Capitalism

In the achievement society, we suffer from an internalised pressure to achieve – to do more, to be more, to have more. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have internalised the capitalist work ethic to the degree that our successes and failures weigh heavily on our individual shoulders. The primary result of the achievement society is burnout – t

So floriert oberhalb einer relativ niedrigen Einkommensschicht fast überall da, wo beschleunigter Konsum zur Normalität geworden ist, eine nichtssagende Nettigkeit – und zwar nicht nur in bestimmten sozialen Schichten, Berufs- oder Altersgruppen. Paul Valéry glaubte schon in den zwanziger Jahren vorauszusehen, dass die technokratische Zivilisation

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 sel

Love, in this social philosophy, is something far, far beyond what “economic forces” limit us to. It is the great liberating force of the human spirit, which leads to concrete social progress. Under capitalism, I can see you as a producer, or a consumer — or even a slave or a servant — but never really as a human being. I am always just looking for

Since the 1970s, productivity has grown at 3.5 times the rate of pay for American workers. Precarious employment has risen by 9 per cent since the late 1980s, and we have seen extraordinarily high levels of burnout in the workforce. In short, we are underpaid, insecure, and burned out. And yet the achievement society – with its injunction to be mor

Thus, the ads mostly affected the people who were in a “deciding” mindset when those ads ran.

“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”