FAIRY TALES FOR TREND SPOTTERS.

Here’s a story about Western society.

It goes like this: Sometime in the last twenty years, we all turned into hippies. Some of us became big hippies, some medium-sized hippies, and some quite small hippies – hippies in suits with BMWs. Nevertheless, compared to “Homus Eighties,” we all might as well be playing acoustic guitars with sun-flowers in our unwashed hair.

As part of this general hippification, products and services that promote a more selfless consumerism became the norm.

Take recycling, for instance. Once exclusively for New Agers, but now widespread and unremarkable, with even the most conservative householder separating glass from plastics, and paper from organic compost.

Or take biological food. ...

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