The eradication of craft skills and of economically productive family activity, has lessened people's chances to gain a sense of accomplishment and worth and has increased our vulnerability to the blandishments of advertising, the most potent educational institution in our culture. As the opportunities for personal power on a human level diminish for all but a relatively small part of the population, self-confidence, trust and pleasure conceived in straightforward terms are poisoned, and we are increasingly beguiled by an accordion-like succession of mediations between ourselves and the natural and social world, mediations in the form of commodities. We are each promised personal power and fulfilment through consumption; we are as nothing unless clothed in a culture that is conceived of as a congeries of packages, each of which presents us with a bill. In pursuit of meaning and satisfaction we are led to grant the aura of life to things and to drain it from people: we personify objects and objectify persons. We experience alienation from ourselves as well as from others. We best comprehend ourselves as social entities in looking at photos of ourselves, assuming the voyeur's role with respect to our own images; we best know ourselves from within in looking through the viewfinder at other people and things.
[...] In pursuit of meaning, also, we are led to see meaning where there is only emptiness and sham, strength where there is only violence or money, knowledge where there is only illusion, honesty where there is only a convincing manner, status where there is only a price tag, satisfaction where there is only a cattle prod, limitless freedom where there is only a feed lot. Our entire outlook is conditioned by the love and the terror of consumption.
– Martha Rosler, To Argue for a Video of Represntation. To Argue for a Video Against the Mythology of Everyday Life, 1977