The market, adaptability and false challenges

A most nefarious aspect of late Capitalist society is the idea that people ought to work on themselves to change to be more effective.   Of course there are many ways to analyse, see and be better at what you do. This is different being exhorted to adapt and improve to respond more effectively to the demands of others.    A problem with accommodating the demands of others is that they have not been screened to determine their rationality, freedom from malice, capacity to perceive accurately, ability to be free from prejudices, and so on.  Adaptability thus becomes a spiritual meat-grinder.  

To refuse to pass through the meat-grinder gives the impression that one considers one's present state to be all too precious.   After all, others have happily passed through it, or so it would seem.   To pass through the grinder by accepting public opinion means that one is changed.   In a fundamental sense, one has altered according to the needs, demands and emotional requirements of others.   These others are a black box of consumerist needs and qualities that are defined abstractly.   Tomorrow, they may have different demands.

Adaptability is demanded by an unstable economy, and capitalism is the quintessence of economic instability, since its principles of success demand constant change.  Although economic systems are, in themselves, without moral meaning, people nonetheless assume that adaptability has a moral meaning.   To fail to adapt when change is demanded of you seems to imply retaining the aura of an unethical stance.   After all, others demand it and your own well-being (in the short-term) depends on it.   The situation you are commanded to adapt to may be amoral, but you stance sure as hell isn't.

Responsiveness is a market need and anything else is not self-preservation but selfishness, for the market eats all of its children -- and it eats them again and again.

Perhaps it is due to the hollowness of market demands that many these days now refuse to be anything other than what they "are", maintaining that if they have any deficiencies, these are surely biological and unchangeable. The market for psychiatric drugs increases, as many fall back on the position that there is nothing they can do to change themselves.   At the same time, everybody recognizes that acquiescence to market forces is necessary, no matter how illogical or harmful their impact on the person.

So contemporary society poses the problem:  "Change is impossible (because it's never enough) -- but it is necessary for survival."   It is no wonder that most people's responses to its demands for adaptability remain incoherent.

Giving children psychiatric drugs is an example of a typical non-response.