ABSTRACT
Selfishness is rampaging through global society. Narcissism, the extreme expression of selfishness, has become is an apparent trait of business and political leaders. Consumerism, everyday activity of accumulating ‘wants’ rather than just ‘needs’, is proliferating and is required so to do for the world’s economic system not to collapse. The self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-directing, autonomous, ‘me-first’ individual is an essential component of contemporary capitalism and contemporary expressions of what it is to be a ‘normal’ human. However, there are severe side-effects from selfishness for the self and society. Capitalism’s survival rests on its capacity to not only sustain but intensity consumerism at a time when concerns over the climate, pollution, and the pointlessness of buying more and more ‘things’ is being challenged. In this chapter, it is argued that an obsession with personal satisfaction and happiness is making people worried and miserable. The consumer society produce widespread melancholy, a sense that the self, in seeking satisfaction from consuming, has found only dissociation from itself and from other selves.
