modern malaise

The social group is broken down into atomized individuals who fight for their right to fulfillment via professional advancement or personal consumption. This system is often sold to us as freedom. Those competing individuals never find true autonomy, however, because they lack the social fabric in which to exercise it.

As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise.

Will we update our scripts and stories about how the world actually works? Or is this a conversation that people just don’t want to have? Is it easier to pretend that everyone can make it?

I don’t have good answers to these questions, but I sense the disconnect between what people believe at a societal level and the market finding reality of an econ

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As the individual experiences an ever-growing sense of acceleration provided by technological developments (new media and the “speeding up” of the infosphere) alongside a general decrease in security of past provisions and expectations (read: precarity, freelance positions, housing shortages, and increasing wealth disparities coexisting with rhetor... See more