A Point of View 2

socially prized goals, or through being well-regarded by others. In part, it is about awarding oneself a status ranking, and thus implicitly involves comparing oneself with others, taking into account the generalized views of others. The external world mediates in the way one judges one’s social standing in various ways. What is so ironic about the elevation of the ego, the relentless promotion of the individual at the expense of the ‘collective’, which we find in advanced capitalistic societies today – particularly in the West – is that it can actually result in crushing the ego. Why so? Firstly, because, in the materialist consumerist milieu created by capitalism, how one feels about oneself, as I pointed out earlier, often hinges upon how one measures up to assorted style, or indeed ‘lifestyle’ exemplars, what or how much one consumes, or how much conspicuous wealth one can display. Conversely, poverty often creates feelings of worthlessness, and self-hate, for all sorts of reasons; for example, being compelled to do things against the grain of one’s nature in order to make ends meet, being powerless to change one’s circumstances, or simply not being able to afford the paraphernalia indicative of a certain level of social status. Basically, capitalism creates losers, and let’s face it, most of us are losers in this ‘celeb-obsessed’, fetishistic society. Secondly, as Marx pointed out, apart from alienating workers from other workers, from the act of production and from the products themselves, capitalism alienates workers from their very essence, from what they essentially are – human beings, rather than mere machine-like functionaries. This obviously rebounds on how workers value themselves, which in turn may be

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