Goblin mode is another manifestation of "Tang Ping" [1] and the "Great
Resignation" [2]. We're seeing a global regressive psychological
event. Perhaps it's a reaction to the "shaming industrial complex" I
read about earlier [3].
I think we got into this horrible self-obsessed insecurity when the
honourable Protestant work ethic mutated into something dark under
late capitalism. As people are forced to commodify themselves, to
"work on themselves", not as selves but as objectified means to sell
in pursuit of ends, simply to eat, they eventually give up. Erich
Fromm elegantly describes this process of reification and its effects
on the soul [4]. Similarly, the relentless pressure of advertising,
and technology that sells domesticated conformity, popularity, and
tepid acceptability, actually produces its opposite in the long run.
Our self can only emerge once we've shaken off all that pressure.
Goblin mode may look like surrender in the face of a system of
unreasonable demands, but it is a surrender against it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810085
[4] http://www.core.eqi.org/fromm.htm
I think we got into this horrible self-obsessed insecurity when the honourable Protestant work ethic mutated into something dark under late capitalism. As people are forced to commodify themselves, to "work on themselves", not as selves but as objectified means to sell in pursuit of ends, simply to eat, they eventually give up. Erich Fromm elegantly describes this process of reification and its effects on the soul [4]. Similarly, the relentless pressure of advertising, and technology that sells domesticated conformity, popularity, and tepid acceptability, actually produces its opposite in the long run. Our self can only emerge once we've shaken off all that pressure.
Goblin mode may look like surrender in the face of a system of unreasonable demands, but it is a surrender against it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30810085
[4] http://www.core.eqi.org/fromm.htm