“Lebow and his cronies got together to ‘create’ the modern advertising industry, which plays to primitive beliefs,” says Rees. “It makes you feel insecure, because the advertising industry turned our sense of self-worth into a symbolic presentation of the possessions we have,” he told me. “We’ve turned consumption into a necessity, and how we define ourselves.”

The result is a world in which rampant consumption in rich countries is rapidly outstripping the resources in the world needed to satisfy demand.

—From a must read New Scientist article: Consumerism is ‘eating the future’