things.
A specular dimension of this otherwise morbid profundity is an experience of frustration and anxiety. The inability to find ultimate gratification in the world of things often turns into an experience of lack but also psychological stress. Whereas Gyges fears the return of a world in which normal moral practices apply, we fear a world in which we no longer have access to commodities that we believe may yet give a brilliance to our lifestyles: our everyday life then often turns into a constant pursuit of objects as a mark of social relevancy. A logic of frustration therefore remains a basic underlying element of modern lifestyles, for in a credit-driven economy, the accumulated objects have become mechanisms that focus our very being toward a never-ending procession of things whose mastery ultimately escapes our will to power. While Gyges’ blind pursuit of pleasure hides a basic inability to freeze his life into a permanent state of satisfaction, our consumption-based lifestyles allow the pressures of objects to structure our personalities.
Whereas Gyges no longer worries about popular challenges to his power, the idolaters of mass consumption also remain confident that most of the American public would tolerate their financial charlatanism, for over the years most of us have internalized the notion that the high levels of wealth accumulated by our financial institutions is an index of both their economic health and the progress of our society. The technocrats of the society of mass-consumption seem to be aware historically most of us have operated a doubling of our personality. That is, in an apparently materially flourishing society, we have often chosen an identity that tends to repress that part of