ourselves that subconsciously longs for an existence determined by concrete work activities contributing to a collective level of happiness, thanks mostly to recent economic ideologies stressing personal gratification based on individual rational calculations. For example, the ideologues and publicists of consumer capitalism have recently worked hard to inculcate in us the notion that the value of one’s life reduces to one’s worthiness in terms of personal line of credit held or investment in the stock market. Often our internalization of this notion represents our most potent means for dissolving the residual guilt associated with our hidden recognition of the alienating life conditions that derive from an existence governed by the circulation of things. Such a personal decision to organize life according to reigning idols is reinforced when we find similar models in the lifestyles of most people around us. As a community of consumers, we recognize in the ideological prototypes of a “credit card nation,” as molded through the spectacular forms of the mass media, a condensation of materialistic ideals that calm our hidden sense of economic insecurity. In the social brilliance of the demigods and demigoddesses of TV commercials, we find reassurance that a life according to commodities can only mean social happiness, for their self-confidence and quasi-superhuman capabilities have successfully equalized , in the eyes of the world, a structurally unsound economic arrangement with our pursuit of happiness. Whereas Gyges finds himself alienated by a normal world in which most people tend to conform to moral conventions, we find ourselves alienated by a world in which our collective needs are evaluated according to the requirements of the