We are all grown-ups now, and we know that living by want is not only necessary but can be justified with software modelling and leader columns in The Times.
But a value system which glorifies wealth and accumulation, which builds itself on a platform of want, which inflames and creates more of it daily through a marketing machine which colonises the human mind – this is what every spiritual tradition in history has warned against, and with good reason. Take, for example, the famous list of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Western Christian tradition: gluttony, lust, pride, wrath, greed, sloth and envy. With the possible exception of sloth, we currently live in a culture which not only sees nothing wrong with these values but actively encourages them. The pursuit of these six vices is no longer something to be confessed or repented: it is the very thing which drives our notion of Progress forward.
— Paul Kingsnorth in Against the Machine
