Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 8
The Market Personality Today:
The Further Transformation of Human Beings Into Things
(page 7)

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During the period from the 1950s through the mid-1970s, people were trying to become the façade played by Bogart: slick, loaded with self-confidence, but not overtly aggressive. But by the mid-1970s — the era of gasoline lines and “stagflation” — this started to change again, because the pressure of growing economic uncertainty generated greater insecurity within stressed individuals.

By the late 1970s, the post-Second-World-War economic boom was clearly fading. And in the 1980s we began to return openly to the “good old days” when rugged individualism and open aggression were the accepted norm. How and why did this happen? Bluntly speaking, through the ruthless competitive pressures of global capitalism. To adjust to the 24-hour-a-day expansion of the “free” markets, and to survive the diminishing and unstable job market, people found it necessary to revive some of the aggressive features characteristic of the earlier capitalism of the nineteenth century.

By the time of the high-tech boom (or rather, bubble) of the 1990s, the triumphant “free market” had entirely taken over people’s lives. Global capitalism — with the Internet, computers, and instant communications — began to force people to work hideously long hours, and to make themselves available to do business anytime, anywhere. Gone were the days when a family of four could have a pleasant lifestyle with a nice house and two cars, all maintained solely by the husband’s 40-hour-a-week job. Today, in most cases, even relatively affluent couples must both work long hours. They must worry about scarce and expensive day care, and diminishing, increasingly costly health care coverage. They live under conditions of growing stress and competition — conditions similar to those which characterized the earlier period of capitalism.

This can be brutal for a sane soul. The only way many people can deal with their intolerable stress is by lashing out at people who stand in their way. A minor example is the rising incidence of “asshole” drivers who cut in and endanger others when they rush to work or to one of their countless appointments. These same people probably display even more aggressive behavior at work, or on other occasions when they cannot control their stress. Taken to the extreme, this same trend is illustrated by the increasing number of disgruntled employees who spray bullets at their bosses or co-workers.

Yet the features of the package personality from the mid-twentieth century have not vanished altogether. The need to appear as an attractive commodity has only increased in the face of an economic environment in which one is either working almost 24 hours a day to consolidate one’s career, or laid off and desperately searching for one’s next job. The “nice” façade is still essential to become a “success.” But that veneer is now is combined with the aggressive and highly competitive individualism of the old days. This combination of deep conformity and aggressive individualism has produced a severely crippled person, incapable of escaping the pain of the insecurities which burst through the veneer of the average conformist. This is the essence of the dilemma of the average person as we enter the twenty-first century.

The Devastating Effects of Busyness

By the 1950s, people felt compelled every few years to get rid of their Buick or Ford and buy a new one as a way of identifying with the new car. The guiding principle was: “I am somebody, because I have a ‘new’ me identified with my new car; and with a new shiny car I can become a higher-priced commodity on the personality market, with a better chance of ‘new’ satisfying exchanges.”

How has this fetishism of commodities evolved in the past 20 years? The pace of life, and the anxiety associated with its rapidity, have increased considerably. The new computers, cell phones and Palm Pilots have arrived at a time when the socio-economic system is pushing people to work harder and be ultra-busy. Having no progressive way to prevent their increasing vulnerability, loneliness, and anxiety from shattering their protective veneer of busyness, the market-personalities of today are driven more and more into identification with machines. Preoccupation with the fast pace of technology gives the average person a means of escaping the painful feelings that arise when one fails to develop a genuine, alive “I.” My ability to “feel OK about myself” is deeply connected with how well I keep up with the slick, fast pace of life by finding ways to acquire and process new data more and more rapidly.

Humans today are conditioned to identify with their machines. The cooler my fast new computer is, and the hotter the multi-speaker CD player in my new car, the more attractive a package I become on the personality market, and the better chance I have to find another suitable package personality for “fun” activities, and even marriage.

People today are obsessed with fast machines and speed. They identify “saving” time with fast computers and machines which help them keep up with their busy schedules — that is, with the life of a preoccupied abstraction that is always on the run. The average person today is even less capable than people were in the past of just doing nothing — putting a stop to their hectic activities and just experiencing the centrality of their being. The busy people of today feel compelled to buy faster computers every few years, so that they can “save” a minute or two a day getting information on the Internet, or taking care of their e-mail. They need the latest cell phone with its new electronic gadgets, so that they can kill their boredom talking to their friends as they drive to make quick business deals, or even when they enjoy a beautiful view. (I have seen, at the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the world, people standing in the water talking into their cell phones.)

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