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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

Inordinate desire for material possessions can become an obsession that consumes our thoughts, drains our resources, and leads to unhappiness.

As human beings, we're very materialistic and have all this stuff - furs and cars and diamonds and money.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

We function in a pack mentality. This is our tribe. And this is how we are exploited - sold a bill of goods and a household of products.

When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.

Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding.

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption instead of by our ability to move beyond it.

Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.

What we buy, and pay for, is part of ourselves.