Capitalism's Biggest Enemy
I finished a book* last week and although most of it was pretty light, there was a phrase in it that really struck me:
Contentment is the enemy of capitalism.
Read that phrase a couple more times and let it sink in.
Capitalism is an economic system that depends on the private ownership and sale of goods. It depends on people constantly buying things.
Contentment on the other hand is a feeling of happiness and satisfaction.
For a moment, imagine if we were all content with our appearances. We were happy and satisfied with how we looked at this moment.
Do you realize how many industries would struggle or go extinct because of this simple shift? Skincare, makeup, hair products, fashion, health foods, gyms, social media influencers, personal trainers, nutritionists, facialists, estheticians would all struggle. Just with people being content about one thing!!
Society - especially in America, the supposed capitalist utopia it markets itself to be - thrives off of stoking discontentment. If we are constantly discontent with our lives, our bodies, our things, and our relationships, then we will go out looking for new things, replacements, bright and shiny objects to fill a hole in ourselves that we constantly seem to have.
But the hole is imagined most of the time. Or at least, it’s not as big as we’re made to believe.
Because we’re constantly told we’re not enough, we don’t have enough, we aren’t doing enough. We’re told this through the constant barrage of information, listicles, and ads we see on a daily basis. The exposure is unyielding and it infects the tiniest insecurities and manifests them into large issues that we, of course, must try and fix.
We know, logically, that it doesn’t really matter if you’re wearing the latest trends, have the newest iphone, or have this year’s model of that car. But logic doesn’t matter, because the faster these things come out, the more we are made to feel like we’re getting left behind, in some lesser-than state of being without those newer, better things - so the faster we eat them up.
But if we didn’t feel this way, if we felt content, in certain areas of our life, we would stop buying things to try and fix ourselves. We would stop spending money on status symbols and trends because we’d already be in a good place with our lives.
Capitalism, as we know it, would hate that. Because these feelings of satisfaction are a threat to capitalism’s success. It only feeds off of constant spending and competition. Anything less, isn’t enough.
This is a pretty powerful thought because it is something you can choose to do anytime you please. You can just stop spending your money. And companies know that - that’s why the email campaigns are endless, the ads are ruthless, and the messaging becomes all the more subtle and insidious.
Ultimately, I’m not saying you should stop spending. I’m just saying, that it might do us some good, to pay a tad bit more attention to why we spend on certain things. Is it because we truly love and want the things we exchange our hard earned money for, or is it because we are trying desperately to outrun the feeling of not being good enough that has been ingrained within us?
Food for thought as you try to stave off your next Amazon boredom haul.
*Book was Bella Figura by Kamin Mohammadi
A moment of contentment I experienced in this park in Tokyo, Japan last spring