all tt matters in the capitalist world is consumption as it drives profit up. look at all the companies – all they r interested is year end profit to pl the shareholders. so we r the suckers who consume without thinking and without any morality attached to it. see the crowd in mega marts – how they rush to get things without any consideration for others.

a new car model comes out and its snapped up. we try keeping up with the joneses as the old saying goes.

we pray for more wealth! instead of helping the have-nots.

our values hv indeed floundered.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070908065319AA3bkdY

I’ve provided little excerpts of the articles at these webpages. You certainly will want to read the entire articles.

1. http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/consumer.htm

The distinction between the consumer and the citizen is crucial to an understanding of the causes of the degradation of our political institutions. That distinction might also point the way toward a restoration of our democracy….

In a nutshell, the governing impulse of the consumer is “I want.” The governing impulse of the citizen is “we need.”

In fact, every individual is a mixture, in varying proportions, of both a consumer and a citizen. Mark Sagoff expresses this point with great clarity and wit:

“Last year I bribed a judge to fix a couple of traffic tickets, and was glad to do so because I saved my license. Yet, at election time, I helped to vote the corrupt judge out of office. I speed on the highway, yet I want the police to enforce laws against speeding… I send my dues to the Sierra Club to protect areas in Alaska I shall never visit… And of course, I applaud the endangered Species Act, although I have no earthly use for the Colorado Squawfish or the Indiana bat… I have an ‘ecology now’ sticker on a car that drips oil everywhere it’s parked. ” (The Economy of the Earth, Cambridge, 1988, p. 52)

2. http://www.iht.com/articles/1994/11/24/moral.php

Across Southeast Asia, government officials, educators and religious leaders are starting to count the cost of the region’s rapid economic growth, wrenching social change and rampant materialism. They are becoming increasingly worried at signs of eroding moral values.

The spread of consumer culture – fanned by television and advertising, much of it influenced by Western trends and ubiquitous international media technology – is blamed for a decline of parental control and core family ethics…

A similar transformation has swept over almost every other city and large town in Southeast Asia, from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok to Jakarta.

Malaysia and Singapore have promoted hard work, discipline, thrift and social cohesion, and leaders of both countries assert that these values enable East Asian economies to outperform the West.

However, J.A.C. Mackie, an Australian political scientist who has visited Southeast Asia regularly for more than two decades, said Singapore had become “the quintessence of consumerism and materialism.”

Although Australia has a reputation for hedonism, contemporary Singapore, he said, “makes Australia look rather spiritual.”

“In the quest for material gains, there is the tendency to believe that nothing succeeds like excess,” said Kanwaljit Soin, a member of Singapore’s Parliament.

“Lavish dinners, flashy new cars, expensive club memberships, branded goods and excessive consumerism,” she said, “cannot sustain for long the spirit of our people.”

Mr. Anwar said that despite the existence of such great religions in Asia as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, there seemed to be indifference in the region to the erosion of the social fabric by “widespread permissiveness and corruption.”