Losing Our Sense of Abundance

Social structures are powerful cultivators of thought and desire. Far from being independent thinkers and autonomous individuals, human beings are trained to think in certain ways by the habitual activities which they perform, activities to which they are compelled by the necessities of living in certain social structures. Social structures provide very limited sets of options to individuals who inhabit them, in terms of life-activity and life-style. There are certain activities which are imperative for anyone who wishes to live functionally in a society. In the social structure of modern consumer capitalism, it is imperative that most people engage in the activity of buying things. In order to do this, it is imperative that they be employed. Under the social structure of capitalism, in other words, it is imperative that most people participate in the markets which constitute capitalist society.

A market is, in fact, a specific form of social structure. In capitalist society, it is the market which defines many of the social relations into which people enter with each other. Capitalism makes people market dependent. Consequently, it is more and more difficult for people to conceive of ways of relating to other people, and ways of giving and receiving benefits to and from other people, outside of the market relation and its constituent activities of buying and selling. As a buyer, one engages…