檳榔嶼

- SHARON SALZBERG : "The fading away greed and hatred is the foundation for liberation. Liberation is "the sure heart's release" - an understanding of the truth so powerful that there is no turning back from it".
- Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair.
  - Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. A culture of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish.
    - Left alone in the "me" culture, we consume and consume with no thought of others.
    - Greed and exploitation become the norm when a ethic of domination prevails. They bring in their wake alienation and lovelessness.
    - Intense spiritual and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption.
- In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced by the passion to possess. While emotional needs are difficult, and often are impossible to satisfy, material desires are easier to fulfill. (從送名牌包代表愛意、情人節送禮，到婚禮花費幾億就代表世紀幸福婚禮的文化可略知一二，在這些金錢標價的背後代表的意義是什麼？難道愛情也可以標價嗎？價高者得？還是價高代表珍貴？10克拉的鑽戒就會擁有10倍於1克拉鑽戒的愛跟幸福嗎？)
- Pathological narcissism in the wake of wars that brought economic bounty while undermining the vision of freedom and justice essential to sustaining democracy.
- It would have been unthinkable to the poor to murder someone for a luxury item. There was no value system in place that made a life less important than the material desire for an inessential object.
  - Americans were asked to sacrifice the vision of freedom, love, and justice and put in its place the worship of materialism and money. 
- Instead of looking for justice in the public world, individuals turned to their private lives, seekinga place of solace and escape.
  - Initially, lots of folks turned inward to family and relationships to find again a sense of connection and stability.
  - Coming face to face with rampant lovelessness in the home created an overwhelming sense of cultural brokenheartedness.
  - Divorce rates were the primary indicators that marriage was not a safe haven. And mounting public awareness of the extent to which domestic violence and all manner of child abuse were widespread clearly revealed that the patriarchal family could not offer sanctuary.
- The good life was no longer to be found in community and connection, it was to be found in accumulation and the fulfillment of hedonistic, materialistic desire. In keeping with this shift in values from a people-oriented to a thing-oriented society, the rich and famous, particularly movie stars and singers,began to be seen as the only relevant cultural icons.Gone were the visionary political leaders and activists.
  - Suddenly it was no longer important to bring an ethical dimension to the work life, making money was the goal, and by whatever means.
- Among the poor and the other underclasses, the worship of money became most evident by the unprecedented increase in the street drug industry, one of the rare locations where capitalism worked well for a few individuals.
  - Quick money allowed the poor to satisfy the same material longings as the rich.
- Greed was the order of the day.
- Widespread addiction in both poor and affluent communities is linked to our psychotic lust for material consumption. It keeps us unable to love. Addicts want release from pain; they are not thinking about love.
  - Addiction makes love impossible. Most addicts are primarily concerned with acquiring and using their drug, whether it be alcohol, cocaine, heroin, sex or shopping.
- When they are not afraid of being seen as politically incorrect, women who are bonded with abusive, rich, and powerful men talk easily about their addiction to power and wealth. Both men and women remain in dysfunctional, loveless relationships when it is materially opportune.
- While this lust if the natural response of anyone who has totally embraced the values of consumerism, when these individuals harm others in their pursuit of wealth we are encouraged to see their behavior as aberrant. We are all encouraged to believe they are not like us, yet studies show that many people are willing to lie to gain monetary advantage.
- This same politics of greed is at play when folks seek love. They often want fulfillment immediately. Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment.
  - John Welwood, <<Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love>> : "dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problem or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love - which is to transform us".
  - Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling. In patriarchal culture men are especially inclined to see love as something they should receive without expending effort. More often than not they do not want to do the work that love demands. When the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening and pain, many of us turn our backs on love.
- We are a nation that normalizes dysfunction. Like hedonistic consumption, we are encouraged to believe that the excesses of the family are normal and that it is abnormal to believe that one can have a functional, loving family.
  - The message we get is that everybody wants to have more money to buy more things so it is no problematic if we lie and cheat a bit to get ahead.
- Unlike love, desires for material objects can be satisfied instantly. Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the heart we are encouraged to treat partners as though they were objects we can pick up, use, and then discard and dispose of at will, with the one criteria being whether or not individualistic desires are satisfied.
- Dehumanization becomes acceptable. Treating people like objects is not only acceptable but is required behavior. It's the culture of exchange, the tyranny of marketplace values. Those values inform attitudes about love.
  - Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another.
  - Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. And friendships or loving community cannot be valued and sustained.
- Increasingly, the mass media is the primary vehicle for the promotion and affirmation of greed; there is little information offered about the establishment and maintenance of meaningful relationships.
- The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present when there is love, is annihilated by greed.
- When the politics of greed become a cultural norm, all acts of charity are wrongly seen as suspect and are represented as a gesture of the weak. 
- If money really made up for loss and lovelessness, the wealthy would be the most blissful people on the planet.
- Brainwashed to believe that they can only be secure if they have more than the next person, they accumulate and still feel insecure because there is always someone who has accumulated more.
- I once asked a rich man, who had only recently attained his status, what he liked most about his new wealth. He said that he liked seeing what money could make people do, how it could make them shift and violate their values. He personified the culture of greed. His pleasure in being wealthy was grounded in the desire to not only have more than others but to use that power to degrade and humiliate them.
- The world of domination is always a world without love.
- Greed subsumes love and compassion. Living simply is the primary way everyone can resist greed every day. Living simply makes loving simple. The choice to live simply necessarily enhances our capacity to love.