Page 195 - Necmettin Erbakan University Press

THE POST-MODERN CONSUMER’S PAIN OF
MEANING A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION IN
SOCIAL THE CONTEXT OF BYUNG-CHUL HAN

Editor : H.Cagatay KARABIYIK
Page : 145

Measurement : 13,5X21 cm
Year : 2023
Category : Social
ISBN : 978-625-6960-77-0
E-ISBN : 978-625-6960-78-7
DOI : 10.51144/neupress.2023.190

Humanity today has more products and consumption possibilities than ever before in history. Even an average life from the Middle Ages
would seem like a hellish agony for the post-modern individual. Nevertheless, the post-modern individual lives in an abstract and hypothetical
anxiety that is rare in history. Despite having unlimited access to food, the post-modern individual takes food supplements for fear of vitamin
deficiency and worries about starvation despite the food stocked in the fridge and freezer. When the root of this concern is analysed, the fear
of consuming less than other people or less than unlimited food emerges rather than the fear of deprivation. In other words, post-modern
man has become an unsatisfied consumer unless he consumes unlimitedly. In other words, the post-modern individual is condemned to
dissatisfaction and as a result, post-modern psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety emerge. It was unthinkable that
psychological problems would not become post in the period when everything became post. Under these circumstances, marketing science
should abandon a growth orientation focused only on the economy and philosophically address the consumer society through alternative
economic understandings and normative structure. Through the approach of the Frankfurt School to marketing and consumption in this
context, this study analyses the approaches developed by Byung-Chul Han, one of the most important philosophers of our time, towards
post-modern society in the context of marketing and consumption, and proposes solutions to the pain of meaning of the post-modern
individual in the context of vita contemplativa. Hoping for a more humane and livable economy, nature and world with the understanding of
economy for people rather than people for economy.
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