Our culturally imposed limitation of economic ends has been constantly disqualified; it was seen as apathy, conformism and, especially as a serious “obstacle to development,” characteristic of a “pre-modern mentality.” We ourselves came to see it like this…. The development metaphor, teaching people to see themselves as obstacles to development, promotes a colonization of consciousness of the deepest sort and is profoundly antidemocratic: it takes away from the hands of people the possibility of defining their own ways of social life.