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Stop Financializing The Human Experience
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
In this financialized hall of mirrors, narcissism replaces identity and the authentic self is rendered incoherent.
Correspondent Dani A.M. (of Removing the Shackles) was kind enough to identify three bits of advice from my recent conversation with Max Keiser on Summer Solutions (25:45): (9:20 min: "We've been brainwashed into financializing the human experience.")
1. Stop financializing the human experience
2. Acquire skills, not credentials
3. Vote with your Feet
These are the themes I'll be addressing this week.
What does financializing the human experience mean? It means turning everything into a financial transaction that profits an enterprise and the state. Since the state needs profitable enterprises to generate its tax revenues (and to pay wages that generate payroll/income taxes), the state is an implicit partner in every financializing the human experience transaction.
In an increasingly cashless, debt-dependent culture, every financial transaction generates income for banks: credit card and debit card fees, interest on credit cards, etc.
Here are some common examples:
-- Mom and Dad work long hours to afford childcare. Maybe they like working for the state or Corporate America more than caring for their kids (or sharing the care of several kids with other parents), but the system incentivizes maximizing income and paying for childcare as a profitable transaction.
In other words, childcare for many has been distilled down to a financial decision.
-- Dinner with friends is purchased, generating income for an enterprise, a bank and taxes for the state. If people no longer learn how to cook, then sharing a meal with friends necessarily becomes a financial transaction.
-- A sense of self must be purchased via signifiers of identity and self-worth.
The obsession with brands and other signifiers of belonging reflects one thing, and only one thing: a pervasive fragility of self. Unsurprisingly, our selfhood is incredibly fragile in a culture that glorifies the impossible (thin, fit, super-smart, witty, personable, creative, wealthy oh and of course humble) and sows insecurity as a means of selling you something.
That each of us remains the same person regardless of what we wear, drive, drink, etc. is obvious but verboten in a culture that profits from insecurity and self-doubt. As Caroline Caldwell observed, "In a society that profits from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act."
I would modify this slightly: liking yourself regardless of what you wear, drink, drink, etc. is a rebellious act.
Liking yourself is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is the result of the consumerist society's relentless focus on the essential project of consumerism, which is "the only self that is real is the self that is purchased and projected."
The narcissism bred by consumerism has nurtured an emotional isolation and immaturity that I call permanent adolescence which leaves many young people without the tools needed to handle criticism, collaboration and the pressures of the workplace.
Personal gratification is the driver of narcissism and consumerism, which are two sides of the same coin. Consumerist marketing glorifies the "projected self" as the "true self," encouraging self-absorption even as it erodes authentic identity, self-esteem and the resilience which enables emotional growth--the essential characteristic of adulthood.
Personal gratification is of a piece with self-absorption, fragile self-esteem and an identity that is overly dependent on consumerist signifiers and the approval of others.
The only way a consumerist economy and the state that depends on it can flourish is to turn every human interaction and emotion into a financial transaction. Just reached a personal goal? Celebrate by going to Disneyland and dropping a packet.
Feeling low? Cheer yourself up by buying a new signifier of self-worth.
Sensing something is terribly wrong with your life? Buy another self-help book that repeats the all-important narrative: It's not the system, it's you.
The problem isn't that the system is deranged, dysfunctional and crippling; no, it's you who are deranged, dysfunctional and crippled. But maybe some costly therapy will help you cope with your bottomless inadequacies.
By holding the system blameless for the fragility of our sense of self and identity, the conventional consumerist narrative fragments any social roles that aren't dependent on financial transactions and consumerist signifiers.
In this financialized hall of mirrors, narcissism replaces identity and the authentic self is rendered incoherent.
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Imagine a world without the Kardashians.
This is all right out of the pages of a Karen Horney book such as "Neurosis and Human Growth"
And especially "The Neurotic Personality of Our Times"
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/book-template.aspx?aid=12688&cid=HORNEYK...
Would someone please summarize this article for me. I am busy posting selfies on Facebook.
Thanks
It's about posting selfies on facebook...
;-D
I've started driving for uber while I deliver pizza and have a car-wrap add on my lexus. Also
This is one reason the 'news' is what it is. Fear this, fear that, emotional this, emotional that....then you will go out and shop to make yourself feel better. Sheeesh!
sorry...no time for selfies...I am watching a rerun of the Kardasians....I was just contemplating beached whales for some reason...
Couple of Z-Packs and a 6 week sensitivity training session and my kardashian rash was gone!
Be careful, that rash might be VD.
Zithromax is some good stuff, no doubt.
I have an idea for a new show....a Gold Medal winning decathalon athlete decides to become a female. The premise of the show is the debate on if the medal is for a man or a woman.
What a dysfunctional and unhealthy society we've become.
Cause it's neurotic as hell.
It's the stealth fascism. The elites hate you because you are not servile enough and do not have sufficient faith in their proclamations. You also spend too much time concerned about their obvious and repeated lies and corruption. The fabricated unreality troubles people more thant the Progs thought it would. They do not comprehend durable personalities not driven by expediency. It makes them fearful and enraged, like everything else in their existence. After all, in their insane world human nature is mallaable, like their own nuerotic narcissism. You are supposed to dig the "meaning" they are dishing out and be happy. When you don't, they hate you and employ fear (see thugs hired by Soros in Ferguson) to soften you up for further re-education. After all, that abusive treatment is what created their enlightened selves.
Good wishes aren't going to stop this train. It's going to have to derail before any real positive change can be made.
Related:
http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=4270
"Unsurprisingly, our selfhood is incredibly fragile in a culture that glorifies the impossible (thin, fit, super-smart, witty, personable, creative, wealthy oh and of course humble)"
You forgot the John Kerry hair doo...
;-D
Regardless, I am still going to ask:
"Why the long face John?"
I will then follow up with:
"You can get surgery for that."
ZH--Long Face Surgery
Repudiating debt and and rejecting consumerism is a gift that keeps on giving.
If I was willing to be in debt, I could live in a gated community and have all kinds of stuff I do not have now. I would also have all kinds of stress, arguments with my spouse (probably), etc.
The gift of saving and not worrying and still having much more than enough shows up constantly.
My flaw is that I can be a little smug about my lack of consumerism.
I could not live in a gated community. Too many fucking BS rules on top of the BS laws that the government wants us to follow.
Lived in a few. Remember house hunting with the spouse and her questioning the need for security systems on the homes we were touring. I mentioned that the gates keep the lunatics outside from getting into the community while the security system keeps the lunatics inside the gates from getting into the house. Never forget that you are surrounded by lunatics; some are helpful and blatant about it while others camoflauge their lunacy.
I always recalled how my grandparents were maladjusted to the new age living they grew old in due to the era they were born in. I feel the same way, but am not even close to an octogenarian.
Truly. The Past is a thing of the past. Our culture has absolutely no history. It's the revision thing being done by the propaganda machine. Non-dystopic personalities are distressed by it.
Going a little deeper the financialisation that has occurred can rightfully be accused of resulting a dehumanising of life. Poverty and suffering are given an economic explanation that somehow makes them ok. The problem is that the entire area of economics in based on views and theories that are not reliable. For example when Adam Smith said early societies traded using barter before using money, he was wrong. Anthropologists have yet to find a single early society that did this. Maybe economics is the problem.
Tune in and drop out ... we don't need it anymore. A walk in the woods does the heart good.
While you're at it, turn it off, too.
Good advice. I've been reading books about the Appalachian Trail.
Henri, Le chat noir:
http://youtu.be/0M7ibPk37_U
who are the kardasian's?
www.teamramgold.com
"What does financializing the human experience mean? It means turning everything into a financial transaction that profits an enterprise and the state."
You mean like charging you rent to live on a planet you were born on? Yea, you humans are a strange bunch.
Any fool knows a dog needs a home
A shelter from pigs on the wing
"And in the end you'll pack-up, fly down south, hide your head in the sand.
Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer..."
Money may not buy happiness but poverty is sure to make you depressed.
I love how healthcare and prison are 2 very different systems in which money make a big impact on the outcome. Its not just frivolous things people want money for. I want to be able to buy food that's not manufactured garbage and I want to be made better if I fall ill.
Of course I do want a new smart phone too... ugh <-guilty
What I really can't wait for is when there are no more cosmetic dentists for the elite and all of their toothcaps eventually fall off, exposing their filed-down nubs which can't really be used for chewing. Somehow, they'll have to come out...
And the women, without their undertaker plastic surgeons on-call for maintenance, well, their plastic parts will start to degrade and turn into autoimmune disease triggers.
Real survival of the fittest then, bitches.
Are you fit? Are your parts organic? Can you function without the aid of pharmaceuticals? That's all that's gonna matter.
Here here!
A very profound article that touches on some deeply rooted "defects" in our culture. It all begins with our alienation from the natural world, our place in nature which grounds us. This creates a vacuum which man attempts to fill with man-made, artificial equivalents. At one time man's relationship to nature was very acute..in spring he sowed seed, in summer he cut hay, in fall he harvested, hunted and readied for winter. The festivals and celebrations had meaning...the harvests, the equinox, the lean months, etc. Most modern people have lost that connection and some are quick to offer substitutes which benefit certain financial/state backed interests. Instead of sowing seed in spring we watch arbitrary, man-made, profit driven "games" like basketball. In summer its "basball season" instead of hay harvesting. In fall it's "football" etc, etc. For women, its seaonal "fashion" following. Of course the games, fashions, and TV schedules are man made and completely meaningless. this emptiness manifests in depression, unnamed anxieties, mid-life crisis, etc. For those who've lost the skills and knowledge to live with nature there exists deep feelings of inadequacy. They attempt to fill these with expensive status symbols. But again these are nothing but man-made, empty, meaningless baubles.
What is needed is a reconnection with the earth and our place within it. Learn to grow food, to hunt, to build, etc etc. Man is meant to live and work OUTSIDE in the real world. Not just existing as a corporate/state slave toiling under artificial light, shuffling paper and data points around a virtual reality. Its a meaningless life. TAKE THE RED PILL!
Nice insight and pretty much spot on. One of the root underlying problems is that a high majority of people do not have the philosophical acumen you project. We were discussing the coming "financialization" of our world and the seeds of narcissism in various studies at a Christian Liberal Arts college (it was not "fundamentalist" by any means) when I attended it almost 30 years ago. The post-modern shift had already taken place in Western Culture and the void was left for this to follow. And like others have said here, what a convoluted dysfunctional mess we have become. Most poeple are shallow and vacuous and only capable of simple social small talk.
Who needs to watch TV anymore? Just observe and listen to the average person around you on a daily basis - there's plenty of entertainment just watching the freak show of our society. Should we laugh or cry? Hence our neurosis?
Your post is spot on, with one addition:
The connection to the land has been replaced by human connection.
A person cannot bullshit his way through dealing with nature. Nature does not tolerate human deceit. It therefore forces humans to be pragmatic and rational.
Unfortunately, just the opposite is the norm in human to human interaction.
Words constantly mask intention. And people idolize charlatans.
This will not end well.
"Financialization:"
a term used to refer
to national governments ENFORCING
FRAUDS by privately controlled banks.
"All human history can be portrayed as the history of deception."
-- Alexander Vladimirov
Very good comment.
In alignment with nature and as a part of world. Not just a consumer or useless eater.
Hard to get back to that state if you've bought in to this shit show. Myself included.
"2. Acquire skills, not credentials"
Learn how to turn a selfie stick into a curtain rod.
Whenever I hear that term, I think of something a bit more private.
"Mom was embarassed when the kids walked in and she was using her selfie stick."
pods
Narcissism doesn't get any better than this:) From a tweet:)
MedicalQuack Doesn't get any worse than this:) Kim Kardashian took a selfie with Hillary Clinton as well as her mother bit.ly/1P3GMRL
Tue, Aug 11 07:19:22
Hey wait a minute - we've been ripped off Charles... Where is the:
"...end of part 1. Part 2 accessible here, $enrollment required."
"thin, fit, super-smart, witty, personable, creative, wealthy oh and of course humble"...check
Our culture "...sows insecurity as a means of selling you something." Spot on, and something I taught my kids several years ago, and reinforce on occassion.
What is not altogether spot on is blaming the system. The blame game transfers your power to the entity you blame. There is the old concept that while we can't control the actions of others, we can control our reaction to it. My experience has been that from that mindset, the "authentic self" is most likely to emerge.
I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
(refrain) Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
(refrain)
Kick 'em all around
We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond who
Comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
It's interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry
Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
Running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry
You don't really need to find out what's going on
You don't really want to know just how far it's gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry
(refrain)
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're stiff
Kick 'em all around
Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody's pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry
We can do "The Innuendo"
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
Nice article.
As MJK sings, "Crucify the ego, before it's far too late..."
Jerry Mander covered all this in the late 70s in his book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television".
I wish I could succinctly summarise his arguments, but stop watching television, stop being told you need to buy your own emotional responses, stop monetising everything. That'll get you started.