ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at consciousness and its creations, as a mutually interactive system. Changes of consciousness and of technologies mutually influence one another as interacting parts of an economic system. Capitalism, like all economic activity, is an attempt to overcome the insecurity of existence and the anxiety of death with material production and increased consumption. Capitalism has been most inventive and revolutionary economic system in the history of mankind. Capitalism was made possible by changes in religious consciousness, which became less Catholic and more Protestant. Capitalism breaks down the extended family system, the natural container for identity formation for millennia. Capitalism with its intense division of labour produces a more specialised but narrower consciousness, but largely ignorant of, the nature of the products and services it creates. Technology and the economic and military system, though created by the knowledge of the human race, very soon stand over and dominate it, a reification that in turn shapes consciousness and social relationships.
