The Obvious

 Recently I've been reflecting upon the obvious.  How for a couple of generations now people have been clearly telling us what's happening... and we've been blithely ignoring them and the situation... A couple of quotes summarize the point pretty well:
 

• "Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
       Bill Vaughan, US columnist and author (1915 - 1977)
• "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption ... We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate ... the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants."
       Victor Lebow, US retailing analyst and marketing consultant, in 1955