling property values, softening retail sales, and unfunded retirement liabilities." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.) "Many re-embraced the mantra of consumerism and the American dream, and the economy began to recover anew. The tradeoff was that by early 2006, the United States was "more dependent on housing than it [had] been in a half-century," the Washington Post reported, with activity in the real estate sector accounting for "nearly three-quarters of the nation's job growth" since the 2001 recession. During that five-year period, consumers had borrowed an estimated $2." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.)

"Over the past couple of decades, pharma has been the major beneficiary of social change towards consumerism in healthcare. It is no coincidence that the rising pharmaceutical spend on the big broad-spectrum conditions has been in parallel with an obsession about health. And, of course, it has been helped enormously by the revolutionary new dimension to health made possible by the Internet. The quest for good health could suddenly find expression in infinitely more ways as the commercialization of the prize you can be sure everyone wants, longevity and health, gathered momentum." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"Some put the change in children's behaviour down to diet or lack of exercise; others chose working mothers, marriage breakdown, defects in the education system, excessive consumerism or other effects of technological or social change. The world is full of experts on children's behaviour, and most of them seem completely oblivious of all the others." - Sue Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it (Get the book.)

"My Lord, what do you want youths to do when their city is being choked off and they blame it on stupid, mindless American consumerism, buying cheap wood for what? Their McMansions? If profiteering continues and wages and earning power remain low, disillusioned youths are sure to turn to charismatic leaders like Osama bin Laden who offer hope, however false and misleading it might be, as a deadly way out of their despair. Good jobs with meaning and decent wages, the idea of hope—these are antidotes to terrorism, not more missiles and guns." - David Steinman, Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown (Get the book.)

"He explains why we must consider these three factors in the following example: If we don't like capitalism or consumerism, which are expressions of the [modernist stage], it's not the same thing as the [abilities of the modernist level], which is the capacity to engineer things, to make things better. The creativity and ability to engineer that are inherent in the same [modernist stage] can now be used to clean up the environment. That's why we can't afford to bash any of these [stages of consciousness]." - Steve McIntosh, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (Get the book.)

"In a culture of consumerism, people are forever trying to buy happiness, and sellers are expected to appear happy so as to inspire confidence in what they are offering. There are few businesses that are not in some sense selling happiness or the relief from unhappiness—and thus there is enormous pressure to maintain the appearance of happiness. The perversion of the pursuit of happiness to mean that it is our duty to be chronically upbeat has, according to psychologist and journalist Lesley Hazleton, resulted in the labeling of anxiety and depression first as weakness and now as illness." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.) "And he most certainly would be sad that mental health treatment has increasingly become a component rather than a confrontation of modern consumerism. The Unhappiness Taboo There are many possible reasons for the increasing rate of depression among Americans, but I believe that one important cause is a culture that demands happiness. The pressure to be in a good mood can make people ashamed of not being in one. This "pain over pain" can then result in normal low moods becoming prolonged bouts of despair. Why did this unhappiness taboo take hold so strongly in the United States?" - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.) "Finding fault with a fundamentalist market economy, industrialism, and consumerism does not mean that I am against the production and use of all material things. Rather it means that I oppose the worship of a one-dimensional value system that does not recognize that certain realms of our humanity need to be outside of markets, industry, and consumer products. Human beings are complex, and positive references to particular persons do not indicate my blanket approval of everything about them." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.) "This truth is often denied because it plays havoc with industrialization and consumerism. If the vendor and the customer are not clearly defined, then who gets billed? Symptoms can be seen, but a lack of emotional, interpersonal, existential, or spiritual wholeness does not show up in any lab test or X-ray. What can be intuited and known often cannot be quantified—and so in Western science is often not taken seriously. Healing the source of despair is about becoming whole, and this too cannot be scientifically measured. With wholeness there is strength—and the gift of choice." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.)

"Does Vandana feel it>s likely we will make the flip to the flow of Right-Side Up agriculture and consumerism? "I don't energy in the think anything is ever inevitable in human history or in universe. evolution. There are always probabilities and possibilities. —Wilhelm Reich Right now there's a probability that the machinery of destruction will continue without enough resistance building in society to shift the direction." - David H. Rippe, Jared Rosen, The Flip: Turn Your World Around (Get the book.)

"The influential British economist Richard Layard puts this down to a combination of consumerism and constant economic growth luring people in highly successful nations into over-competitiveness: 'Our fundamental problem today is a lack of common feeling between people - the notion that life is essentially a competitive struggle. With such a philosophy the losers become alienated and a threat to the rest of us, and even the winners can't relax in peace." - Sue Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it (Get the book.)

"Have we fallen victim to the insatiable call of consumerism, which brings on debt, which brings on the need to earn more money, which forces us into servitude in jobs that greedily demand more and more of our time? Are we caught in a vicious cycle of our making? It's a competitive world, to be sure. But does it have to be? Try this. Close your eyes and ask yourself what the three most important things are in your life. Just three. C'mon, close your eyes. Don't think about it too long; just quickly name three things. Now look at the list and place a checkmark by the items you named." - David H. Rippe, Jared Rosen, The Flip: Turn Your World Around (Get the book.)

"As author Madeline Bunting observed, 'The central tenet of consumerism is choice; when you're ill, you don't have the strength to make complicated choices. You want a relationship of trust and mutual respect in which someone very experienced and knowledgeable helps to make you better.'15 Nevertheless, the idea of having a greater say in health decisions is compelling. The Internet has made this possible. By enabling medical knowledge to be distributed in a more egalitarian manner, it instantly transformed the relationship one could have with one's doctor." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"Prior to the twentieth century, conservationism was much more the national ethic than consumerism, so advertisers were trying to change deeply ingrained values and habits. They helped create in a conservationist culture a continuous reservoir of new consumers who aspired to be affluent and consume at least as many goods as their neighbors. As we have noted many times in this book, after each war or economic depression U.S. farmland became more concentrated in the hands of fewer farmers as local banks folded and regional banks foreclosed on small-scale farmers." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

"How well does the "media mind-set" of consumerism fit the reality of our changing world? Does our use of the mass media accurately reflect our evolutionary intelligence as a species? Is the mass media's focus on consumerism diverting our cultural attention, dumbing-down humanity's self-image, and holding back our social evolution? What is a more positive and elevated view of humanity's potentials? How might the mass media nourish and strengthen our culture and enable us to cope with unprecedented ecological, social, and spiritual challenges?" - APC Books, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves: The Power of change Within to Change the World (Get the book.)

"The models of traditional cooking, which once had to contend or harmonize with the physical limitations of territories and with the relationships that formed between different societies, are now on the verge of disappearing because of the emergence of a model where what prevails, after intense industrialization and the globalization of trade, is consumerism and detachment from the agricultural world. The history of man can be reconstructed through a geohis-tory of taste, where general models of cuisine become dominant and come to characterize the various areas of the planet." - Carlo Petrini, Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair (Get the book.)

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