" [T]he course of development most typical of our society is ... the transformation of a lively and promising human infant, through a period of indoctrination, disillusion and rebellion, into an emotionally constricted, competitively hostile adult saturated in the values of commodity consumption, desperately conforming, anxiously pursuing an ever-receding 'happiness', bereft of any ability to criticize the society in which he or she is located, pathetically eager to enjoy those of its 'fruits' (consumer durables) which are within reach. This is the great, inertially stable backbone of our society, the guardian of its values and the target of its mass media, working tirelessly in the interests of others and blindly against its own, forced by the crushing vice of economic power into reproducing itself reliably and endlessly in its children. "
― David Smail , Taking Care: An Alternative to Therapy (Psychology/self-help)
![David Smail quote : [T]he course of development most typical of our society is ... the transformation of a lively and promising human infant, through a period of indoctrination, disillusion and rebellion, into an emotionally constricted, competitively hostile adult saturated in the values of commodity consumption, desperately conforming, anxiously pursuing an ever-receding 'happiness', bereft of any ability to criticize the society in which he or she is located, pathetically eager to enjoy those of its 'fruits' (consumer durables) which are within reach. This is the great, inertially stable backbone of our society, the guardian of its values and the target of its mass media, working tirelessly in the interests of others and blindly against its own, forced by the crushing vice of economic power into reproducing itself reliably and endlessly in its children.](/image/2489187.jpg)