Video: The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff: Breaking the grip of the shop/consume/dispose culture and replacing it with a system that's sustainable

While the problems of consumer culture have spread worldwide, America holds a unique place in the scheme that dates back to decisions that we made at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. Inn some countries like Denmark and Norway, people chose to take advantage of increasing productivity to reduce the work week, to take more vacations, and enjoy more time with family and friends. But in America, every gain was turned into a material gain, into more stuff. Rather than gathering in more happiness and freedom from advancing technology, we buried ourselves in an ever accelerating quest for the latest goodies. Generation by generation, year by year, we've accumulated more goods and consumed more of the world's resources (and made ourselves more miserable).

More reading material on this topic:

"Affluenza: the all-consuming epidemic. Affluenza.org offers a reading list, that includes older works.