But we cannot really honor things if we use them as a means to self-enhancement, that is to say if we try to find ourselves through them. This is exactly what the ego [a.k.a, “sense of self”] does. Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can’t let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of “negative growth.”
Eckhart Tolle
from A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Section: Identification with Things