“Emotions arise, above all, when circumstances change – and perception shifts. Rationality entails duration, consistency and regularity. It prefers stable conditions. The neoliberal economy, increasingly dismantling continuity and progressively integrating instability in order to enhance productivity, is pushing the emotionalization of the productive process forward. Accelerated communication also promotes its emotionalization. Rationality is slower than emotionality; it has no speed, as it were. Thus, the pressure of acceleration now is leading to a dictatorship of emotion.
Consumer capitalism enlists emotion in order to generate more desires and needs. Emotional Design moulds emotions and shapes emotional patterns for the sake of maximizing consumption. All in all, today we do not consume things so much as emotions. The former cannot be consumed without end – but the latter can. Emotions assume dimensions beyond the scope of use value. In so doing, they open up a field of consumption that is new and knows no limit.” – Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics
Broken River Blog 