Economic-man identity drives endless escalating consumption of commodities

Evidence

Where it is based in the conception of human identity as ‘economic man’ whose main identifying feature is the drive to the satisfaction of wants, identity is confirmed and expressed in a process of endless and escalating consumption of commodities. These modern foundations for identity are still based in the master’s discontinuity from and opposition to nature. They fail to recognise any larger order persisting over time of which humans are a part. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 388

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds Eco-Justice pedagogy’s critique of consumerist identity and connects to ch1’s claim about identity practices driving nature’s destruction. — connects to: Commodity fetishism in mass production dictates conventional human behavior — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46; Financialization drives a nonlinear shift from rational to imaginative economic man — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 26; Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Commodity fetishism in mass production dictates conventional human behavior #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46
• Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation. #corroborates (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 456
• Financialization drives a nonlinear shift from rational to imaginative economic man #contradicts (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 26
• Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753
• Market ideology fragments classes into individual consumers and hides production #complicates (0.75)