THE CULTURE of capitalism is a disease that exists in external economic and internal mental realms, and thus afflicts both society and the individual. Our economic system is both materialistic and capitalistic; it is constructed and maintained under the assumption that objects produce human happiness and that humans have no inherent right to possess objects, and thus no right to experience happiness. The absence of inalienable human rights can exist only in the context of a belief in the separate destinies of the individual and the community. This concept of self-salvation lies at the heart of a capitalistic society, and that society, in which inviolable human value does not exist, must create an alternative system to measure human worth. Materialism fills that role, and, in the context of the "free" market, provides a faux meritocracy to legitimate the systemic denial of basic material welfare to the majority of the human population.
The symptoms of the disease of capitalism include the war against Iraq, Cosmopolitan magazine and the self-help industry, to name a few arbitrary yet representative examples. It is impossible to invade a country and murder 100,000 Iraqis (which is the death toll estimated by a Johns Hopkins University study) while believing that the victims are as human as one's mother. Such an invasion is only acceptable within the context of a material hierarchy of human value, the same hierarchy that says it is acceptable for working class servicewomen and men to die while the draft-dodging elite plan the next offensive.
Cosmopolitan magazine reinforces cultural norms of alienable human worth; female value is based on the proportion of ways she knows to please a man, divided by her body weight in pounds.
The "self-help" industry blames the individual alone, and, conversely, suggests that only the individual can save herself. The implicit message is that her fate is not tied to the fate of her sisters, which is a message of salvation through selfishness.
Logically, under a value system in which human worth is based on extrinsic factors, the individual has no inherent responsibility for one's fellow human. Similarly, the community is not responsible for the welfare of the individual. Thus, in the capitalistic context, personal salvation is a lonely endeavor, which, in a materialistic society, can only be attained through consumption of constantly increasing amounts of material. If you are not happy now, it is because you have not purchased enough, the advertisements insist. Consumption is not necessary to fulfill physical human needs, but rather to fill a spiritual void which grows in direct proportion to GDP.
Under this economic model, satisfaction or fulfillment is a theoretical impossibility. Thus, the consumer will continue to believe that she must purchase more tomorrow than she did today, and that her human value is linked to the type and quantity of her purchases. Not surprisingly, this economic construct produces great human dissatisfaction, since it tells the population that they have no inherent value and that they will always attain a satisfactory level of material with the next purchase.
Because satisfaction is impossible, even successful capitalists cannot find fulfillment in the marketplace. A Lexus produces no more spiritual fulfillment than a Kia. Ubiquitous anti-human, materialistic messaging has produced a society with serious mental problems. Twenty-four percent of women and 15 percent of men will suffer from clinical depression in the course of their lifetimes, and much of that discrepancy is due to underreporting of depression by males (according to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance). According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide is the third leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty four, and depression is a major factor in many suicides.
The consumer's response to depression is to buy Prozac. Doctors prescribe Ritalin for children who threaten to establish patterns of behavior that are incongruent with the service level jobs for which they are destined. Adults and children alike who have difficulty coping with an anti-human culture can purchase sleeping pills so that they can forget about it for eight hours a night. To cure the afflictions associated with consumption culture, our societal prescription is more to consume legal drugs.
It is absurd to think that consuming pills can protect us from a culture that denies our basic humanity. It is insane to mold children into servile students, who are to learn little more than how to take orders from future managers. It is ludicrous to imagine that we as a society can ever sleep soundly while we maintain a culture in which humans have no inherent value, but are organized into hierarchies based on who can exploit her neighbor most effectively.
Zack Fields' column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at zfields@cavalierdaily.com.
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