Failure to Cope "Under Capitalism"

The opposite of agency is learned helplessness. If people believe that we can’t do very much to stop the world’s problems, it’s unsurprising that they’d be terrified to bring children into the world. But this seems like a mental trap that we can, and should, teach people to resist falling into. As  Clare Coffey writes  in “Failure to Cop

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In the achievement society, we suffer from an internalised pressure to achieve – to do more, to be more, to have more. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have internalised the capitalist work ethic to the degree that our successes and failures weigh heavily on our individual shoulders. The primary result of the achievement society is burnout – t

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It begins to feel as though you’re failing at life, in some indistinct way, if you’re not treating your time off as an investment in your future. Sometimes this pressure takes the form of the explicit argument that you ought to think of your leisure hours as an opportunity to become a better worker (“Relax! You’ll Be More Productive,” reads the hea... See more