Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the pervasive influence of consumerism and hedonism in American society.
Cornel West's quote highlights how deeply ingrained the market-driven lifestyle is in America, suggesting that it fosters a culture obsessed with physical pleasures and social status. He points out that this lifestyle encourages individuals to seek constant stimulation and comfort at the cost of deeper, more meaningful experiences, ultimately leading to a superficial existence driven by personal gratification and individualism.
In practice
During a speech on consumer culture, this quote can illustrate the negative aspects of modern life.
King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.
Profound music leads us beyond language...to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'
We have contradictory expectations of police: We want to be perfectly safe and perfectly free. We want total security and total privacy. We want the bad guys stopped and the good guys unmolested. That's great for the consumer; try providing it.
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.
Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
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