We live in a commodity-driven world. Life is entangled with consumer symbols, and there’s no clean way to detach from them. These symbols aren’t just products—they’re indicators of how we relate to society, what we value, what we reject, and ultimately who we allow ourselves to become.

The issue isn’t consumption itself, but the attempt to express identity through consumption.

The meaning feels real for a moment, until it doesn’t. Revenge spending only leads to a sharper emptiness, and in response, people reach for more symbols—more complex, more expensive—to define themselves, to signal something, to numb something. The void expands; the response is more of the same.

The most effective resistance against consumerism is creation.

Creation lets you shift from “using symbols” to “making symbols.” An ordinary scene, an ordinary person, an ordinary moment—none of it carries inherent meaning, yet once you notice it and record it, it becomes something else. You assign weight. You create value.

Creation is from zero to one, from nothing to something. It doesn’t deplete. It doesn’t expire. It builds an internal architecture that consumption can’t touch.

You can always rebuild a civilization on ruins. Even if the ruins are internal.