What We Own Controls Us

Max Weber

"Material goods have gained an increasing an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period of history." - Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 2002 translation by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, Penguin Books.

"...we are locked into a situation in which we can never stop yearning for new and better things because we are always comparing ourselves with others who have more than we do." - Arthur Asa Berger, (2009), What Objects Mean: An Introduction to Material Culture, Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press.