ESP Biography

We confront a stark contradiction—so much unhappiness in a country that was founded on the principle of "the pursuit of happiness." True, this principle is deceptive since what it promises isn't happiness but just the chance to pursue it, and what most people get is endless pursuit and precious little joy. Still, the identification of American society with happiness played an enormous role in the political and ideological struggles of the twentieth century: in contrast to the grim repressiveness of Soviet society, America seemed a "free" country where individuals could live any way they wanted. And with the postwar boom and the rise of consumerism, happiness was on sale everywhere. Never have the pleasures of the marketplace been more mesmerizing—the glitter of the shopping mall, the seductiveness of advertising, the magical aura that seems to surround every new commodity; companies like Nike don't sell mere products anymore, they sell embodiments of dreams. But for all the hype and flashiness, the basic message is as old as capitalism: possessions are what make you happy. Here we have the "common sense" of the marketplace in all its crudeness: everything (and everyone) is dealt with in terms of buying and selling, every relationship is reduced to what Marx once called a “cash nexus.” This idea is so commonplace under capitalism that we rarely notice how perverse it is, because what it really amounts to saying is that happiness derives not from people but from things. In other words, this is a kind of happiness that has been dehumanized. The thesis of this lecture will be that the logic of capitalism gives rise to what I call a 'masturbatory mindset': that is, capitalism functions by sustaining a fantasy (e.g. the American dream) that we are always approaching but can never fully realize.