>Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody.

Marx noticed this in the 19th century, and he called it alienation, caused (in part) by commodity fetishism, in which we tend to confront others not as humans but as bearers of goods.