Many of my patients would like to see the category of “Capitalist Depression” in the next DSM.
They say things such as, “I don’t think 90% of the people who I interact with today— besides family members and a few friends — care if I live or die. Most of my business associates would be too busy to attend my funeral. They wouldn’t even read the second paragraph of my obituary unless it was performed as an interpretive dance by my daughter on TikTok. Sometime I feel like a wallet with legs.”
In hyperspeed late capitalism, authentic empathy has become a luxury commodity. If you have a boss, you know that she wants to report to her boss that she is squeezing the most productivity out of you and paying you the least wages possible. It’s her job to maximize efficiency. That’s what she gets paid to do. Even if she and you hug the same tree during the annual company retreat and wear matching vests with the company insignia next to your hearts, she would fire you faster than you can say Jiminy Cricket if it resulted in a 10-X Christmas bonus.
The “Leave It To Beaver” illusion of company loyalty is a product long ago discontinued, replaced by MBA consultants helping your company merge and acquire or be merged and acquired.
“Mergers and Acquisitions” has the same outcome as a “Performance Improvement Plan:” it means that someone is getting fired. The only job security today is a golden parachute.
It has become a “Winner take all, Survival of the ruthless” society.
Yesterday a patient told me of someone whose partner has cancer who was “downsized” after 20 years.
We are being increasingly siloed… if not into status tribes then settling for the — chase-the-dragon — dopamine hits of individualized scrolling… cramped in solo conference rooms Zooming fellow two-dimensional pale faces while nursing our Emotional Support Water Bottles…
The whipping post of Western Civilization, Karl Marx, proposed that capitalism would fail because workers are estranged from the fruits of their labors and would ultimately revolt. If you plant carrots, peas, tomatoes and lettuce, water them, watch them grow, pick them and make a salad and eat it, you enjoy the fruits and vegetables of your labors. If you toil on a digital assembly line increasing shareholder value for billionaire investors who live supposedly much cushier lives than you lead, doesn’t that breed resentment?
Could this estrangement, resentment, and emotional alienation correlate with rising depression rates? Could it be labeled as its own type of “Capitalist Depression?”
And really look at the lives of the finest workers alive today: an odd combination of stress-inducing crisis-management mitigated by the ephemeral solace of tastebud enhancing meals in exotic destinations followed by alcohol or drug-induced relaxation. Then do it all over again tomorrow.
The problem is that there is currently no solution, no way out, no way up, no way down, no way back, and no way forward envisioned. It’s a strange dystopia of bottom line efficiency and zero-sum finance that we are living in. In a world where authentic connection, empathy, compassion and secure attachment are rationed at the will of the market, what can we do to humanize late capitalism and make it less depressing?