Renata Salecl: Capitalism, Apathy and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Slovenian philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist, Renata Salecl, lays bare the fraying fabric of our communities, worn thin by corruption and apathy and she examines corporate exploitation, the unchecked dominance of technology behemoths, and the unsettling rise of new authoritarianism.

Renata explores societal inertia, uncovering how feelings of helplessness and disenchantment often render individuals passive and how authoritarian forces capitalise on societal disconnection. She explains that the extreme individualism promoted by capitalism is exactly what needs to be overcome in order to tackle existential crises such as climate change. She confronts the stark realities of corruption, injustice, and the mental health toll perpetuated by capitalist structures—a relentless pursuit of productivity that often culminates in guilt, anxiety, and a dearth of empathy amidst cutthroat competition.

Voiceover 1: My biggest worries for the future are both financial and environmental. I worry about whether or not I’m going to be working until I’m 80 or 90, if I’m going to be able to retire.

Voiceover 2: My biggest worries for the future are my kids, because as we are foreignness, so we don’t have purpose.

Voiceover 3: My biggest worries for the future, I think it’s just a lack of security in life. I think just not being able to have somewhere secure, to live and to exist comfortably.

Carl Schlyter:
Welcome to a second season of our podcast SystemShift. As you have just heard. We find ourselves in a point of history, but ordinary people in many countries are under intense pressure, including a cost of living crisis that has many of us focusing on our immediate needs. It’s this search for survival that is at the heart of our 2nd season as people find themselves with reduced time, energy and mental space to grapple with the long term existential threats such as climate change and biodiversity crisis. We’ll be delving into the shadows to reveal the myths and disinformation that allowed our understanding of the current failing economic and financial systems that are driving the exploitation of people and planet.

Against that backdrop of dark clouds, I’m joined for this episode by the distinguished Slovenian philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist Renata Salecl. I think it’s fair to say that Renata defies the constraints of disciplines. Since the 1980s, she has been associated with intellectual circum known as the Libyan the School of Psychoanalysis. In addition to being a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana. She is Professor of Psychology and Psychoanalysis and Law in the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. And she also has connections with the London School of Economics, the Cardozo School of Law, King’s College, London, the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, the Humboldt University in Berlin, George Washington University and Duke University. In this episode, Renata lays bare the fraying fabric of our communities worn thin by corruption and apathy, and she examines corporate exploitation, the unchecked dominance of tech giants and the unsettling rise of authoritarian regimes.

We uncover how the overwhelming problems people face, render them helpless and disenchanted, and how this is exploited by authoritarian forces which capitalize on societal disconnection. We confront the stark realities of corruption, injustice and mental health told perpetuated by capitalist structures a relentless pursuit of productivity that often culminates in guilt, anxiety and a lack of empathy amidst cutthroat competition. So, without further ado, a warm welcome to you, Renata.

Renata Salecl:
Hello. Hi.

Carl Schlyter:
Hi, I was wondering, what have you been up to lately in your work?

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, I’m writing a book on apathy. I’m exploring ways in which people are switching off today, don’t want to be engaged. Are closing their eyes in front of all kinds of atrocities that are going on around the world.

And also, why so many people don’t even follow news or don’t want to vote. And I’m going back to the discussion which happened in the previous century, in the fifties, especially in the United States, over the question of whether people have the right to apathy and whether democracy somehow in all should allow people to switch off and not be too concerned with it. 

Carl Schlyter:
What makes people passive and what makes people active? What’s your take on that?

Renata Salecl:
I think the general feeling today is that political systems around the world are not functioning.

We know very well that is also, you know, in some way a huge trend to authoritarianism.

There was actually Swedish research which showed that about more than 70% of countries around the world are either authoritarian or authoritarian leaning.

And I think that the problem of passivity today is linked, on the one hand, to the feeling of helplessness, hopelessness of people in Egypt, Gaza, the future of society and the planet and their own future. But also, on the other hand, there are all kinds of mechanisms which actually contribute to passivity in authoritarian governments actually, tries if people are passive and not engaged. 

Carl Schlyter:
And one of our episodes this season is going to be with Helena Norberg-Hodge that has been for a long time, working in how to develop the strength in local communities.

Because if you have a point where you have some power, you can actually get more active by seeing that you can make a small change closer to you and then have more belief and bigger change.

Renata Salecl:
That is true, and we observe this in times of crisis. Slovenia had terrible flooding in the summer and we saw incredible organization in local communities solidarities. I would say that the roots of this social organization is actually in the previous socialist system where that in former Yugoslavia there was really a kind of attention to get mobilized for local communities in times of crisis. Very similar thing happened at the start of the pandemic. But what happens then after, you know, the crisis sort of like is a little bit over, is that people start switching off and they start switching off often also because they start observing corruption, injustice in the community. So, when Covid started, first it was solidarity. We all had the feeling that we are in the same boat. But then very quickly, in many countries, Slovenia among them, we started noticing that some politicians, some very powerful people in corporations, started profiting from the pandemic. You know, so when injustice, corruption starts in society, quite often a kind of a disillusion meant and kind of a lack of a desire to engage in the community also starts.

Carl Schlyter:
Yeah, and this is very much in line with the research made by Pickett and Wilkinson on social injustice and its negative consequences, both on stress level, on health and on many aspects of society. 

Renata Salecl:
Definitely, we observe this, you know, we have such an increase of psychological symptoms like burnout, all kinds of self-damaging behaviors. So, when we analyzed the society today, the way capitalism is functioning, we should see the toll that people are paying with their lives, with their physical health, and especially with their mental health. So, across the world, an increase of anxiety, an increase of hopelessness, often, you know, kind of a type of a depression, which is not necessarily kind of a classical clinical depression, but more depression linked to exhaustion, burnout, which is not necessarily physical exhaustion, but can be kind of psychological exhaustion because of mistreatment, insecurity at the workplace, and quite often because of pointless type of work that a lot of people are engaged in. 

Carl Schlyter:
Beyond that part of work life, what other aspect of capitalism has negative effects that you mention?

Renata Salecl:
Definitely, you know, the type of, let’s say, exploitation that we observe, you know, around the world and all kinds of, let’s say corporations are now becoming, you know, so ruthless in the way they organize the workplace, the way they exploit people, the way they damage nature. That’s definitely one thing. But the other thing is also the problem of new technologies. We hope quite often that new technologies would solve a lot of problems and they can. So, I’m not against new technologies, but what we are observing with the power in the hands of very few companies in the Silicon Valley in regards to the big data, in regards to the surveillance mechanisms that are linked to it and in regards to the possible control of all aspects of people’s lives, that’s one of the dangers of capitalism today. So, monopolies in regards to AI, big data, the development of new technology, and especially the possibility to manipulate democratic processes. This year we have more than 40 elections around the world. U.S. European Parliament among them. And my fear is that we will see much, much more manipulation than we have seen at the time of the scandal with Cambridge Analytica, for example. 

Carl Schlyter:
But the illusion of techno-salvation that’s kind of common in Silicon Valley. This is sometimes also used as a tool to pacify or delay changes of industries that are not adapted for living on this planet and within nature’s boundaries. So, this is not only a consequence, this is sometimes even used as a tool, isn’t it?

Renata Salecl:
Yes, absolutely. And if we look at the problem of legislation or control over this development, it is very much lacking. in Europe. We are trying to do something, but technology is very much ahead of us. And, you know, at this stage we see what the passivity, I would say in regards to somehow controlling the monopolies that are established. And often their answer is if we will break up the big monopolies in Silicon Valley, we will not be able to compete with China. And China, we know, is developing very rapidly. AI, all kinds of, let’s say, surveillance mechanisms related to it. 

Carl Schlyter:
How come we have this focus on technology compared to other solutions? 

Renata Salecl:
We have had psychological studies of people as consumers. You know how to target them, but we have not been investing or expecting anthropological studies, even psychoanalytic studies, which are trying to understand how people are functioning in today’s world, what kind of suffering, what kind of anxieties, what kind of imagination people have, what brings people some kind of psychological well-being that is a push for people to work on themselves. There is a whole industry of coaching and self-help. And this was all linked to the desire to be more and more productive. What psychoanalysts found out observing is that desire to be productive, however, goes hand-in-hand with a desire to be actually passive or somehow switch off. So British psychoanalyst Josh Cohen wrote an interesting book with the title Not Working, where he describes his patients coming to analysis, damned usually successful, hardworking and all they want to talk is about kind of just the possibility to do nothing, to lie for hours in bed or for a long time just to gaze in the newspaper. Not even the reading, maybe kind of focusing on the one line in the newspaper and kind of chilling. So hardworking people have this fantasy of passivity, which is interesting because rationally, of course, they’re trying often to do as much as possible to be more productive or more successful. And also, quite often wrongly, people think that they need to work hard to be happy or to make their children happy. And my idea is that all these pressures of the ideology of late capitalism or neoliberal ideology are creating as a side effect the feeling of guilt, the feeling of anxiety, you know, the feeling of inadequacy, which are pacifying people in the way that this kind of pacified people or anxious people are allowing the system in which we live to continue. So, when you are constantly questioning what you did wrong, which choices you will make wrongly, when we are constantly obsessing about your own well-being or you know, you’re thinking whether you are happy or not happy, then you are much less engaged with the question of social choices or with the question of how to mobilize yourself socially.

Carl Schlyter:
So, the thinking of capitalism and bringing everything on your table put the responsibility on you, gives us less time and effort to focus on social changes that would benefit everyone.

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, and also often you don’t observe how limited your choices actually are, how linked they are to the economic situation in which you live or even, I would say, the physical, ecological setting in which you live. You know, if you don’t have the environment, if you don’t have economic stability and economic means, then your choices are very, very limited.

For me, it was always interesting to observe in the United States there’s discussion about health care, people who don’t have means to have adequate health care, where often because of political discourse, convincing them that they should have a choice in regard to health care against universal health care. 

Carl Schlyter:
And that’s similar also to people when asked if they’re in favor of inheritance tax or a wealth tax, they tend to say no because if I would have $100 million, I would not like to pay taxes. Well, the thing is, you’re never going to have it, most of them.

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, that is interesting because some of the studies about anxieties in today’s society actually show that people are very much anxiety ridden first in regards to losing that little that they have. So not so much kind of seeing the broader picture, but just being, you know, afraid that that the little that they have would be gone and also, that they are kind of thinking about the possibility of possibility, which sometimes is linked to some kind of, you know, vision that maybe they will still make it or maybe they will kind of win in the lottery, or maybe their children will become the next Silicon Valley billionaires. I remember visiting Chile a couple of times, which is a very neoliberal society, and a few years ago, just before pandemic, I was speaking there with political scientists, psychoanalysts, you know, what kinds of mental suffering people are experiencing there. And of course, it was all the usual, you know, the anxiety, the feeling of inadequacy, a lot of self-damaging behavior. But interestingly, because they have 50 years of radical neoliberal ideology, people internalized so strongly that everything is in their hands that although they are working at that time, they had like 46 hours or something of work week and they were working maybe two jobs they still had the idea that maybe they will make it, that it is up to them, up to an individual to try to become very successful. 

Carl Schlyter:
But the ideology of the neoliberal logic would be that if you give people all these possibilities, they would be more active, fight more for success and well-being. Why isn’t that working in practice? 

Renata Salecl:
There is no real kind of state in the way giving people the possibility. The possibilities are quite limited. What the state could give is a very good education, very good health care. But what has been happening is that there has been an ideology going on for some time, which is very much linked to competition. So, winner takes all, that logic is at work in today’s capitalism. One person in the office will let’s say, given a special treat or the idea that you have to ruin your competitors, you have to be ruthless. So, for some time, this kind of ruthlessness has been glorified as a stepping stone towards success, which is why in many companies we observe top leaders with particular psychological characteristics, which, you know, in the cycle analytic circles, they would discuss them in terms of like psychopathy or, you know, sort of people in the kind of a borderline structure where this people might have fewer problems with responsibility towards others or responsibility towards society. So, this ruthlessness has been glorified, that you use other people as tools for your success, and then you discard them when you don’t need them anymore. You are not compassionate; you are not empathetic. So, empathy has been kind of neglected as something that we teach, even in schools. In schools, children are thought to first think about themselves. Sometimes, you know, we see kids not sharing notes because they perceive another pupil as competition. 

Carl Schlyter:
How modern is this thinking? Because when I talk with anthropologists, they quite often say that belonging to a group and helping each other out is a more natural reaction, not fighting and winning over everybody but finding possibilities of cooperation. So how is this possible that this has become the dominant narrative if it’s not in our nature?

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, I think you are right. And you know, in my home country, when Yugoslavia collapsed, there was also suddenly an emergence of new ideologies.

I was still schooled in the old socialist system in Yugoslavia where, you know, the ideology in school was group. You need to be part of the group, like even sports. Sport was about being a participant. It was not so much about winning. And nowadays, if you watch any competition in sports, if your team is not getting a medal, it’s like a disaster. Fourth place is a national disaster.

Carl Schlyter:
But if you have been growing up in a communist society, you would see the negative aspects of that and then want the complete opposite.

Renata Salecl:
It was more some kind of an imitation of societies around us that happened in post-socialism. So many post-socialist societies did not really go through a process of envisioning what kind of a future society they would like to build up, but they were pretty much kind of, let’s say, swamped into the capitalist regime. There was a huge interest in co-opting those countries into the international capitalist machinery, and people wrongly thought that with capitalism we will also, you know, kind of automatically develop democratic mechanisms.

But what we are observing more and more around the world when we are looking at this turn to all kinds of new authoritarianism or, you know, kind of right-wing populism, is that people are disillusioned, with the type of capitalism they are living in, the type of organization of society they are living in. They are also questioning the institutions, rightly so, but politicians, those who are gaining, are the ones who are also behaving as if they are an opposition even when they are elected. You know, leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, probably Milei now in Argentina, they win because they are perceived as the one who will clear the swamp, who will kind of let’s say change the political setting. And when they are elected, they continue in this populist role of trying to tear everything apart. 

Carl Schlyter:
This theory of a swamp is a very heavy wink to Mussolini who said exactly the same thing about Rome in the twenties. That was his slogan. 

Renata Salecl:
And many politicians are actually, in a way, copying him, which is why we have so many politicians who are, I would say, kind of developing their own kind of a fascist narrative. I would not say that these are a direct repetition of the previous, but there are a lot of elements of fascist ideology which we observe around the world. 

Carl Schlyter:
You said once the knowledge economy has become the ignorance economy, and also, we see a movement from Aristotle’s ideals of philosopher kings doing everything right for society, being only working for society as rulers. And now we come close to these leaders where they are not afraid of being ignorant. They think being ignorant is part of their attractiveness to come closer to people or whatever. How is it possible that these leaders are elected today? 

Renata Salecl:
Because people actually feel closer to them when politicians admit their own ignorance or disregard for knowledge. And it’s very interesting when politicians like Trump are lying. The more they lie, the more actually the audience stops caring. So, when people lie a little, then people notice of it. When someone lies a lot, people stop caring. Or sometimes it’s even a feeling that a listener is responsible for believing the politician. Everyone is kind of allowed to figure out for him or herself whether something is a fact, whether something is scientific truth. We have seen this at the time of the pandemic, where the idea was that everyone decides for him or herself, whether or not the vaccines are something that helps stop pandemic or not. And science has been, unfortunately losing in society. The discourse of science is very much pushed aside. And when politicians are ignorant in regards to scientific discourse, it’s for science very hard to have kind of a power in convincing people about the scientific facts. And I would say that the pandemic was also a very important moment where globally we have seen this kind of ignorance, strategic ignorance, and also structural ignorance at work in the world. The fact that rich countries did not share vaccines with the poor countries or they did not allow for the use of formula, they very much wanted to prevent poorer countries to make their own vaccines, giving all kinds of explanations that they are unable to produce them. 

When we see this combination of attack against truth, the attack against science by new authoritarian leaders and this lock-in effect of exaggerated intellectual property rights that actually limit research and development rather than promote it, when we see the combined effect of this, if Hannah Arendt would be alive today, she would probably say, I predicted that this will give rise to totalitarian regimes. First, you take away the truth and then you take away people’s belief of the truth, and then you can replace it with a totalitarian ideology.

What are the tools we can use to fight against this development? And what would you suggest?

Renata Salecl:
First is, I think, really important to understand that something has shifted
in our relationship to choose. So, the late Czech writer and former president Václav Havel, very interestingly, wrote about tools in his times. So, in the book The Power of the Powerless he gives an example of a greengrocer who doesn’t believe in the communist regime. And then every 1st of May, he nonetheless puts the obligatory in all colonies and the state flag in his shop. And Havel says if this person were to be able to live in truth, he would not do this and he would openly express this belief in the regime. And Havel also said that in some way the regime actually doesn’t need his belief, it’s enough for the regime that the guy just puts the flag in the window. Now, Havel’s belief was that we should start living in truth saying what we believe. What has changed today is that actually no one cares about truths anymore, and especially the power structures in a way thrive in a total disbelief that we can observe today.

Like when the war started in Ukraine for me it was shocking that very quickly the discussion started, did the war really happen? What is actually going on are the images real or fake? Are they manipulated and so on. So those kinds of discussions that we see now all the time and I think this is the change where we are not fighting for what is true or what isn’t, but that we are living in a total, I would say, disbelief. We are constantly questioning and actually, power loves that. Authoritarian leaders like Putin thrive in the fact that people, you know, are bickering over what is true or what isn’t. At the end of my book, A Passion for Ignorance, I discussed research which I was quite shocked when I read it. It was done by Danish-American political scientists who interviewed 5000 passionate Twitter users who were sharing fake news and conspiracy theories, and the researchers, through interviews, show that a majority of this Twitter users did not believe in what they were sharing. So, the question for me was why are people sharing something they don’t believe in? And I think they get two gains. First is they get the recognition from their own group through likes, you know, and sharing of those kinds of inflammatory posts. And second, they get recognition from the anger of the other group, let’s say people who have other political beliefs, when they respond furiously. That’s another kind of recognition, but even more shocking. 

Carl Schlyter:
Supported by the algorithms of the platforms of course. 

Renata Salecl:
Absolutely supported very much by the algorithms. But for me, another shocking part of this research was that about a quarter of those passionate Twitter users actually were hoping for the world in which we live to come to an end. So, they were fantasizing about, you know, kind of burning everything down and a small group would then start anew.

So we would have a total collapse of society, some big natural catastrophe. This was just before pandemic, so pandemic, you know, where it was almost like the realization of those fantasies, and then there would be like a small, small group doing a reset of society.

Carl Schlyter:
But this vision of the end of the world, hasn’t that historically been exploited by political leaders or religious leaders to get power? 

Renata Salecl:
Definitely, but it’s interesting to see when, you know, the system starts crumbling, all kinds of mythical thinking also emerge, which is why
I think this goes hand-in-hand with this on the one hand, disbelief in facts and truths and on the other hand, turn to all kinds of gurus or creating new types of mythical thinking.

So, a whole new field of study has developed recently, which is called Catastrophe Studies, sort of like a study of how the systems end. Collapsology is actually the term that in American academia they are using. 

Carl Schlyter:
But then we have some actual developments that scientifically are proven to be a threat to many things we are doing in society today. And that is the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis that is an actual real threat to society. Why are they not acting on the actual problem there? 

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, some are imagining that there will be a second coming of Christ and everything will turn out well for them. You know, let’s say this is the evangelical thinking, very strong now in the United States. And then I would say that you have a kind of a mythical thinking, which psychoanalysts have also analyzed, which is that you do not imagine actually your own death. It’s very hard to think that your own life will also end when you are kind of imagining the end of the world. But with the changes that we are observing, what I analyze with my research team at the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana, nowadays is also that, you know, with the catastrophes that we are going through, we are deeply changing society.

So, my research team is working on kind of a permanent state of exceptions that we are living through from September 11, economic crisis of 2008, migration crisis of 2015/2016 and COVID. So those crises have altered society. They have opened the doors for more surveillance and much more, I would say, cruel treatment of others, especially the migration crisis. And also, with the pandemic in many countries in all limitations to the right of protest has been established. So, we establish the time of crisis, a kind of a temporary state of exception, which then becomes, in one way or another, much more permanent state of exception, or it alters the democratic mechanisms and opens doors for new mechanisms of surveillance. And that’s kind of my fear that crises have been used in the last 20 something years for this reshaping of society in a much more anti-democratic, authoritarian leaning, and of course, surveillance obsessed society. 

Carl Schlyter:
That is also this thing of showing that you are doing something, even if it’s very, very inefficient but another thing is that I would like to ask you about that you have been researching is also the tyranny of choice. I remember a quote from Albert Camus that says, Shall I kill myself or shall I have a cup of coffee? And of course, ironic. But when we talk about these choices that leaders do all the time and the neoliberalism, that makes everything to a personal choice and the amount of time was spent doing personal choices. Is it possible that this is exploited by leaders in order to give us less time and energy and effort to engage in social change and politics and democracy?

Renata Salecl:
Definitely, psychologists know very well that when we have far too many choices, even as consumers to make, we at the end might actually not choose anything. You know, like if you have ten objects in the shop, you might choose one. But if you have hundreds of options, you might be so pacified. At the end you will exit the shop without buying anything and you will be overwhelmed in making more choices. And of course, that is also quite interesting research about consumer choices, which shows that a lot of people who already make consumer choice, you know, like buying a new car, after they made the choice, spent a lot of time looking at reviews or, you know, magazines about this particular object they chose, just to convince themselves that they have made the right choice. So, you know, after buying a car they will spend even more hours reading about the car just so that they feel that they have done it ok. And we are very much influenced by what others are choosing. Like when we go to a restaurant, we don’t know what to choose on the menu. And then quite often we ask our friends, what are you choosing? Or we ask the waiter, what do you suggest? Even those banal choices, you see how social they are. And the next important thing is that there is the unconscious mechanism which are, you know, kind of pushing us to make one choice or another and where rationally, you know, we might not be aware of this push, which is why, quite often no matter how long you would think you will be dissatisfied, which, you know, capitalism relies on. So, the fact that we are constantly dissatisfied, that we are constantly thinking, what do I want, what others want, what might be the right choice is what makes us actually human. Kind of let’s say, permanent dissatisfaction. So, we shouldn’t think that making a better choice would bring us more happiness, but it might make us, let’s say,
more anxious and less prone to think about global social issues, which I think where choice should really focus about what do we want, where are we going? Even people are working with AI now are realizing that we need to involve social scientists, anthropologists, psychologists to sort of figure out what might be the values of society, you know, what might be sort of, let’s say, the values that ChatGPT should in some way promote with its algorithms and what should be sort of, let’s say, the future vision of society that we are trying to build with the help of new technologies. 

Carl Schlyter:
And let’s see how long we are in control. Fred Hirsch said the tyranny of small choices, it takes so much time and effort to do all these small choices. 

Renata Salecl:
Exactly, in my last book on ignorance, I call that IKEAization of society. Like in the IKEA shop, Swedish invention, you do all the work yourself, choosing, schlepping around the shop, bringing it home. At least if you are poor and you are not hiring their services, and then putting the furniture’s together, you spend enormous amount of time and this logic that you would need to do everything yourself, make constant choices, is now permeating our whole lives. Buying, a ticket used to be in the past, you went to a travel agent. Okay, you can still do it, but the majority of people are searching for hours for the hotel and train tickets and pension fund. We’re wasting so much time nowadays and actually very much working hard on these often quite banal choices. But what is then happening is the feeling of responsibility when it comes to major things like what I mentioned before, the pandemic is vast. So, a lot of people did not vaccinate themselves because of this feeling of anxiety in regards to the choice that they need to make, or some people, very educated people nowadays are not vaccinating children because of this ideology of choice. They perceived themselves so responsible about everything that is happening in the lives of the children, that they’re endlessly researching vaccines. And I’m not trusting science or, you know, sort of, let’s say pediatricians, but they perceive that it is up to them, even if there are people without knowledge in vaccines or medicine, the responsibility that we need to have, you know, to make choice for ourselves is vast. 

Carl Schlyter:
And this shifting of responsibility, this is nothing new. I mean, already Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said the possibility of the possibilities gives us anxiety. So how come this has been aggravated with today’s system? What has changed?

Renata Salecl:
Capitalism really thrives and sort of constantly make us feel that we can gain more profit personally, that we can, you know, improve our lives, that there is some kind of an ideal of happiness being content and so on. And I think that capitalism really succeeded in creating much more misery with these new imperatives. So, the possibility of the possibilities became much more vast. And of course, we also have had enormous successes, economic successes of a very, very small group of people, you know, less than 1% nowadays, 0.1%. And when you observe these enormous successes which came out of creating an app or having some kind of a brilliant idea, this fantasy of possibility of possibility became even stronger. 

Carl Schlyter:
And so, if we want to vaccinate us against the negative impact of possibilities and choice, what advice would you give people who want to spend more time on changing society and not spend their whole life making minuscule choices in their own lives?

Renata Salecl:
I would say believe in the ideology of happiness is really pointless. You should kind of stop striving to create this kind of, let’s say, a happy outcome in your life. There are far too many unpredictable things. And, you know, happiness is cheating, it might be temporary but it cannot be a goal neither for us nor for children. We need to think beyond ourselves. We need to sort of overcome this extreme individualism in the type of crisis we are living, especially with climate change, with the inequalities. It is very important to engage, to engage and fight for democracy. You know, go back to even thinking about human rights, I’m involved with a group which is proposing a new human right, which kind of deals with psychological and physical effects related to threats from above, which means military attacks, climate change and surveillance. It might appear like a utopian project, but a group of artists, theorists decided that with this kind of, let’s say it might be utopian or that’s say too optimistic projects, we are at least opening up discussions of where we are going and what might be kind of a possibility to alter the course of society, which unfortunately all around the world is going in a very, very bad direction. So, I would say that social engagement and before acting, thinking, analyzing, looking broadly interdisciplinary, that might be, I’d say, a way to go and not obsessing simply about individual consumer choices. 

Carl Schlyter:
I think you exaggerate when you say it’s utopian because I have started to see a counter push to this also where people get more local engagement and more cooperation, you can see that growing as well. So, there is a counterforce emerging. 

Renata Salecl:
I think that is great. My fear is when you have just local engagement that maybe it’s one step but not enough because the power center nonetheless can very much kind of steer the states, the society generally in the wrong direction. So, you might have a little enclave where the community, you know, tries to be as engaged as possible and that is fantastic. But the bigger picture should not be forgotten of where capitalism is going today and whether, you know, we can somehow work on democratic institutions, change to make them better, but not abolish them. 

Carl Schlyter:
Another psychological character, very much promoted by capitalism, is being a maximizer. What is that and what negative effects do that have?

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, I would say that the first is quite often burnout. When we try to multitask, kind of squeeze out ourselves the most we can. Quite often at some point physically and even more psychologically, we might experience a kind of negative effect of that. That’s why we see quite an increase of kind of the strategy of laying low. In China, especially during the pandemic they observed doing the minimal of work so that you are not fired from the job, but trying to be as passive as possible and actually switch off as much as possible at the workplace, but also in your private life. 

Carl Schlyter:
What could be the benefits of having a more sufficiency approach to your life? 

Renata Salecl:
If you look a little bit beyond yourself you know, we’re speaking about the pandemic of loneliness in today’s society, not only disconnection, in some families where parents might work this long hour or, you know, are very anxious. So, the anxiety that exists in the family in regards to economic situation, precarity of employment, inadequate housing, all this affects children. Not only the fact that parents don’t spend enough time with them. Parents who are unemployed might spend lot of time with their children, but, you know, the anxiety that they are unemployed might affect children in a very dramatic way.

So, what we are more and more observing is that the well-being of humans relies on creating some kind of social networks. And in UK, they’re trying to figure out in the global way how to tackle loneliness. You know, there are kind of small initiatives that have been successful, like little groups being encouraged in the communities. People are being encouraged to reach out to neighbors and so on, but they are just a drop, not really an engaging thing. So, I think that we need to strengthen communities, strong boundaries. Schools are, I would say, kind of the help of parents dealing with small children because the psychological benefits when parents are psychologically, let’s say, supported when someone answers to their anxieties are really helping for the physical and psychological development of children. So, I would say definitely providing economic means is one important step, but kind of empowering parents to also trusting themselves. And the British psychoanalyst Winnicott rightly said we can only become good enough parents. While the ideal of being perfect parents doing everything for your children, making perfect choices have been very much propagated, and a lot of parents nowadays deal with the anxiety that they have not done enough or make the right choices. 

Carl Schlyter:
How can a government and our economy help people to feel that good enough is good?

What kind of changes in our economy and political system would help people to feel less anxiety, to destroy the planet less? What kind of decisions would make us go in the right direction here?

Renata Salecl:
Yeah, we are now entering the whole debate of whether the capitalism in which we are living is here to stay. Can we envision a different type of organization of society? Can we envision a less profit driven economy? I think we are really entering very important political and economical discussions to this, to which I think we need to find answers. Unfortunately, so far, we have been neglecting globally the idea of any kind of rethinking the economic development that we are, you know, sort of encouraging today. And unfortunately, also we don’t have many politicians who are visionaries. It’s very difficult today to find politicians who are thinking decades ahead unfortunately. The political game became so dirty that often those who go into politics are the ones who themselves, either they have very thick skin and can survive all the attacks or are kind of, let’s say, ruthless people who don’t care that much about others but mostly about their own climbing the ladder of success. 

Carl Schlyter:
Thanks a lot for that and thanks for this nice talk.

Renata Salecl:
Thank you.