. . . buying essentially useless luxury items "is one-dimensional, shallow, ahistorical, without memory and expendable.  But it is also strangely democratic and unifying.  If what you want is peace on earth, a unifying system that transcends religious, cultural and caste differences, well, whoops!, here it is.

James B. Twitchell, professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, as quoted by Patricia Cohen in the
New York Times article titled
In Defense of Our Wicked, Wicked Ways.