There is a paradox embedded in consumer capitalism involving the distinction between the personal and the nonpersonal. All interactions with the economic system, from ordering fast food at a drive-up window to filing income taxes are assumed to operate in the realm of the nonpersonal. There is nothing about the interaction that is meant to be relevant for you personally, as a unique individual human being. It is not you, what’s relevant to the exchange is the specific systemic role that you are playing at the time.
When you are interacting with the machine of civilization, you are not acting as a person. An unspoken requirement of participating in the system is that you first relinquish a substantive portion of your personhood. There are some situations—herded like cattle through the roped cue for a flight at the airport, for instance—where this is uncomfortably obvious. But not to worry, everyone else is being dehumanized in the exact same way, so it’s nothing personal.
“It’s nothing personal” is how a workplace supervisor ended the conversation several years ago after he informed me that I was being passed over for a promotion. Let’s be clear, it’s always personal. All experience is in the first-person (or first-bird, or first-catfish, or first-grasshopper). There is nothing that you could possibly experience that isn’t irreducibly personal even if everyone on the planet was experiencing the exact same thing.
It is relatively easy to trace the ways that the idea of the nonpersonal serves the interests of power. What would happen if we refused to accept the lie? What would happen if we insisted on making it all personal?
