I agree with Helmut Holzapfel on this:
A “distance-intensive” lifestyle has emerged and is taken for granted, at least in modern industrialised societies; it has become a typical way of living shaping attitudes and behaviour for part of the population. A distance-intensive lifestyle means large distances covered in ever-smaller units of time, not only in personal travelling, but by the products consumed. Even in health food shops, Argentinean honey or apples from oases in the Brazilian jungle are freely available. The lifestyle means constant availability and spatial accessibility for people and products: Australian or Californian wine, strawberries at Christmas, most likely from South Africa. People fly from Hamburg to Milan for an evening at the opera, and back the next morning. And they live in the suburbs in a detached house with a double or triple garage outside (an SUV is a must); the house is in a beautiful location, yet a blot on the landscape.(...)The disadvantages of the lifestyle gradually become apparent: being everywhere, people are increasingly nowhere. The freedom they search for far and wide means more than dependence on transport systems. Since everyone wants to get everywhere else, everywhere looks the same; same products, same supermarkets. And since everyone wants to go somewhere else and consume products from all over, transport infrastructure is congested. If we consume yogurt made from milk and fruit sourced all over Europe, we shouldn’t be surprised about a lorry jam on the motorway near London or Milan.
It's striking to realize that how identical ultra-consumerists are no matter their race, religion or ethnicity. After all, if buying and stocking stuff is one's 'religion' then all other variables such as race and ethnicity are not essential. For some reasons, that reminds me of the term 'poor white trash' used in the United States, which puts the emphasis on the fact that social condition is in fact more defining than race.
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