We have arrived today in a totally bizarre epoch. Contemporary society is oriented towards means (things that are desirable because they achieve something else), while increasingly estranged from ends (things that are desirable in-themselves (an sich)). We pursue means to achieve further means in an infinite chain with no consummating end. To do so constitutes an impossible contradiction (a means is defined by its working toward an end) — but we are trying nonetheless.
By “we” I refer to all layers of society, from the economic base to the individual psychology. Capitalism incentivizes the accumulation of capital, which we take a fetishized pleasure in pursuing. Consumption is frustratingly unfulfilling, except insofar as we use it as a means to achieve other things, especially participation in a social game where we create our identities through symbolism. Our culture has become defined by these symbols and appearances and is endemically inauthentic. What matters to us now is not beauty or morality, but power — and as long as the chain of means continues, we will never be satisfied.
This phenomenon has been discussed in critical theory, best in the work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who critiqued what they called “instrumental reason,” or rationality aimed at optimizing means. Although this criticism might be poignantly applied to the anathemas “postmodernism” and “neoliberalism,” contemporary academics have yet to vocalize it to the public (I won’t use those words in this essay because I hardly understand what they’re supposed to mean). But humanists get enough flak already — let us recount some of their greatest successes and synthesize an understanding of this contradiction that underlies every aspect of our lives.
Marx’s M-C-M’ formula is foundational to this theme. He posits that capitalists use money (M) to buy commodities (C) only to resell them for profit (M’). In competition, capitalists can never “cash out” and must forever accumulate capital, lest they be out-competed. Thus, in capitalism, we value things not for qualitative “use-value” but quantitative “exchange-value.” Money is the liquid social means, and the consumption of a use-value is theoretically an end.
But we are not incentivized by only material conditions to pursue exchange-value. You and I have both enjoyed the process of owning or gathering capital, even without any idea of what to do with it. Georg Simmel noticed the deeper psychological peculiarity at play: we want money in-itself, with a vehemence distinct from that which we want what money can buy.
When we do “cash-out,” consumption is often unfulfilling. Many times, I have found myself entranced by a deeply pleasurable activity of shopping, wherein I spend weeks researching, deliberating, budgeting, and looking forward to my prospective purchase. But after weeks of anticipation, the moment of consumption can be deflating, even if what I bought was exactly what I hoped it would be. The potential feels better than its actualization.
Let’s imagine that this purchase was a concert. Perhaps I hoped for true, in-the-moment happiness seeing a tangible performance by my favorite band, but I felt unfulfilled. So, I joined the rest of the crowd in filming the show and posting it on my Instagram story: now everyone will see how cool I am for liking such a niche band. My current emptiness is no bother; I have the future to look forward to. I become yet another hyperconsumer, as described by Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation. He depicted contemporary social interaction as a game of symbols in which consumption is merely a mechanism to play. When playing this game of symbols, we turn what was meant to be satisfying in-itself into another means.
Of course, sometimes we do take pleasure in momentary consumption. Food and drugs feel fantastic, and not just in the realm of mental stimulation, but right here, right now. These pleasures are our most base, our most “universal.” Insofar as our identity is our desires and emotions about the world (to explain Hegel’s work here would be out of my scope), the fact that we struggle to access non-universal ends means that we struggle to distinguish ourselves as individuals.
To construct our identities, we rely on consumption symbols. For example: Elliot = “those who consume Bob Dylan songs,” ∩ “those who consume Dostoyevsky novels,” ∩ “those who have consumed one chapter of Baudrillard,” and so on. Thus, if I want to be a distinct individual, I must narrow this intersection with increasingly niche interests or desires. It seems we struggle to create ourselves originally, and we instead display to others symbols of identities artificially constructed for maximum instrumental value (i.e., I think reading Dostoyevsky novels will impress others, so I decide to read them).
The contemporary mind strives to surrender itself to top-down rationality and eliminate the nefarious influence of bottom-up emotion. This is no surprise: reason is a psychological means, in contrast to emotions, which are psychological ends. Adhering to rationality, we create institutions derived from rigorously enforced universal laws: bureaucracies. Bureaucracy allows us to organize huge amounts of people and ensure that as little human emotion as possible inhibits whatever tenets that organization is oriented toward (see Max Weber for a closer analysis). Modern technology enables us to ever more closely scrutinize adherence to bureaucracy; criminal records, social media, background checks, and DNA databases are all tools to ensure no humanity frustrates the perfect optimization of the organization. Within bureaucracies, relations between people are necessarily means, and usually the goal of a bureaucracy is profitability: the ability to get money, another means.
Through technology we abstract and instrumentalize even non-institutional human interaction. Digital marketplaces allow you to trade without having to look the other party in the eye. Social media allows us to quantify our social capital, our interactions with each other, and provides a canvas for curating a symbolic identity. And of course, you have better things to do than re-read the obvious but accurate critiques of dating apps. I recommend, for those interested, David Greaber’s claim that in past decades, technological innovation has become increasingly focused on bureaucratic optimization and simulation.
One may have noticed that symbols and abstraction have come up frequently in this discussion. This is no coincidence: a means is inherently abstract, while an end is inherently particular. This is because a means is defined by its end; if I go to the grocery store, it is because I want to eat. If ordering takeout could better achieve my end, I would do that instead. Meanwhile, an end is defined by itself; if I want to eat, only food will satisfy me. Curiously, we tend to treat abstractions — money, liberty, utility, etc. — as ends in themselves. To the latter item, some will retort that abstract happiness is clearly the end goal of life. But utility is only a (completely impractical) metric of how much we will enjoy something that we want in itself. Even if eating food is worth 10 utiles, I do not feel any desire for 10 utiles; I am simply hungry.
My claim that contemporary man “chooses” his identity as an instrument might earlier have seemed dubious — identity is supposed to be something that determines you, not the other way around. This can now be clarified: our desires are for means (therefore abstract), so our identities, constituted by our desires, are also abstract means. Thus, they are in the realm of symbolic instrumental rationality.
I argued in an essay last year that the products of contemporary society have remarkably less beauty and character than those of previous eras and attributed this development to our economic impulse to optimize for efficiency, which reduces the human effort that goes into each product. This is true, but only half the story — I admittedly had not yet read Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. It is not labor alone that imparts soul into a product, but a particular desire. The contemporary laborer rarely sees production/work as something desirable in itself; it is only something they do so that the capitalist will compensate them with abstract reward. For the laborer, the product is a means; it does not reflect their identity. Due to both a lack of particular labor and a lack of particular desire, the products of the contemporary world are soulless and alienated.
As prefaced earlier, postmodern culture is based on symbolism. This can be seen in architecture, where we have moved even past honest submission of form to function, to an era where form follows the symbol game. Take the ubiquitous strip mall architecture, which might feature superficial allusions — pictured below, the wood paneling symbolizes “modernity,” the arches symbolize classical architecture, and huge letters represent brands — but hardly any attempts at authentic beauty underneath the simulation.
A strip mall synthesizes classical architecture, modernity, and capitalism | Image Source: Creating an Authentic In-line Shopping Center
Even these soulless developments exhibit our deep-seated desire for non-symbolic, authentic ends. They would not appeal to our aesthetic sensibilities if we had none, but our overwhelming compulsion towards means (in this case, saving money on purchases) results in a market that selects for cheap counterfeits. This conflict also plays out in the previous example of the concert and the growing obsession with the bespoke (evident in vintage fashion and “analog media,” for example), which, although grounded in genuine desire for beauty, has become yet another symbolic performance mechanism.
In an excellent essay last year, Merjan Khwajazada described increasing commodification and decreasing self-sacrifice in the contemporary dating scene. She analyzed our reluctance to truly surrender ourselves to love, and the commonplace dynamic of romantic partners merely using one another for affirmation or pleasure. All that I could add has already been summed up by Oscar Wilde: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Power is, after all, the ultimate means, and so the ultimate aim of a world without ends.
In the search for power, we inherently forgo access to our authentic desires and identities. If we embody our necessarily less-than-optimal authentic selves, we cannot optimize for power. This applies to the way we act when looking for romantic partners, as it does to how we choose our careers, and so on. So, in the search for means, i.e., the search for power, we will always fail our essential urge to be authentically ourselves and to be recognized as such by others.
Thus, we are locked in an infinite competition, living endemically shallow lives within a symbolic culture, accumulating power that leads to no in-the-moment happiness, and inherently unsatisfied in our fundamental need for authenticity and recognition. We live in a contradiction yet unresolved.
This follow-up article analyzes the origins of the instrumental existence and the way out of it.
Featured Image Source: The British Museum