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Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed.

We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of 'choice' and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands, and a growing machinery of social and civil death.

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want.

People have become shallower. They view spending, entertaining, seeking leisure and enjoying as the main objectives of their life.

Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.

A lot of people are deeply dissatisfied by the diminishing control they have over their lives, because of the way our system of government is set up, to cater to the powerful, cater to the wealthy, cater to the corporations, and not to the individual American citizen.

We lost our way and allowed greed and excess to become the twin pillars of too much of the financial culture. We became a society utterly absorbed in consumption and dismissive of moderation.

Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence has itself betrayed us.

Society is becoming less and less transparent. People no longer know where decisions that substantially affect their lives are taken, nor by whom, nor how.