On loneliness & capitalism
by π
If there is an abundant thing in the world beyond information it is love and affection. We all have so much love to give, yet none of us ever gets enough of it. We are all eager to love and be loved, yet we hardly find people to give our love to. There is an almost infinite supply of love and affection which co-exists with a constant and unsatisfied demand for it. What is the source of this market failure, this unexplainable mismatch between supply & demand?
Love and affection both qualify as public goods, given that they are abundant, non-rival (e.g. loving your family does not preclude you from loving your partners, colleagues and friends) and non-exclusive (i.e. it is not possible to prevent someone from feeling and experiencing love). Yet, in contrast to other public or quasi-public goods, love and affection do not suffer from over-exploitation or under-production. In contrast with environmental resources, love cannot be ‘depleted’ by consuming too much of it. As opposed to information, one does not need any economic incentives to produce love or affection. Hence, love and affection do not suffer from the tragedy of the commons that is commonly found in the context of public or quasi-public goods. But then why are these resources so scarce in modern societies?
The problem is that, given that the economy of modern societies is built on the notion of scarcity, we have a tendency to create “artificial scarcity” even when it is not actually necessary. In the same way as we have commodified a non-rival good like information through copyright law, we are now commodifying human attention and affection by means of social norms and the architecture of modern institutions
In many modern societies, people displaying too much love or affection are often considered weak or lustful (or both). People are therefore incentivized to minimize the public demonstration of these feelings, even if it ultimately harms them. In the meantime, more and more people are suffering from loneliness due to their inability to receive the love and affection they deserve.
We live in a society of loneliness, where both love and affection have been turned into scarce resources so that they can be more easily commodified. This brings the question of whether it is actually possible to access love and affection with an arbitrary thing like money. Social connections cannot be created arbitrarily, without taking the time to properly engage with one another, understanding each other’s cultural background and sharing many intimate moments with one another. These multiple layers of engagement are destroyed via commodification.
As opposed to genuine human connection, which are free and abundant, commodified experiences cost money and are sometimes restricted to those with a certain level of status or privilege. Hence, as we seek to acquire more money or status in order to indulge into more of these commodified experiences, we cannot help but activate the capitalist enginealong with the vicious cycle of loneliness that it inevitably comes with. Capitalism feeds off loneliness and generates more loneliness to thrive.
To get out of this cycle, we need more places where we can construct real human connections, as people will finally be able to see themselves for what they really are. This is what we find sometimes within the scope of a small commune. This is what we’re trying to create at Feÿtopia