Caring nothing for the effects of this voracious appetite, our society in the western world plunges on, working harder and longer in order to satisfy a lust for more possesions, property, and luxury. When possessions take precedence over people, children fall victim to this trend. Sent at a tender age to local or state child care facilities, there to be indoctrinated and steeped in the new morality. It's OK to be here, your parents are working hard to fulfill themselves and buy you stuff. Both mother and father work impossible hours, communicating by means of notes and messages left in areas where paths are likely to cross at some point.
Guilt is assuaged by spending a half hour of quality time with junior each week.
Too often this translates to dumping the poor child at a playground while mommy sits on the bench finishing up her work on a laptop computer. If these were the only consequence of wicked excess, it would be bad enough, but in order to meet the unquenchable demand, industry, a willing accomplice in this foul endeavor, utilizes slave labor to produce the products we demand at such impossible prices. How many of us have thought about the misery our TV, VCR, CD player, microwave oven, etc. We are taught that the civil war ended slavery, but this is not true. It simply transferred slavery from our backyard where looking at it made us feel guilty to forgotten and isolated corners of the world where we could pretend it no longer exists.