The Psychological Roots of Capitalism

Nearly all of us who are reading this reside in some form of a capitalistic society. Capitalistic societies are characterised by using capital (cash, but also people, goods, and raw materials) to create profits. The generation of profit is central to capitalism (among other core tenets). Why is this important? Because most of us do not realize that the pursuit of future profit has a profound impact on our well-being.

The pursuit of profit is anchored in two closely associated psychological movements of the human mind : fear & greed. Fear, that we won’t have enough to consume in the future and therefore we must hoard as much as possible. Greed, to have more and more in order to achieve a greater sense of self. Note that both fear and greed are future-oriented mind movements. That is, a consciousness of the future is imperative in order to feel both fear and greed. Both are born in uncertainty. The need to compulsively accumulate resources to meet anticipatory shortages in future is the core psychological movement in capitalism.

The consequence of this core belief leads to a commodification of resources. In the previous post, we saw how modern societies tend to put a price on everything they value. Commodification is the term used when we reduce goods and services into something that can be traded in the marketplace by assigning a price. This is needed in order to induce demand for it among consumers (usually through advertisement) and the price tag helps shore up more profit. We also do this to people’s time and therefore their lives. In nearly all consulting firms, each human is assigned a labour rate, i.e. the value of his time and subsequently his life. The assumption naturally is, that senior people are valued at higher rates than junior ones, despite the fact, that most of the hard work is done by the junior staff. What these labour rates do is dehumanise us to think of our inherent worth only in price terms. Oliver Burkeman, talking about corporate lawyers, in his excellent book ‘Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals’ has this to say:

“The reason so many [corporate lawyers] are so unhappy – despite being generally very well paid – is the convention of the “billable hour”, which obliges them to treat their time, and thus really themselves, as a commodity to be sold off in sixty-minute chunks to clients.

So when an outwardly successful, hard-charging attorney fails to show up for a family dinner, or his child’s school play, it is not necessarily because he’s “too busy”, in the straightforward sense of having too much to do. It may also be because he’s no longer able to conceive of an activity that can’t be commodified as something worth doing at all…. When an activity can’t be added to the running tally of billable hours, it begins to feel like an indulgence one can’t afford.”

Four Thousand Weeks. Oliver Burkeman

While the above example may be of corporate lawyers, all of us can find parallels to this in our lives. Take social media. Our happiness for posting something is strongly linked to the rewards – likes and shares. We also value social media influencers by the number of subscribers they have – not necessarily the quality of their content. We appear to have lost the ability to value a presenter, solely on the content of her post. We first check numbers to see if this is indeed valuable. And thus viral effects (or herd mentalities) are born. This means that we haven’t taken the time to educate ourselves on the ability to recognise true value. We are carried away by numbers. This is where advertisement comes in. Advertisement appeals only to those minds that cannot appreciate the inherent value of a product or service. It needs a sports star or a film star to tell you this product is worth consuming. Again, the inability to value things for their own sake.

How does this impact us?

One, it makes us fearful and anxious. The capital mindset is essentially a future-oriented mindset where we try to grab as much as possible. This essentially implies that we are always living in anticipation or fear of the future when life always happens in the present. And contentment is synonymous with the here-now. Life is contentment, provided it is lived in the now. This is one of the reasons why so many of us are so unhappy. We have simply lost the ability to live in the now, to value what we are doing in the here-now, without having to project anything into the future. The next time you visit a beautiful landscape or a museum, don’t take pictures. Taking pictures is a way to capture the now so that you can consume it in the future. Again, a future-oriented consumption attitude that is influenced by capitalistic tendencies. Just learn to be. Relish the present moment. Similarly, when you have friends or families over for dinner, resist the temptation to record any of it for posterity. What you consume in the future will be a pale shadow of the original. Why go for a picture of the cake, when you can eat it? Everything in life becomes a means to an end. We simply lose the ability to enjoy a thing for itself. We want an education to get a job. We want a job to get status and money. We want money to consume goods and services. We want goods and services to free us from the chains of having to work hard. It’s a pernicious cycle that can never be closed. We play along with this cycle until when we are old when we realize that all our hopes of a payday haven’t materialised. We didn’t find that amazing romantic relationship we wanted. That house we bought, didn’t actually make us happy. Our children, through whom we projected so many hopes and aspirations, didn’t live up to our expectations. Our family was rife with feuds. Our careers? Well, they just felt – empty. This brings so much sadness and grief, which is why as we age, we tend to become more pessimistic.

Two, we feel alienated from the world and ourselves. When we reduce everything to a means to an end, we do not value people for who they are. We only value people in terms of what they bring to us. The same with the environment and nature in general. This means that we feel like islands, emotionally disconnected from everything, only letting those things into our emotional fortress that is valuable. We lose the ability to be one with life – open, spontaneous, in the here-now. Utilitarianism reduces everything else (and eventually ourselves) into mere abstractions – numbers. And this alienates us from true joy in life. Our relationships become functional. Our lives – perfunctory. We end up just going through the motions of life. Without purpose, joy or peace, but always expecting contentment to be just after we consume the next best experience.

What is the solution?

We cannot change the economic and political systems around us (right away at least). In all likelihood, they are not going to change during our lifetimes. What we can do though, is begin to reject the idea that price equals value. We need to begin to learn to value things, people and indeed ourselves solely for who we are – not how much we earn, what house we have, or the car we drive – but for just being a unique ripple in the ocean of existence. Second, examine all the motivations for any action. Are you taking up a career only for wealth, or status – for imaginary things it will bring you in the future? Or are you taking it up, as an expression of joy? When we choose to express our joy – it is always in the here-now and not a future-oriented activity. We lose ourselves in it. When we read a book, we are often lost in it. This is because we did not do it as a means to an end. The same with playing an instrument or spending time with a beloved friend.

As we begin to reclaim our authenticity, we reject all false things such as advertisements, social media, social pressures, being one with the latest viral trend and so on. We only do what comes as a natural expression of ourselves. We naturally engage with the economic and political world, but we now do so with an understanding that these systems are anti-human and do not bring the contentment we desperately yearn for. We engage with it from a space of detachment. And as many people begin to do this, slowly over time, the hope is that it changes the collective consciousness of humans, which would in turn build a society that is more humane.