"I also note that you haven't sold your computer to give to proceeds to the poor any more than I have."

My posts weren't about my pious acts of charity to address the worlds vast imbalances, but Western excess. There's not a lot I can do about the prevailing ethic of consumerism in the West "buy more, be better!", but I do live according to my own general anti-consumerist principles.

I live in an affluent area where I see wealth constantly displayed as some kind of "virtue" all around me in big houses and cars. As I've got older I've increasingly adopted a 'Fifties' code about money and material stuff, such as when my grandparents might have when they were were younger: "make do and mend", never borrowing for things you don't need and so-on.

I wear second hand clothes, buy second hand furniture, read second hand or borrowed books. I use them till they fall apart. We run one small second hand car. We camp in the UK, or backpack. If I pass a skip with usable stuff in it, I will take from it. I don't get sneered at by the Tennis Mums as though I'm some kind of 'degenerate' round here, without trying ;-)

I don't only own a computer, but in fact I own *two* expensive items: a computer and a camera. I plan for 'large' items I require for practical projects, save for the best quality item I can reasonably afford, buy them, and use them a lot. There's nothing in that which contradicts anything I believe in.

As an aside, I wonder if the philosophers / psychologists among us might have thoughts on "Wealth as a Virtue" in Western society? I know historically "the poor" were often looked upon as though their material conditions were a direct reflection of some kind of moral or spiritual degeneracy or "vice", 'indolence' in particular. Dickens does a good job of displaying such ignorant prejudice against those in poverty and associated inflated feelings of Godliness or moral and spiritual superiority over them. As said, it's certainly something I witness around me.