Capitalism

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. [[Noam Chomsky]]

By way of contrast, the ideal of limitlessness consumption serves the modern economy quite well, but it does not serve the person well at all. [2] This ideal imparts to us all a spirit of scarcity that darkens our experience: not enough time, not enough attention, not enough capacity to care. But upon what does this spirit feed? It feeds, in part,

Schlaf ist die kompromisslose Unterbrechung der uns vom Kapitalismus geraubten Zeit. Die meisten der scheinbar unhintergehbaren Notwendigkeiten menschlichen Lebens – Hunger, Durst, sexuelles Begehren und neuerdings auch das Bedürfnis nach Freundschaft – wurden in Waren- oder Geldform verwandelt. Schlaf aber bedeutet die Idee eines menschlichen

Taylors moralische Rechtfertigung der Authentizität blendet jenen subtilen Prozess im neoliberalen Regime aus, der die Idee der Freiheit und Selbstverwirklichung konterkariert und zu einem Vehikel effizienter Ausbeutung verkehrt. Das neoliberale Regime beutet die Moral aus. Die Herrschaft vollendet sich in dem Moment, in dem sie sich als Freiheit

“We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.”

— Erich Fromm , “The Sane Society”

In a recent newsletter, “The Shopping Cure,” Anne Helen Petersen explored the compulsion to buy and accumulate stuff that’s been fostered by technologies of frictionless consumption. Every conceivable activity or hobby one sets out to enjoy becomes an occasion to buy stuff: “They transform from sites of actual pleasure and diversion to means of