WAD.

 

Western affluence disease, also known by the acronym WAD, is contagious and has not been contained to the West where it originates in the 18th Century. The symptoms are as follows:

1. Politicised cynicism - an inclination to believe that all governments are corrupt because the party-system is motivated by self-interest, no politician can ever solve our problems and we need to resolve our problems outside of the state. We might as well not vote, nothing will ever change and we should just accept that.

2. Obligatory jouissance - the injunction to enjoy, you can therefore you must, to indulge. This is not the realisation of freedom as it lacks the freedom from enjoyment. Instead it leaves you trapped on a hedonic "hamster wheel" constantly chasing gratification.

3. Commodity fetishism - to derive meaning, value, status or identity from possessions and money. Products seem to take on a life of their own, there value determined by "mysterious forces" and not by the market, leaving people working to attain them.

4. Permitted rebellion - hedonistic escapism, e.g. raving, which does not defy the confines of our so-called "permissive society" but remains embedded firmly in the dominant ideology. A rebellion which is permitted, controlled and provided at a price.

5. Sport-enhanced jingoism - aggressive nationalist tendencies evoked by sport events, which act as a substitute for warfare, in a controlled area and is usually characterised by an overtly homoerotic drinking session in which there is a distinct absences of gays.

6. Liberal communism - the tendency to seek a progressive outcome from a system which undermines such an outcome, in accordance with a logic of private vices reap public rewards. For instance, you cannot end world poverty within capitalism as the economic system is partly driven by poverty.

If you suffer from any of the symptoms above notify a dialectician (preferably one with a beard) as soon as possible.