Walmart and high-priced art aren't often mentioned in the same sentence. But artist Brendan O'Connell turns the discount shopping experience into upmarket culture.
As a white activist, I get this a lot. What does a white liberal weekend revolutionary know about police brutality? What gives me the cultural authority to quote the poetry of Gil Scott-Heron? And who the hell do I think I am?
The problem is that the ease with which we buy online is now rubbing off on our kids. The era of instant gratification blurs the line between wants and needs.
Our economy however, seems built on a set of habits that would suggest that if we all commit to the same resolution of buying less, the layoffs will only get worse. Welcome to the quandary of sustainable consumption.
If there is a War on Christmas, the liberals are getting routed. It's time for evangelicals to declare victory on this front and fight the real secular threat to the true meaning of Christmas: Santa Claus.
I'm all for our capitalist society and for making profits, but at some point. American consumers will rebel against the relentless intrusion into their private time and their private space.
We are a less hospitable nation. Hospitality has been exchanged for a heightened hostility. Let's call it pepper spray hospitality, which is, in fact, no hospitality at all. We are a spray first, ask questions later, kind of society.
Despite the down economy, Americans are still buying, buying, buying: This past Cyber Monday was the heaviest online shopping day of all time, with $1.25 billion spent. And as a result, our garbage cans are fuller than ever.
Many economists are urging Americans to go into the market and buy more things for the sake of jobs. But for people of faith, this imperative to buy creates a difficult moral dilemma.
Americans tend to over-consume, which is especially true over the holidays -- from gorging ourselves on Christmas cookies to spending ourselves into debt on presents.
This year, celebrate Black Friday as Buy Nothing Day. Go one full day without a single consumer transaction. But keep the TV off.
I don't know whether the Buddha ever rioted for austerity, but he certainly counseled against arousing rampant desire, especially as a way of life.
Corporations are the new citizens of this country, and ordinary Americans, who used to be known as "citizens," now fall into three categories: consumers, warriors and prisoners.
In reality, Christmas for Americans--and yes, even the Christian ones--is shaped more by Currier and Ives than Joseph and Mary.
A major theme throughout No Impact Week has been consumption, and how much we buy (and waste!) that is unnecessary. Here at HuffPost Green we've been ...
A video review of the 1965 classic film, which is streaming for free on Hulu through the end of 2009.
I resolve to make a list this year of things that will lessen my personal ignorance to larger issues at hand.
A big part of the enticement of holiday shopping is getting "deals." Here at HuffPost Green, we think that the frenzy around Black Friday and holiday...
Embracing sustainability and crafting a new face of luxury need not be at odds; by exploring ways to achieve both simultaneously, an exciting new era of of design can be borne.
The centrality of the U.S. consumer to the overall global economy has meant his pulling back on a debt induced shopping spree, which has sparked a worldwide synchronized recession.
Consumerism is what they call a "totalizing system." It expands outward across the landscape and simultaneously into the individual's psyche. It must expand.
Recession? Depression? Adaptation. Go green for your survival in the 21st Century. Darwin would be impressed at your foresight.
I need to hold off on procuring the imitation Rolex until I can augment it with an imitation BMW, imitation Armani wardrobe, and the all-important imitation second home in Telluride.
Standing in the nearly empty mall observing the lack of buying interest, I wondered if maybe the American way of measuring status by stuff and price tag is getting turned upside down.
In the midst of these tumultuous economic times in our world, it's curious how our culture perceives increased consumption as the answer to this problem.
