We need way more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption - anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen and known, or at least see and know ourselves.

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition (ed. North Atlantic Books, 2011) - ISBN: 9781583943984