Our modern industrial civilization is in an involuntary conspiracy to convince us that by loving things we will become happy. Yet, from a spiritual perspective, it is clear that the love affair with material objects presented so beguilingly by adver- tisers is causing acute misery.
People are to be loved. Creatures and the living earth are
to be loved. Things are to be used wisely. The tragic inversion of values that draws us to love things and use people has led to our current environmental crisis, in which the natural inheritance of our children's children is being squandered and destroyed within a single generation.
-- Eknath
Easwaran.
A World on Fire,
Blue Mountain Journal
(Winter / Spring 2020).