What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society

Nowadays we have lost sight of this question because an answer has been forced on us, along with a new order. The earlier debate took place in a society where a reasonable balance existed between the political, religious, cultural, and economic spheres. Now, these typically human dimensions have all been made grist to a single mill: the neo-liberal

The latest mutation of social Darwinism goes by the name of neo-liberalism, and interprets nature to mean market forces. The underlying reasoning remains the same, being demonstrated, where possible, with ever more figures and tables.

The importance of these shared stories is great, because it is through them that we obtain answers to existential questions. What is a ‘real’ man or a ‘real’ woman? What should their relationship be? What is the place and significance of career and parenthood, and does that differ for men and women? What should our attitude to authority be? How do

Wherever quantitative yardsticks are used to measure quality, behaviour soon adapts to the system, invariably leading to a loss of diversity. This creates a problem for meritocratic policymakers: the fewer differences there are between candidates, products, or services, the harder it is to rank them. Don’t forget that in a meritocracy, the number o

we live in an extremely controlling society in which authority has disappeared.

the key is to find a good balance between the individual and the group, between individual creativity and productive co-operation.

This feeling of alienation between old and young is indicative of a changed identity resulting from cultural shifts — something that apparently has always sparked generational conflict. Each new generation is indeed different from the previous one.

to define something as mentally abnormal is merely to say that it deviates from the norm — that is to say, the social norm.

The care that an individual shows towards his or her body and those of others derives from the way in which a community collectively formulates answers to existential questions.