When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
Interpretation
The quote critiques a society where values are determined by material wealth rather than ethical principles.
Jonathan Sacks highlights the dangers of a materialistic culture where the worth of individuals is based on their economic power rather than their morals and commitments. He warns that when society prioritizes transactions over integrity, it undermines the foundational virtues that support a healthy community, leading to a loss of true meaning in life and relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about the influence of consumerism on personal relationships.
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
The sun never sets. It is only an appearance due to the observer's limited perspective. And yet, what a sublime illusion it is.
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.
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