False Gods

I've always been vaguely aware that the slavish lurching from one purchase to the next was more than just a little vacuous. The recent 'global financial crisis', 'credit crunch' and resultant 'financial stimulus', though, has shone the gloomy light of a cloudy day into the crevices of my mind and wreaked epistemic violence upon my ostensibly capitalist outlook.

What's the alternative though? I loathe socialism with its controlling, interfering, patronising tendencies and fear its logical conclusion: communism. And yet consumerism surely must be abandoned in light of the recent crisis, the effect it has on the environment and the total lack of moral purpose which it provides.

Maybe we are in need of the next 'ism...