Erich Fromm, “Conformity”

Erich Fromm, “Conformity”
from The Sane Society (Henry Holt, 1955) and Escape from Freedom (Henry Holt, 1969).
 
What happens to the industrial worker? He spends his best energy for seven or eight hours a day in producing “some­thing.” He needs his work in order to make a living, but his role is essentially a passive one. He fulfills a small isolated function in a complicated and highly organized process of production, and is never confronted with “his” product as a whole, at least not as a producer, but only as a consumer, provided he has the money to buy “his” product in a store. He is concerned neither with the whole product in its physical aspects nor with its wider economic and social aspects. He is put in a certain place, has to carry out a certain task, but does not participate in the organi­zation or management of the work. He is not interested, nor does he know why one produces this, instead of another com­modity - what relation it has to the needs of society as a whole.­
 
The shoes, the cars, the electric bulbs, are produced by “the enterprise,” using the machines. He is a part of the machine, rather than its master as an active agent. The machine, instead of being in his service to do work for him which once had to be performed by sheer physical energy, has become his master. Instead of the machine being the substitute for human energy, man has become a substitute for the machine. His work can be defined as the performance of acts which cannot yet be per­formed by machines.
 
Work is a means of getting money, not in itself a meaningful human activity. P. Drucker, observing workers in the auto­mobile industry, expresses this idea very succinctly: “For the great majority of automobile workers, the only meaning of the job is in the paycheck, not in anything connected with the work or the product. Work appears as something unnatural, a disagreeable, meaningless and stultifying condition of getting the pay check, devoid of dignity as well as of importance. No wonder that this puts a premium on slovenly work, on slow­downs, and on other tricks to get the same pay check with less work. No wonder that this results in an unhappy and dis­contented worker - because a pay check is not enough to base one's self-respect on.” ...
 
The alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of work results in two reactions: one, the ideal of complete laziness; the other a deep-seated, though often unconscious hostility toward work and everything and everybody connected with it. 

It is not difficult to recognize the widespread longing for the state of complete laziness and passivity. Our advertising appeals to it even more than to sex. .  …  Indeed, say the adherents of this point of view, the complete automatization of work is what we hope for; man will work a few hours; it will not be uncom­fortable, nor require much attention; it will be an almost uncon­scious routine like brushing one’s teeth, and the center of gravity will be the leisure hours in everybody's life.
 
It must also be questioned whether the freedom for daydreaming and reverie which mechanized work gives is as positive and healthy a factor as most industrial psychologists assume. Actually, daydreaming is a symptom of lacking relatedness to reality. It is not refreshing or relaxing - it is essentially an escape with all the negative results that go with escape. What the industrial psychologists describe in such bright colors is essentially the same lack of concentration which is so characteristic of modern man in general. ...  It is a great mistake to believe that doing something in a non-concentrated form is refreshing. On the contrary, any concen­trated activity, whether it is work, play or rest (rest, too, is an activity), is invigorating - any non concentrated activity is tiring.  ...
 
Is the hope for effortless work not a daydream based on the fantasy of laziness and push-button power, and a rather unhealthy fantasy at that?  Is not work such a fundamental part of man’s existence that it cannot and should never be reduced to almost complete insignificance?  Is not the mode of work in itself an essential element in forming a person’s character?  Does completely automatized work not lead to a completely automatized life?
 
To deal with these arguments properly we must indulge in some speculations on the problem of laziness and on that of the various motivations for work.  It is surprising that the view of man’s natural laziness can still be held by psychologists and laymen alike, when so many ob­servable facts contradict it. Laziness, far from being normal, is a symptom of mental pathology. In fact, one of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with one­self and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.
 
Let us look at children: they are never lazy; given the slightest encouragement, or even without it, they are busy playing, asking questions, inventing stories, without any incentive except the pleasure in the activity itself. In the field of psycho-pathology; we find that the person who has no interest in doing anything is seriously sick and is far from exhibiting the normal state of human nature. There is plenty of material about workers during periods of unemployment, who suffer as much, or more, from the en­forced “rest,” as from the material deprivations. There is just as much material to show that for many people over sixty-five the necessity to stop working leads to profound unhappiness, and in many instances to physical deterioration and illness.
 
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for the widespread belief in man’s innate laziness. The main reason lies in the fact that alienated work is boring and unsatisfactory; that a great deal of tension and hostility is engendered, which leads to an aversion against the work one is doing and everything connected with it.  As a result, we find a longing for laziness and for “doing nothing” to be the ideal of many people.  Thus, people feel that their laziness is the “natural” state of mind, rather than the symptom of a pathological condition of life, the result of meaningless and alienated work. Examining the current views on work motivation, it becomes evident that they are based on the concept of alienated work and hence that their conclusions do not apply to non-alienated, attractive work.
 
However, the discussion about money incentives would be in­complete if we did not consider the fact that the wish for more money is constantly fostered by the same industry which relies on money as the main incentive for work. By advertising, installment plan systems, and many other devices, the individual’s greed to buy more and newer things is stimulated to the point that he can rarely have enough money to satisfy these “needs.” Thus, being artificially stimulated by industry, the monetary incentive plays a greater role than it otherwise would. Furthermore, it goes with­out saying that the monetary incentive must play a paramount role as long as it is the only incentive because the work process in itself is unsatisfactory and boring. There are many examples of cases in which people choose work with less monetary reward if the work itself is more interesting.
 
Aside from money, prestige, status and the power that goes with it are assumed to be the main incentives for work. There is no need to prove that the craving for prestige and power con­stitutes the most powerful incentive for work today among the middle and upper classes; in fact, the importance of money is largely that of representing prestige, at least as much as security and comfort. But the role which the need for prestige plays also among workers, clerks and the lower echelons of the industrial and business bureaucracy is often ignored. ...
 
Most of us assume that the kind of work current in our society, namely, alienated work, is the only kind there is, hence that aver­sion to work is natural, hence that money and prestige and power are the only incentives for work. If we would use our imagination just a little bit, we could collect a good deal of evidence from our own lives, from observing children, from a number of situations which we can hardly fail to encounter, to convince us that we long to spend our energy on something meaningful, that we feel refreshed if we can do so, and that we are quite willing to accept rational authority if what we are doing makes sense. ...
 
We find that there are many men who would, for example, take keen pleasure in being railroad engineers. But although railroad engineering is one of the highest paid and most respected positions in the working class, it is, nevertheless, not the fulfillment of the ambi­tion of those who could “do better.” No doubt, many a business executive would find more pleasure in being a railroad engineer than in his own work if the social context of the job were different.  Let us take another example: that of a waiter in a restaurant. This job could be an exceedingly attractive one for many people, provided its social prestige were different. It permits of constant interpersonal intercourse, and to people who like food, it gives pleasure to advise others about it, to serve it pleasantly, and so on. Many a man would find much more pleasure in working as a waiter than in sitting in his office over meaningless figures were it not for the low social rating and low income of this job. ...
 
Narcissism is the es­sence of all severe psychic pathology.  For the narcissistically in­volved person, there is only one reality, that of his own thought processes, feelings and needs. The world outside is not experienced or perceived objectively, i.e., as existing in its own terms, condi­tions and needs. The most extreme form of narcissism is to be seen in all forms of insanity. The insane person has lost contact with the world; he has withdrawn into himself; he cannot experience reality, either physical or human reality as it is, but only as formed and determined by his own inner processes. He either does not react to the world outside, or if he does, reacts not in terms of its reality, but only in terms of his own processes of thought and feeling. Narcissism is the opposite pole to objectivity, reason and love. ...
 
I want to mention briefly some of the educational methods used today which in effect further discourage original thinking.  One is the emphasis on knowledge of facts, or I should rather say on information. The pathetic superstition prevails that by knowing more and more facts one arrives at knowledge of reality. Hundreds of scattered and unrelated facts are dumped into the heads of students; their time and energy are taken up by learning more and more facts so that there is little left for thinking. To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and fictitious; but "information" alone can be ­just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it.
 
Another closely related way of discouraging original thinking is to regard all truth as relative. Truth is made out to be a metaphysical concept, and if anyone speaks about wanting to discover the truth he is thought backward by the "progres­sive" thinkers of our age. Truth is declared to be an entirely subjective matter, almost a matter of taste. ...
 
In addition to the factors just mentioned there are others which actively tend to confuse whatever is left of the capacity for original thinking in the average adult. With regard to all basic questions of individual and social life, with regard to psycho­logical, economic, political, and moral problems, a great sector of our culture has just one function - to befog the issues. One kind of smokescreen is the assertion that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary it would seem that many of the basic issues of individual and social life are very simple, so simple, in fact, that everyone should be expected to understand them. To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a "specialist" can under­stand them, and he only in his own limited field, actually – and often intentionally - tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter. The individual feels helplessly caught in a chaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the specialists have found out what to do and where to go.
 
The result of this kind of influence is a twofold one: one is a scepticism and cynicism towards everything which is said or printed, while the other is a childish belief in anything that a person is told with authority This combination of cynicism and naivete is very typical of the modern individual. Its essential result is to discourage him from doing his own thinking and deciding.
 
This becomes very clear if we study the function of rationalization. However unreasonable or immoral an action may be, man has an insuperable urge to rationalize it, that is, to prove to himself and to others that his action is determined by reason, common sense, or at least conventional morality. He has little difficulty in acting irrationally, but it is almost impossible for him not to give
his action the appearance of reasonable motivation. ...
 
A great number of apparently insoluble problems disappear at once if we decide to give up the notion that the motives by which people believe themselves to be motivated are necessarily the ones which actually drive them to act, feel, and think as they do. ...  We shall try to show how feelings and thoughts can be induced from the outside and yet be subjectively experienced as one’s own, and how one’s own feelings and thoughts can be repressed and thus cease to be part of one’s self.  ... Let us start the discussion by analyzing the meaning of the experience which if put into words is, “I feel,” “I think,” “I will.”  When we say “I think,” this seems to be a clear and unambiguous statement.  The only question seems to be whether what I think is right or wrong, not whether or not I think it. Yet, one concrete experimental situation shows at once that the answer to this question is not necessarily what we suppose it to be.  Let us attend an hypnotic experiment.  Here is the subject A whom the hypnotist B puts into hypnotic sleep and suggests to him that after awakening from the hypnotic sleep he will want to read a manuscript which he will believe he has brought with him, that he will seek it and not find it, that he will then believe that another person, C, has stolen it, that he will get angry at C.  He is also told that he will forget that all this was a suggestion given him during the hypnotic sleep.  It must be added that C is a person toward whom the subject has never felt any anger and according to the circumstances has no reason to feel angry; furthermore, that he actually has not brought any manuscript with him.
 
What happens?  A awakes and, after a short conversation about some topic, says, “Incidentally, this reminds me of some­thing I have written in my manuscript. I shall read it to you.” He looks around, does not find it, and then turns to C, suggesting that he may have taken it; getting more and more excited when C repudiates the suggestion, he eventually bursts into open anger and directly accuses C of having stolen the manuscript.  He goes even further. He puts forward reasons which should make it plausible that C is the thief.  He has heard from others, he says, that C needs the manuscript very badly, that he had a good opportunity to take it, and so on. We hear him not only accusing C, but making up numerous “rationalizations” which should make his accusation appear plausible. (None of these, of course, are true and A would never have thought of them before.) …
 
What does the hypnotic ... experiment prove? It proves that we can have thoughts, feelings, wishes, and even sensual sensations which we subjec­tively feel to be ours, and yet that, although we experience these thoughts and feelings, they have been put into us from the outside, are basically alien, and are not what we think, feel, and, so on. …
 
He gives expression to a number of thoughts which have not been put into him during the hypnosis, namely, those “rationalizations” by which he “ex­plains” his assumption that C has stolen the manuscript. But nevertheless these thoughts are his own only in a formal sense. Although they appear to explain the suspicion, we know that the suspicion is there first and that the rationalizing thoughts are only invented to make the feeling plausible; they are not really explanatory but come post factum [after the fact].  ...
 
Let us suppose we are on an island where there are fishermen and summer guests from the city. We want to know what kind of weather we are to expect and ask a fisherman and two of the city people, who we know have all listened to the weather forecast on the radio. The fisherman, with his long experience and concern with this problem of weather, will start thinking, as­suming that he had not as yet made up his mind before we asked him. Knowing what the direction of the wind, temperature, humidity, and so on mean as a basis for weather forecast, he will weigh the different factors according to their respective significance and come to a more or less definite judgment. He will probably remember the radio forecast and quote it as supporting or contradicting his own opinion; if it is contradic­tory, he may be particularly careful in weighing the reasons for his opinion; but, and this is the essential point, it is his opinion, the result of his thinking, which he tells us.
 
The first of the two city summer guests is a man who, when we ask him his opinion, knows that he does not under­stand much about the weather nor does he feel any compulsion to understand anything about it. He merely replies, “I cannot judge. All I know is that the radio forecast is thus and thus.” The other man whom we ask is of a different type. He believes that he knows a great deal about the weather, although actually he knows little about it. He is the kind of person who feels that he must be able to answer every question. He thinks for a minute and then tells us “his” opinion, which in fact is identical with the radio forecast. We ask him for his reasons and he tells us that on account of wind direction, temperature, and so on, he has come to his conclusion. ...he forgets that he is simply repeating somebody else’s authorita­tive opinion, and believes that this opinion is one that he arrived at through his own thinking. He imagines that the reasons he gives us preceded his opinion, but if we examine these reasons we see that they could not possibly have led him to any conclu­sion about the weather if he had not formed an opinion before­hand. They are actually only pseudo reasons which have the function of making his opinion appear to be the result of his own thinking. He has the illusion of having arrived at an opin­ion of his own, but in reality he has merely adopted an author­ity’s opinion without being aware of this process.
 
The same phenomenon can be observed if we study people's opinions about certain subjects, for instance, politics.  Ask an average newspaper reader what he thinks about a certain political question. He will give you as “his” opinion a more or less exact account of what he has read, and yet - and this is the essential point - he believes that what he is saying is the result of his own thinking. ...
 
The same phenomenon is to be found in aesthetic judgments. The average person who goes to a museum and looks at a picture by a famous painter, say Rembrandt, judges it to be a beautiful and impressive picture. If we analyze his judgment, we find that he does not have any particular inner response to the picture but thinks it is beautiful because he knows that he is supposed to think it is beautiful. ... Many persons looking at a famous bit of scenery actually reproduce the pictures they have seen of it numerous times, say on postal cards, and while believing “they” see the scenery, they have these pictures before their eyes. ...
 
What holds true of thinking and feeling holds also true of willing. Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have suc­ceeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expecta­tions of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. ...
 
What has been said about the lack of “originality” in feeling and thinking holds true also of the act of willing. To recognize this is particularly difficult; modern man seems, if anything, to have too many wishes and his only problem seems to be that, although he knows what he wants, he cannot have it. All our energy is spent for the purpose of getting what we want, and most people never question the premise of this activity: that they know their true wants. They do not stop to think whether the aims they are pursuing are something they themselves want. In school they want to have good marks, as adults they want to be more and more successful, to make more money, to have more prestige, to buy a better car, to go places, and so on. Yet when they do stop to think in the midst of all this frantic activity, this question may come to their minds: “If I do get this new job, if I get this better car, if I can take this trip - what then? What is the use of it all? Is it really I who wants all this? Am I not running after some goal which is supposed to make me happy and which eludes me as soon as I have reached it?” These questions, when they arise, are frightening, for they question the very basis on which man’s whole activity is built, his knowledge of what he wants. People tend, therefore, to get rid as soon as possible of these disturbing thoughts. They feel that they have been both­ered by these questions because they were tired or depressed ­and they go on in the pursuit of the aims which they believe are their own.
 
Yet all this bespeaks a dim realization of the truth - the truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.  Modern man is ready to take great risks when he tries to achieve the aims which are supposed to be “his”; but he is deeply afraid of taking the risk and the responsibility of giving himself his own aims. 
 
Intense activity is often mistaken for evidence of self-­determined action, although we know that it may well be no more spontaneous than the behavior of an actor or a person hypnotized. When the general plot of the play is handed out, each actor can act vigorously the role he is assigned and even make up his lines and certain details of the action by himself. Yet he is only playing a role that has been handed over to him.
 
We can speak of idolatry or alienation not only in the relationship to other people, but also in relationship to oneself, when the person is subject to irrational passions.  The person who is mainly motivated by his lust for power, does not experience himself any more in the richness and limitlessness of a human being, but he becomes a slave to one partial striving in him, which is projected into external aims, by which he is “possessed.” The person who is given to the exclusive pursuit of his passion for money is possessed by his striving for it; money is the idol which he worships as the projection of one isolated power in himself, his greed for it. In this sense, the neurotic person is an alienated person. His actions are not his own; while he is under the illusion of doing what he wants, he is driven by forces which are separated from his self, which work behind his back; he is a stranger to himself, just as his fellow man is a stranger to him. He experiences the other and himself not as what they really are, but distorted by the uncon­scious forces which operate in them. The insane person is the absolutely alienated person; he has completely lost himself as the center of his own experience; he has lost the sense of self.
 
To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he there­fore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identi­cal with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.
 
The assumption that the “normal” way of overcoming aloneness is to become an automaton contradicts one of the most widespread ideas concerning man in our culture. The majority of us are supposed to be individuals who are free to think, feel, act as they please. To be sure this is not only the general opinion on the subject of modern individualism, but also each individual sincerely believes that he is “he” and that his thoughts, feelings, wishes are “his.” Yet, although there are true individuals among us, this belief is an illusion in most cases and a dangerous one for that matter, as it blocks the removal of those conditions that are responsible for this state of affairs. ...
 
The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform, for it results in a profound doubt of one’s own identity. If I am nothing but what I believe I am supposed to be - who am “I”? We have seen how the doubt about one’s own self started with the breakdown of the medieval order in which the individual had had an unquestionable place in a fixed order. The identity of the individual has been a major problem of modern philoso­phy since Descartes. ...
 
This loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform; it means that one can be sure of oneself only if one lives up to the expectations of others. If we do not live up to this picture we not only risk disapproval and increased isolation, but we risk losing the identity of our personality, which means jeopardizing sanity.
 
By conforming with the expectations of others, by not being different, these doubts about one’s own identity are si­lenced and a certain security is gained. However, the price paid is high. Giving up spontaneity and individuality results in a thwarting of life. Psychologically the automaton, while being alive biologically, is dead emotionally and mentally. While he goes through the motions of living, his life runs through his hands like sand. Behind a front of satisfaction and optimism modern man is deeply unhappy; as a matter of fact, he is on the verge of desperation. He desperately clings to the notion of individuality; he wants to be “different,” and he has no greater recommendation of anything than that “it is different.” ... But since, being an automaton, he cannot experience life in the sense of spontaneous activity he takes as surrogate any kind of excitement and thrill: the thrill of drink­ing, of sports, of vicariously living the excitements of fictitious persons on the screen. ...
 
Modern society, in spite of all the emphasis it puts upon happiness, individuality, and self-interest, has taught man to feel that not his happiness (or if we were to use a theological term, his salvation) is the aim of life, but the fulfillment of his duty to work, or his success.  Money, prestige, and power have become his incentives and ends. He acts under the illusion that his actions benefit his self­interest, though he actually serves everything else but the interests of his real self. Everything is important to him except his life and the art of living. He is for everything except for himself.  ...
 
People work in order to make money; they make money in order to do enjoyable things with it. The work is the means, the enjoyment, the end. But what happens actually? People work in order to make more money; they use this money in order to, make still more money, and the end - the enjoyment of life - is lost sight of.  ...
 
In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains, become ends in themselves. It becomes man's fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself. Man became a cog in the vast economic machine – an important one if he had much capital, an insignificant one if he had none - but always a cog to serve a purpose outside of himself. ...
 
Up to this point we have maintained that the mode of capitalistic production made man an instrument for supraper­sonal economic purposes, and increased the spirit of asceti­cism and individual insignificance for which Protestantism had been the psychological preparation. This thesis, however, conflicts with the fact that modern man seems to be motivated not by an attitude of sacrifice and asceticism but, on the contrary, by an extreme degree of egotism and by the pursuit of self-interest.
 
The members of the society and/or the various classes or status groups within it have to behave in such a way as to be able to function in the sense required by the social system. It is the function of the social character to shape the energies of the mem­bers of society in such a way that their behavior is not a matter of conscious decision as to whether or not to follow the social pattern, but one of wanting to act as they have to act and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the re­quirements of the culture. ...
 
Modern, industrial society, for instance, could not have attained its ends had it not harnessed the energy of free men for work in an unprecedented degree. Man had to be molded into a person who was eager to spend most of his energy for the purpose of work, who acquired discipline, particularly orderliness and punctuality, to a degree unknown in most other cultures. It would not have sufficed if each individual had to make up his mind consciously every day that he wanted to work, to be on time, etcetera, since any such conscious deliberation would lead to many more excep­tions than the smooth functioning of society can afford. Nor would threat and force have sufficed as a motive, since the highly differentiated tasks in modern industrial society can in the long run only be the work of free men and not of forced labor. The necessity for work, for punctuality and orderliness had to be transformed into an inner drive for these aims. This means that society had to produce a social character in which these strivings were inherent. ...  Produce, consume, enjoy together, in step, without asking questions. That is the rhythm of their lives.
 
What kind of men, then, does our society need? What is the “social character” suited to twentieth-century Capitalism?  It needs men who co-operate smoothly in large groups; who want to consume more and more, and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience - yet willing to be com­manded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction. How can man be guided without force, led without leaders, be prompted without any aim - except the one to be on the move, to function, to go ahead. . . ?
 
At first glance, nobody will have any quarrel with the idea that love, security, sexual satisfaction are perfectly normal goals of mental health.  A critical examination of these concepts, however, shows that they mean something different in an alienated world than what they might have meant in other cultures.  Perhaps the mast popular modern concept in the arsenal of psychiatric formulae is that of security. In recent years there is an increasing emphasis on the concept of security as the para­mount aim of life, and as the essence mental health. ...
 
Increasingly people feel that they should have no doubts, no problems, that they should have to take no risks, and that they should always feel “secure.” ... How can a sensitive and alive person ever feel secure? Because of the very conditions of our existence, we cannot feel secure about anything. ... Our life and health are subject to accidents beyond our control. If we make a decision, we can never be certain of the outcome; any decision implies a risk of failure, and if it does not imply it, it has not been a decision in the true sense of the word. We can never be certain of the out­come of our best efforts. The result always depends on many factors which transcend our capacity of control. Just as a sensitive and alive person cannot avoid being sad, he cannot avoid feeling insecure. The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear.... Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.
 
How, then, can man tolerate this insecurity inherent in human existence? One way is to be rooted in the group in such a way that the feeling of identity is guaranteed by the membership to the group, be it family, clan, nation, class. ... The development of modern society has led to the dissolution of these primary bonds. Modern man is essentially alone, he is put on his own feet, expected to stand all by himself. He can achieve a sense of identity only by developing the unique and particular entity which is “he” to a point where he can truly sense “I am I.” This accomplishment is possible only if he develops his active powers to such an extent that he can be related to the world without having to submerge in it; if he can achieve a productive orientation. The alienated person, however, tries to solve the problem in a different way, namely by conforming. He feels secure in being as similar as possible to his fellow man. His paramount aim is to be approved of by others; his central fear, that he may not be approved of. To be different, to find himself in a minority, are the dangers which threaten his sense of security; hence a craving for limitless con­formity. It is obvious that this craving for conformity produces in turn a continuously operating, though hidden, sense of in­security. ...
 
What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer the question by saying that to be happy is to have “fun,” or “to have a good time.” The answer to the question, “What is fun?” depends somewhat on the economic situation of the individual, and more, on his education and personality structure. Economic differences, however, are not as important as they may seem. The “good time” of society’s upper strata is the fun model for those not yet able to pay for it while earnestly hoping for that happy eventuality - and the “good time” of society’s lower strata is increasingly a cheaper imitation of the upper strata’s, differing in cost, but not so much in quality.
 
What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies, parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television, taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on Sun­day mornings, and traveling, for those who can afford it. If we use a more respectable term, instead of the word “fun,” and “having a good time,” we might say that the concept of happi­ness is, at best, identified with that of taking into consideration our discussion of the problem of consumption, we can define the concept somewhat more accurately as the pleasure of unrestricted consumption, push-button power and laziness.
 
From this standpoint, happiness could be defined as the op­posite of sadness or sorrow, and indeed, the average person defines happiness as a state of mind which is free from sadness or sorrow.  This definition, however, shows that there is something pro­foundly wrong in this concept of happiness. A person who is alive and sensitive cannot fail to be sad, and to feel sorrow many times in his life. ... The effort to avoid it is only possible if we reduce our sensitivity, responsiveness and love, if we harden our hearts and withdraw our attention and our feeling from others, as well as from ourselves.
 
If we want to define happiness by its opposite, we must de­fine it not in contrast to sadness, but in contrast to depression.  What is depression? It is the inability to feel, it is the sense of being dead, while our body is alive. It is the inability to experience joy, as well as the inability to experience sadness. A depressed person would be greatly relieved if he could feel sad. A state of depression is so unbearable because one is incapable of feeling anything, either joy or sadness. ...
 
It follows that happiness cannot be found in the state of inner passivity, and in the consumer attitude which pervades the life of alienated man. Happiness is to experience fullness, not empti­ness which needs to be filled. The average man today may have a good deal of fun and pleasure, but in spite of this, he is funda­mentally depressed. Perhaps it clarifies the issue if instead of using the word “depressed” we use the word “bored.” Actually there is very little difference between the two, except a difference in degree, because boredom is nothing but the experience of a paral­ysis of our productive powers and the sense of un-aliveness. ...
 
In our society emotions in general are discouraged.  While there can be no doubt that any creative thinking - as well as any other creative activity - is inseparably linked with emotion, it has become an ideal to think and to live without emotions. To be “emotional” has become synonymous with being unsound or unbalanced. ... On the other hand, since emotions cannot be com­pletely killed, they must have their existence totally apart from the intellectual side of the personality; the result is the cheap and insincere sentimentality with which movies and popular songs feed millions of emotion-starved customers. ...
 
In contemporary Western culture this polarity has given way to an almost exclusive reference to the abstract qualities of things and people, and to a neglect of relating oneself to their concreteness and uniqueness.  ... It is quite customary to talk about a “three-million-dollar bridge,” a “twenty-cent cigar,” a “five-dollar watch,” and this not only from the standpoint of the manufacturer or the consumer in the process of buying it, but as the essential point in the description. When one speaks of the “three-million-dollar bridge,” one is not primarily concerned with its usefulness or beauty, that is, with its concrete qualities, but one speaks of it as of a commodity; the main quality of which is its exchange value, expressed in a quantity, that of money. ...
 
In other words, things are experienced as commodities, as em­bodiments of exchange value, not only while we are buying or selling, but in our attitude toward them when the economic trans­action is finished. A thing, even after it has been bought, never quite loses its quality as a commodity in this sense; it is expendable, always retaining its exchange-value quality. ...
 
The same attitude is obvious in the relationship of people to the cars they buy; the car never becomes fully a thing to which one is attached, but re­tains its quality as a commodity to be exchanged in a successful bargain; thus, cars are sold after a year or two, long before their use value is exhausted or even considerably diminished.  …
 
But beyond the method of acquisition, how do we use things, once we have acquired them? With regard to many things, there is not even the pretense of use. We acquire them to have them. We are satisfied with useless possession. The expensive dining set or crystal vase which we never use for fear they might break, the mansion with many unused rooms, the unnecessary cars and servants, like the ugly bric-a-brac of the lower-middle-class family, are so many examples of pleasure in possession instead of in use. However, this satisfaction in possessing per se was more prominent in the nineteenth century; today most of the satis­faction is derived from possession of things-to-be-used rather than of things-to-be-kept. This does not alter the fact, however, that even in the pleasure of things-to-be-used the, satisfaction of prestige, is a paramount factor. The car, the refrigerator, the television set are for real, but also for conspicuous use. They confer status on the owner. ... Consuming is essentially the satisfaction of artificially stimulated phantasies, a phantasy performance alienated from our concrete, real selves.
 
Our way of consumption necessarily results in the fact that we are never satisfied, since it is not our real concrete person which consumes a real and concrete thing. We thus develop an ever­ increasing need for more things, for more consumption. ... Originally, the idea of consuming more and better things was meant to give man a happier, more satisfied life. Con­sumption was a means to an end, that of happiness. It now has become an aim in itself. The constant increase of needs forces us to an ever-increasing effort, it makes us dependent on these needs and on the people and institutions by whose help we attain them.
 
Man today, is fascinated by the possibility of buying more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption-hungry. The act of buying and consuming has become a compulsive, ir­rational aim, because it is an end in itself, with little relation to the use of, or pleasure in the things bought and consumed. To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. He would wander around open-mouthed in this heaven of gadgets and commodities, pro­vided only that there were ever more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that his neighbors were just a little less privileged than he.
 
Significantly enough, one of the older traits of middle-class society, the attachment to possessions and property, has undergone a profound change. In the older attitude, a certain sense of loving possession existed between a man and his property.  It grew on him. He was proud of it. He took good care of it, and it was painful when eventually he had to part from it because it could not be used any more. There is very little left of this sense of property today. One loves the newness of the thing bought, and is ready to betray it when something newer has appeared.  ...
 
He always remains the passive and alienated consumer. He “consumes” ball games, moving pic­tures, newspapers and magazines, books, lectures, natural scenery, social gatherings, in the same alienated and abstractified way in which he consumes the commodities he has bought. He does not participate actively, he wants to “take in” all there is to be had, and to have as much as possible of pleasure, culture and what not. Actually, he is not free to enjoy "his" leisure; his leisure-time consumption is determined by industry, as are the commodities he buys; his taste is manipulated, he wants to see and to hear what he is conditioned to want to see and to hear; entertainment is an industry like any other, the customer is made to buy fun as he is made to buy dresses and shoes. The value of the fun is determined by its success on the market, not by anything which could be measured in human terms. ... But the abstractifying and quantifying attitude goes far be­yond the realm of things. People are also experienced as the em­bodiment of a quantitative exchange value. To speak of a man as being “worth one million dollars,” is to speak of him not anymore as a concrete human person, but as an abstraction, whose essence can be expressed in a figure. ...
 
What is the relationship of man toward himself? I have de­scribed elsewhere this relationship as “marketing orientation.”  In this orientation, man experiences himself as a thing to be em­ployed successfully on the market. He does not experience himself as an active agent, as the bearer of human powers. He is alienated from these powers. His aim is to sell himself on the market. His sense of self does not stem from his activity as a loving and thinking individual, but from his socio-economic role.  ... His sense of value depends on his success: on whether he can sell him­self favorably, whether he can make more of himself than he started out with, whether he is a success. His body, his mind and his soul are his capital, and his task in life is to invest it favorably, to make a profit of himself. Human qualities like friendliness, courtesy, kindness, are transformed into commodities, into assets of the “personality package,” conducive to a higher price on the personality market. If the individual fails in a profitable invest­ment of himself, he feels that he is a failure; if he succeeds, he is a success. Clearly, his sense of his own value always depends on factors extraneous to himself, on the fickle judgment of the mar­ket, which decides about his value as it decides about the value of commodities. ...
 
If a man goes to a concert or to the theater, he asks himself more or less explicitly whether the show is “worth the money” he paid. ... The need to measure living acts in terms of something quantifiable appears also in the tendency to ask whether something was “worth the time," A young man’s evening with a girl, a visit with friends, and the many other actions in which expenditure of money may or may not be involved, raise the question of whether the activity was worth the money or the time. ...  A new question has arisen in modern man’s mind, the question, namely, whether “life is worth living,” and correspondingly, the feeling that one’s life is a failure, or is “a success.” This idea is based on the concept of life as an enter­prise which should show a profit. The failure is like the bankruptcy of a business in which the losses are greater than the gains. This concept is nonsensical. We may be happy or unhappy, achieve some aims, and not achieve others; yet there is no sensible balance which could show whether life is worth while living.
 
 

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