OK, I know he’s not exactly a bonafide source, but one of Oscar Wilde’s quotes remains relevant to western society. He remarked that we “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” This reminds me how Prabhupada once described American ‘culture’ as “a society concerned only with manufacturing new cars and new skyscrapers every year and then breaking them to pieces and making new ones.” He said it “may be technologically advanced, but it is not a human civilization” (Srimad Bhagavatam 6.7.13 purport).