Accepting senseless contradictions is the exemplary technique of sanity in late capitalism.
Evidence
This strategy – of accepting the incommensurable and the senseless without question – has always been the exemplary technique of sanity as such, but it has a special role to play in late capitalism, that ‘motley painting of everything that ever was’, whose dreaming up and junking of social fictions is nearly as rapid as its production and disposal of commodities. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 113
Categorization
- SEED: The equivalence between ‘junking social fictions’ and ‘disposal of commodities’ suggests an essay comparing cultural forgetting-speed to planned obsolescence.
- XREF: connects to: Economic realism under capitalism is itself a form of collective insanity; Capitalism may resolve its internal contradictions by making them tolerable rather than ending them — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 161; Capitalism’s permanent contradiction enables endless mutation instead of revolution — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 21 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Economic realism under capitalism is itself a form of collective insanity
#corroborates(0.85) - Cynicism is a requirement of late-capitalist subjectivity
#expands(0.85) - Capitalism may resolve its internal contradictions by making them tolerable rather than ending them
#expands(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 161 - Dreamwork’s confabulated smoothness models how capitalist realism papers over contradictions
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 122 - Capitalism functions on performed belief rather than sincere conviction
#expands(0.80) - Capitalism’s permanent contradiction enables endless mutation instead of revolution
#corroborates(0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 21 - Capitalist realism makes a coherent alternative to capitalism unimaginable.
#corroborates(0.75) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 8 - Capitalism’s naturalness and eternity are a hoax
#complicates(0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 26