Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 8
The Market Personality Today:
The Further Transformation of Human Beings Into Things
(page 2)
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A perfect analogy of this phenomenon is a study done years ago by psychologists with infant monkeys. In place of its real mother, one monkey was given an unmoving monkey doll, which at least was soft and looked like its own kind. Another was given only a wire outline of a monkey to hold onto. A third stayed with its real mother. Each of the three was observed over time. What was found was that the youngster with the real mother, because it was getting its basic needs met, was healthier, happier and more genuinely independent at the appropriate age because it had the inner confidence that only an authentic and loving upbringing can provide. The youngster with the “stuffed” mother was clingy with the false representation and more insecure about parting from it. The youngster who had only a pitiful wire figure was the clingiest of all. It was neurotic and insecure in the extreme. At the slightest provocation, it would run to and hold onto the wire mother for dear life.
Similarly, human children whose parents cannot spend quality time with them, because their lives are too busy, are often profoundly insecure. They must habitually quiet their insecurity with the false nourishment of consumer goods. But because the pricey objects are not what they really need, they can never get enough. They have to keep buying new things until the gloss wears off, and then go out and find another bauble to fill the void.
Even when the parents do spend time with the child, the child often still turns into a compulsive consumer. When the parents are depressed or insecure, even if they are physically present, they cannot really be there for the child emotionally, and they cannot teach him the basic love of life. Erich Fromm demonstrated that the development of a person who loves things at the expense of his humanity, may occur not only when a child’s mother is absent from the child’s life, but also when the mother is troubled:
. . . it is not the toilet training as such, with its effects on the anal libido, which leads to the formation of an anal character, but the character of the mother who, by her fear or hate of life, directs interest to the process of evacuation and in many other ways molds the child’s energies in the direction of a passion for possessing and hoarding.[1]
Fromm describes how the child develops the “hoarding personality” (what Freud refers to as the anal personality). The hoarding personality exhibits a tendency to accumulate things and possess as much property as possible. While modern consumerism reflects the tendency to buy new commodities constantly, both the hoarding personality and modern consumerism reflect people’s obsession with things, at the expense of living human relationships. In our society, a child’s parents, and the other adults who are close to the child, tend to be busy or troubled, so that their attention is diverted from the child in a way that stunts its growth and love of life. In this situation, the child, and later the adult, is unable to overcome the anxiety associated with his or her separateness, and cannot develop self-love, and thence a love for humanity and the world. Emotionally, the adult remains a child, or in some cases a baby, and has to suck the pacifier of consumption constantly to keep his anxiety at a tolerable level. Thus, a child who grows up in today’s alienated society associates love with the consumption and accumulation of things.
The resulting population of insecure adults who have a void to fill dovetails nicely with the needs of the capitalist system, which has a ready and abundant store of goods to pass off to a population of emotionally needy people. Because of the system’s constant manipulation of these people through advertising, which associates security and social prestige with owning the latest clothes, cars, and so on, people become obsessed with the accumulation of dead products and property in general.
Capitalist society is the perfect environment for the possession of things at the expense of living human relationships, since it is based on the principle of private property and the possession and accumulation of things in a world of brutal competition. When one cannot grow and expand emotionally and spiritually, one must retreat into the routines of life where one can derive a sense of security from the world of things. The need to possess dead products reflects the essence of our alienating relationships. It is the critical compensatory measure with which we soothe the negative feelings that derive from our inability to connect with others from the heart. It is the essence of the bourgeois psychological character, based on the possession of a permanently dissatisfied ego, an ego which has to be fed by things to avoid facing internal feelings of anxiety and emptiness. People who do not have a positive outlet for their constant anger and anxiety fit well into the competitive, inherently belligerent structure of bourgeois society, which inevitably transforms human relations into antagonistic relations. The antagonism can be expressed openly, or, when people successfully fake the façade of the market personality, it can lie under the surface.
In this society the sense of “I” comes with the having and possessing mode — from the power of domination and success which rewards us with new things. The ego is a social façade — expressing the self-importance of the commodity and the commodification of life. I am somebody as long I possess a “successful” job, a new shiny car, a “good” wife and “adorable” “well-behaved” children, and so on. To survive the underlying antagonism and distrust between people, the insecure person needs constant approval of his/her superficial identity, or more accurately the façade of the ego. The real, antagonistic relationships that lie under the surface drive the market personality further and further into the world of things with which s/he can find temporary security, comfort, and a sense of belonging to the herd.
The market personality’s drive to conformity is closely associated with the drive to acquire things. Without engaging in a buying spree or becoming part of the shopping mall milieu, the market personality feels cut off from the majority. Unfortunately, it is owning the newest Palm Pilot that makes us feel we are all in the same club. Being an outsider and different from the majority is one of the most frightening experiences for the market personality. This is so because s/he is insecure to the core and thus needs the constant approval of the majority. Without such constant approval s/he clearly feels utterly separate and alone.
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[1] Eric Fromm, The Heart of Man, page 60.