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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

> exponential progress in the material and technological fields combined with perplexing stasis in the psychological one.

That's not an accident. Nor a failing in the many timeless tools of emotional education - literature, drama and other arts. It's deliberate and systematic. Ever since Edward Bernays the power of Wall Street has been directed at stripping our emotional centres of everything but blind selfish desire. Late capitalism depends on arrested emotional development. Indeed, I think it was Adam Phillips who said "Capitalism is for children". The object of a consumer culture is psychoanalysis in reverse, to make the conscious unconscious and to celebrate and harness the irrational impulses of fear, shame, greed and so on. That's what sells stuff.

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When I spy on folks that buy the truly insanely expensive but useless gadgets/fashion, I really start to agree with sentiments like yours.

There's few things quite as profitable as an endless black pit of despair within yourself. Well that, and war.

I'm not sure the marketing people are deliberately selling despair. That would be spectacular foot marksmanship. As Bill Hicks said (of AC/DC or Spooky Tooth) - "what rock band wants their fans to actually kill themselves?"

Despair may be a late onset symptom, but on the whole it's joyous self-invention, instant gratification, ephemeral experience, and other kinds of microwavable self-stroking that's being pushed. Nice as they are, convenient, zero-effort mind candies give a quick rush but no lasting sustenance. Hence Adam Phillips's comment, I guess.

> It's deliberate and systematic

I think that implies a belief in a total dominance power hierarchy (with absolute power at the apex of one or many). God, USA#1, world conspiracies, lizard men, etcetera. Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence that exists. If complete power domination exists why would it be hidden, and isn’t most everyone powerless to fight against omnipotence? To fix capitalism in this case would require becoming part of the apex, which seems unlikely.

Another belief could be that the actions of the reptile brainstems of 8 billion people create outcomes that result in emergent system behaviours that are bizarre and unpredictable (from the perspective of a simple human). If capitalism is a systematic outcome of billions, then to fix it requires systematic changes to how humans act. Education? Fascism? Enlightenment? As a starting point, we can try to understand how emergent systems occur, regardless of how complex that task is, however the cyclomatic nature of human systems is that the systems change and become more complex as we discover anything about them!

> I think that implies a belief in a total dominance power hierarchy

It doesn't. Not at all.

It just acknowledges the existence of an industry which spends ~300 billion dollars a year in the US alone. [0] Not exactly hidden.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272314/advertising-spend...

Emergent systems are cool to understand and all, but don't forget: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” - Adam Smith

Your comment drips with conspiracy, but is hard to trifle with.

Actually, it's sort of a proven conspiracy. Edward Bernays (Freud's nephew and student) went to America and basically invented modern advertisement. His system of propaganda found its way back to the likes of Goebbels and other unsavory types.

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

Quite conspiratorial if you ask me.

Who molded kings and queens and powerful people before Bernay to want material/status things?

Bernays' ancestors

I think I first heard about this form Adam Curtis’s 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.b

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