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Growth, progress, and innovation are convenient slogans for countries that have adopted capitalism. These ideals are primarily expressed through economic indicators. The economic growth forecasts published annually by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have consistently projected positive growth, except during periods of global crisis.
Every nation proclaims that economic growth and technological innovation can bring about comfortable lives and prosperous futures. Against this backdrop, a new belief has emerged. Neoliberalism, which rose to prominence through Thatcherism and Reaganomics in the 1970s, justifies competition by emphasizing market autonomy and efficiency, as though neoliberalism were a necessary condition for capitalism to function properly.
Its influence has been internalized not only in social, political, and economic structures but also within individuals themselves. Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval define this phenomenon as a “new global rationality.” Neoliberalism is new in that it emerged relatively recently, and global in that its influence extends comprehensively across the world. Moreover, because it shapes and organizes our behavior, it is a form of rationality before it is an ideology or an economic policy.
Today, nations, societies, and individuals subscribe to a narrative of progress in which the unskilled, immature, and inadequate are expected to become skilled, mature, and complete. Driven by this belief, they pursue continuous development and self-improvement without a moment to spare. Not even a single mistake is tolerated. Time is always in short supply, and busyness has become a habit.
Our lives seem to have been meticulously designed by an invisible hand. From the moment we begin to walk until the day we die, our individual lives appear to have already been planned by governments, educational institutions, and corporations. In his book Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, Malcolm Harris argues that society has demanded a new type of worker based on increased productivity and the pursuit of efficiency.
As “engines of productivity growth,” millennials have internalized competition, enduring extensive education, accumulating overwhelming debt, and willingly refining their abilities. Yet job security has deteriorated, wages have declined further, and individuals continue to push themselves into endless competition.
Meanwhile, individuals believe they must get ahead of others as quickly as possible and lead lives worthy of envy. Every event in their lives is shared on social media in real time. People become absorbed in one another's tastes, while items once considered indulgences gradually turn into necessities, encouraging further consumption. Standards of living continue to rise, and things one does not possess come to be perceived as things one cannot afford.
When abundance becomes culturally normalized, “modernized poverty” emerges. Even when we are not materially poor, the growing number of products we are expected to purchase makes our lives increasingly impoverished. The concept of an “adult” as a “complete individual” is continually deferred with each successive generation. The average ages of marriage, employment, and childbirth continue to rise, while the expansion of knowledge advances at a pace that exceeds human limitations and becomes increasingly impossible to keep up with.
The desire for an ideal life ultimately leads to notions of superiority and hierarchical thinking, creating grounds for distinctions between normal and abnormal, adults, children, and the elderly, disabled and non-disabled, and human and nonhuman, thereby legitimizing discrimination. The anxiety of individuals who fail to reach already elevated standards of perfection grows in proportion to those expectations.
Socially prescribed standards, such as middle-class wealth, a healthy body, an attractive appearance, qualifications superior to those of others, and impeccable cleanliness, diminish satisfaction with life and keep individuals in a perpetual state of incompleteness.
In their efforts to meet expectations that remain unfulfilled, individuals exhaust their time and bodies. Every decision is framed as a choice for the future, and people are pressured to make choices that will allow them to prevail in competition. No one has ever explicitly forced us to make these choices, yet we have never been offered any alternatives.
