“Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us to an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy…
Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit without ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity…The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. (We still find it hard to imagine that a girl could do either!) Covetousness we call ambition. Hoarding we call prudence. Greed we call industry…
Courageously, we need to articulate new, more human ways to live. We should take exception to the modern psychosis that defines people by how much they can produce or what they can earn. We should experiment with bold new alternatives to the present death-giving system. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent vision throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.”
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) 80-81.