The worldwide horrors of war, conflict, injustice, exploitation, marginalisation, inequality and everyday violence and brutality on a mass scale are designed to numb people, eroding their civilised, humane self-confidence and their trust in each other. The aim of these manufactured crises and shocks is to shape a society in which individuals become ever lonelier and more vulnerable — in the name of personal space and individual freedom. Scientific reason and secular consciousness are being undermined by reactionary, right-wing social, cultural, religious and political projects that seek to dismantle collective conscience in every sphere of life, beyond national, cultural, social, regional and religious boundaries. This transition is taking place locally, regionally, nationally and globally, weakening every process, institution and regulation that promotes rules, solidarity, coexistence and cooperation.
The world is witnessing disasters in every sphere of life. The naked imperial assault on world peace, and capitalism's assault on everything humane and social, are the defining features of the desolation of our times in the twenty-first century. Unbridled individualism is offered as an alternative to the collective foundations of a happy life. It is argued that collective life undermines individual freedom and liberty. It is partly true that conservative societies, built on reactionary traditions, domesticate individuals in the name of socialisation. However, egalitarian, progressive and collective societies share both sorrow and happiness and empower individuals to live in a society where our freedoms are interconnected. "Realise freedom together, or diminish it alone in the wild" is the maxim of progressive and egalitarian collective societies, from indigenous and remote communities.
The culture of mass consumerism is imposed on individuals, families and societies. Diverse cultures of consumption are transformed into mass consumption of goods and services based on desires that exceed consumers' needs and means. There is no longer any relationship between the product, its producer and its price. This separation is central to the creation of a market-driven society, in which the market fixes prices by severing producers from consumers. The market-led society is fundamentally based on desire-driven consumption — not only for survival and pleasure but also to define existence and the meaning of life. In such a society, a brand is not merely a product to be consumed; it is a means of defining one's self and self-worth through the product and its label. Brands carry value in terms of price, and that price defines the self-worth of the consumer. A car, for example, is not merely a means of transport; it is a product that defines its owner. Such everyday commodification of individual life undermines life itself and establishes relationships and interactions based on commodities. Consumption, therefore, defines life and society.
The availability and accessibility of products and services depend on one's ability to enter the market according to one's purchasing power — a central feature of a market-led society. Indifference is inherent in a society built on the commodification of life, where the struggle for fundamental survival itself produces alienation. This alienation is crucial to transforming a need-based society into a desire-based one, founded on the mass consumption of unnecessary goods and services in pursuit of a deceptive self-realisation of worth — through the ownership of a big house, big cars, expensive luxury items and so on. Unnecessary commodities and meaningless desires obscure reason and clarity of judgement; this obscurity is essential to the survival of capitalism in all its forms.
The desire to satisfy a material sense of self-worth, shaped by capitalism, produces social, cultural and spiritual emptiness. This emptiness then seeks a remedy in the consumption of the next generation of commodities and services, yet alienation and moral emptiness continue to drive people into mental hospitals, counselling centres or religion, in search of escape. Individualism and the individualistic lifestyle thus lack any foundation on which they can stand. Individualism promotes personal utility, pleasure and satisfaction as the means of sustaining an atomised life, but it collapses in the long run. The meaning of life comes from interacting with one another; interconnected individuals can flourish only in society. Capitalism promotes an individualistic lifestyle and a market culture of individualism, yet it survives on collaboration and cooperation among capitalists, who work in solidarity with one another while dismantling the collective foundations of society beneath working people. In this way, the visible and invisible power of capitalists and their system promotes authoritarianism to control, domesticate and dismantle human lives and the planet — all in the name of growth, development and prosperity.
Crises and disasters are inherent to capitalism. They create the very conditions of desolation that capitalism needs for its own survival, and weaken the unity of human beings by promoting a reckless culture of mass consumption, in which the triumphant market decides the nature of individual life, family, society, states and governments. The everyday collapse of humane societies, therefore, should not surprise anyone. The millennial tenacity of liberal democracy has a quintessentially capitalist core, well equipped to assimilate individuals, their cultures and their societies into its fold. Rigid compliance is the only rule of the game called capitalism: there is no choice but to comply. Such a culture of capitalism kills all forms of diverse democratic practice. It breeds authoritarianism, accelerated by digital platforms and AI-led technologies controlled by a few who wish to create a rent-seeking, techno-feudal society in which all human beings are mere digital slaves. This system conceals itself with lies told in the name of technological progress, while denying people the technological knowledge that could bring emancipation. And yet this deplorable condition continues to shine, paraded in the name of progress and prosperity.
Life is consumed by capitalism. Alienation and authoritarianism are twin toxic forces that destabilise life and society. It is time, therefore, to pause, breathe and imagine an alternative — one that empowers both people and the planet.
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*Academic based in UK
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