Alain de Botton: Inordinately Rich & Small
on Thursday, August 24, 2017Alain de Botton Money Quote saying we prefer to create vast wealth for those who provide mostly meaningless piffle to occupy us. Alain de Botton said:
“What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things” — Alain de Botton
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In this quote, Alain de Botton is critiquing modern consumerism and how wealth is often accumulated. By describing civilization as “inordinately rich” yet generating wealth through “astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things”, Botton suggests that outsized profits are regularly made from trivial products providing little genuine value or fulfillment.
He implies current economic systems prioritize profits over well-being by allowing vast fortunes to be amassed from nonessential goods and services that provide limited lasting benefit.
The overall interpretation is that Botton views society as overly focused on monetary accumulation through proliferation and marketing of disposable, superficial offerings that do little to nourish people’s deeper needs and potential. His perspective conveys a need for rebalancing economic priorities to better align wealth creation with serving communities and cultivating what truly enriches individuals and society.