The society we live in today is clearly highly consumptive.

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The society we live in today is clearly highly consumptive. By this I mean we consume mass produced commodities in abundance. We drive cars, use microwaves, listen to CDs, wear GAP khakis, eat packaged foods, live in pre-fab houses, watch Sony TVs, burn fossil fuels, and brush our teeth with Colgate (tartar control). We buy to fulfil our needs: basic and not-so basic. We are a consumer society; we buy, use, and discard to survive. [Although survival is rarely the impetus behind consumer purchases.] We are immersed in a consumer culture which eschews a dependency and faith in the commodity market like no other; it's an entire way of life -- we even define ourselves in terms of consumption. ("How many have you got?") Indeed, consumption has become a cultural ideal. Stuart Ewen summed it up beautifully when he noted that, "the commodity system enjoys a kind of passively accepted legitimacy as the universal arena within which most human needs are to be met..."(p.187 Captains of Consciousness). The culture of consumption is now the prevalent cultural form.

It wasn't always like this. Before the days of mass production and ubiquitous industry, most people sustained themselves through farming, a