A Consumer Society

“Living in a consumer society inflames our discontent. It feeds our sense of inadequacy. It encourages us to make comparisons with other people. Social media in particular has created entirely new sources of unhappiness. We have already seen the negative impact on teenagers of comparing themselves with the carefully curated images of their Facebook friends. More generally, in a consumer society we act to be envied rather than admired. That is a problematic basis on which to construct a life.”

Morality, Chapter 7, p. 107