The New York Times Online has a regular feature called “The Idea of the Day”. The idea for Feb 17th was that capitalism causes neuroticism. The idea was centered on a study printed in a publication by the name of “Eurozine”, based in Germany. Here are some excerpts.
“There is good reason to assert the existence, […] of a new type of capitalism, neuro-capitalism”
“…what links capitalism with neuroscience is not so much strict regulation as a complex system of systemic flaws. Repressive late nineteenth-century capitalism, with its exploitive moral dictates, proscriptions and social injustices, was a breeding ground for the neurosis diagnosed by scientists in the early twentieth century as a spiritual epidemic.
The article is long and your time is valuable, so I will spare you from the rest of it, except the conclusion. It is too entertaining to miss.
“The psychologically relevant question of how the self will relate to a mood-enhanced, more capable version of itself is rendered irrelevant by the fact that the requirements of the new capitalist reality make an individual improvement of this kind appear a highly desirable option. Indeed, as a consumer and commodity value appropriate to capitalism, it has already been in currency for some time. Alongside globalisation – the capitalist rationalisation of space and time – we are witnessing the epistemic and technical rationalisation of the neural foundations of the self, or what Walker Percy called the abstraction of the self from itself”
Now, dear reader, if you consider yourself a capitalist, and if you understand what the authors have just said in this their summary and conclusion, then I must consider their premise may be valid after all.
Or perhaps you think our nations leading newspaper is just putting us on. It’s true, the item is ridiculous to the point of being funny, but I am afraid they are serious. Lest you doubt me I offer this, another sample from the “Idea of the Day” feature. It was submitted by a reader and published immediately following Obama’s election.
The free market did I embrace,
Derivations and hedges took place,
Now I’m short on my cash
I’m feeling the crash,
The redness, it shows on my face.
— Thank God America is now Socialist.
We have a tough row to hoe to reclaim America. I am writing a blog. It is not much, but it is my best. What are you doing?
Bob B
RANDOM THOTS 