Feel lonely? Don’t worry, someday your eyes will meet those of your perfect mate. Wait for the end of your loneliness, don’t change your behavior or your expectations, but make sure you look good, always, so your love can recognize you in one glance. Feel powerless? You might be a wizard, or a superhero, or friends with a secret agent: At the very least, there’s one coming to rescue you. Don’t worry, individuals will always have the power to overcome and appear when they’re needed, so don’t unite or organize. Think being poor sucks? But even this fat slob succeeded by being in the right place at the right time! Keep working. Opportunity comes for everyone.

Entertainment reinforces the narcissistic myth of the consumer as master of his own experience: In the movies, a protagonist always wins by making the right choices or loses by making the wrong ones. The important thing isn’t success or failure, tragedy or comedy, it’s the protagonist’s individual responsibility: If he’s crushed, it’s because he picked a fight with an enemy too powerful to overcome. If he finds love, success, and happiness, it’s because he did the right things starting from a level playing field where anyone can succeed. But the individual’s actions provide cover for the systematic processes of alienation and exploitation.

Via the new enquiry