The geography of consumerism: a Buddhist deconstruction of Los Angeles

Virtually every ecological challenge facing the world today has its roots in global consumerism, or what some refer to as globalization. In the present era of industrial capitalism, where raw materials are transformed into commodities and commodities into pure capital, a global consumer class has been steadily cultivated in order to accelerate this transformation. By exploiting the instinctual drives of human beings with aggressive commercial advertising technology, a lifestyle of instinctual gratification has been elevated to the world 's first global religion. (See more in text.)