society do not overwhelmingly favor the few to the detriment of the many, while guaranteeing greater efficiency and mobility in the socioeconomic system; and with the civil rights movements and their micro-political orientations, they have learned to make sure that social relationships are open enough to give them the right to demand equality and fashion their own lifestyles.
II.
An unhealthy development in the internal constitution, balance, and functioning of the will has been for a while an expression of this identity crisis. As in the case of Gyges, many Americans’ commitment to the pleasures of commodities often led to disturbing experiences of illusion, guilt, anxiety, and fear, that is, personality qualities that are fundamentally detrimental to a healthy will to power. In other words, among the forces that explain such a loss of social and cultural efficiency we count a general though personally repressed acknowledgement that the objects that structure our world represent the alienating expressions of others‘ will to power, prove the extent to which our lifestyles merely reify the tensions of things, and symbolize our powerlessness in the face of an ideology that equates the wealth and power of high finance with the economic health of our nation. Indeed the money borrowed through credit and spent ultimately represents someone else’s ownership, not the product of our own hard work. A billing statement reflects not only what is owed but also a constant reminder that the commodity being consumed has a double ownership, of both a consumer and her creditor. One acquires the title deed of a car purchased through credit only after paying off the debt, and for most people by then the car has