Consumerism is more like a religion than religions are. Its temples, real and virtual, draw millions of adherents on every day and night of the week. All the festivals are celebrated. Nobody is turned away. And via the act of acquisition, we’re happy again.
The way of Tao: Less, not more. Fewness, not many. The path of under-stimulation.
Gurdjieff had the view that humanity exists in a near-perpetual state of sleep. “Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.” On the evidence—climate change, consumerism, ceaseless warring and the wanton destruction of the planet—the Russian mystic wasn’t wrong.
Many of our young men are dangerously dissatisfied. It’s not their fault. They’ve been trained to want what they don’t have—trained, you could say, to suffer.
Men's Work 