Capitalism Wants Us To Divorce

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Guardian): “We like to think we’re free in the free market; that we’re beyond the forces of advertising and social manipulation by market forces. But there is a new social trend – the rise of ‘the single person’ as model consumer – that presents us with a paradox. What we once thought of as radical – staying single – may now be reactionary.

“The long-term relationship, like the job-for-life, is fast being deregulated into short term, temporary arrangements with no promise of commitment, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has been warning us for over a decade. It’s hard for two people to be self-employed, with no promise of a stable future, together. Capitalism now wants us to be single.

“Being single, has since the 60s been seen as a radical choice, a form of rebellion against bourgeois capitalist conformism. As sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann says, the shift away from family life to solo lifestyles in the 20th century was part of the ‘irresistible momentum of individualism.’ But this ‘freedom’ looks a lot less glamorous when viewed through the perspective of planned changes in consumerism.

“It now makes economic sense to convince the populace to live alone. Singles consume 38% more produce, 42% more packaging, 55% more electricity and 61% more gas per capita than four-person households, according to a study by Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University. In the US, never-married single people in the 25-to-34 age bracket, now outnumber married people by 46%, according to the Population Reference Bureau. And divorce is a growth market: one broken family means that two households have to buy two cars, two washing machines, two TVs. The days of the nuclear family as ideal consumption unit are over. …

“Consumerism now wants you to be single, so it sells this as sexy. The irony is that it’s now more radical to attempt to be in a long-term relationship and a long-term job, to plan for the future, maybe even to attempt to have children, than it is to be single. Coupledom, and long-term connections with others in a community, now seem the only radical alternative to the forces that will reduce us to isolated, alienated nomads, seeking ever more temporary ‘quick fix’ connections with bodies who carry within them their own built-in perceived obsolescence. “

My Comment: That’s how capitalism looks on society, only as a consumer of its products. It is this attitude of egoism toward humankind and nature that led us to a confrontation with nature, to the crisis, and now we can see the uselessness of egoism for our existence. To get out of the crisis, we need to begin to correct our egoistic nature.

The desire to enslave everyone and the whole world is the natural desire of egoism in us. But nature has a plan: to bring all of us to balance, to equality, and unity. If we don’t recognize this necessity, then through crisis this plan will still be implemented. It is truly a pity for victims.
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