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Early in the age of affluence(富裕)that followed World War II, an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed, Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate. Americans have responded to Lebows call, and much of the world has followed. Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values. Opinion surveys in the worlds two largest economies-Japan and the United States-show consumerist definitions of success becoming ever more prevalent. Overconsumption by the worlds fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests, soils, water, air and climate. Ironically, high consumption may by a mixed blessing in human terms, too. The time-honored values of integrity of character, good work, friendship, family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches. Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world, of plenty is somehow hollow-that, misled by a consumerist culture, they have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social. psychological and spiritual needs with material things. | 
