As human beings, we're very materialistic and have all this stuff - furs and cars and diamonds and money.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink).
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.
Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things.
Cars and cameras are the two things I let myself be materialistic about. I don't care about other stuff.
We live in such a consumer-based world. Everything we do, someone else has provided for us, so there is something really empowering about knowing that once I have found the right pieces of wood, I can start a fire and keep myself warm and skin an animal to eat and make its skin into leather.
In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.
The rest of the world wants our cash; we like plastic.
Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering.
We don't need bigger cars or fancier clothes. We need self-respect, identity, community, love, variety, beauty, challenge and a purpose in living that is greater than material accumulation.