Are we Things in a Material World?

"We don't realize how much the current indoctrination into systematic and organized consumption is the equivalent and extension, in the twentieth century, of the great indoctrination of rural populations into industrial labor, which occurred during the nineteenth century."

"This same process of rationalization of productive forces, which took place in the nineteenth century in the production sector, is accomplished, in the twentieth century, in the consumption sector."

"We are surrounded today by the remarkable conspicuousness of consumption and affluence, established by the multiplication of objects, services and material goods, all of which constitute a part of fundamental mutation in the ecology of the human species."

"Strictly speaking, these affluent individuals are no longer surrounded by other human beings as they were in the past, but by objects..."

"Just as the wolf-child becomes a wolf by living among wolves, so we are ourselves becoming functional objects."

"We are living in the period of objects: that is, we live by their rhythm, according to their incessant succession."

"Today, it is we who are observing their birth, fulfillment...We have reached the point where 'consumption' has grasped the whole of life."

-- Jean Baudriallard