"To end consumerism, we must reeducate ourselves on the separation of needs from desires. If capitalism emerged originally to fulfill a need, its offspring, consumerism, created and fed desires. Today so many of these desires have been exposed as artificial.. The craving for possessions, status and material wealth has become addictive and we feed our addictions by creating and consuming more of everything. But at the same time our desires have overtaken and eclipsed our needs. We seem to be trapped in a perpetual cycle of demand. The demise of competing ideologies allowed those living in capitalist societies a brief period of satisfaction before people began to ask: "Is this it?" (Richard.Donkin@ft.com, Financial Times, May 2)