The Resolution is inherently founded in the desire to move forward and not look back at its past mistakes.

Instead, it progresses in endless consumption and consumerism by creating this grandiose advertisement in the debate community that we should commit to investment of transportation infrastructure Pricen 10 - Ph.D., Political Economy and Government, 1988, Harvard University, M.P.A., 1983,
Harvard University, B.A. cum laude, Biology, 1975, Pomona College (Thomas, Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order, pg. 39-41)//EA To begin, in the climate debate, after the skeptics became marginalized in the face of overwhelming evidence, the signal would go something like this: Okay, climate change is real and its largely caused by humans. As leaders in politics and business, we get that. And we know there are other problems like tainted food and polluted water. We get that, too. But listen, theres no point dwelling on the past. Whats done is done. Weve gotta move forward. How often does such a statement sound right (no use crying over spilled milk; the past is past), and yet somehow suspicious? What this rhetoric does is divert peoples attention. It deflects real action. It lets off the hook those who have written the rules of the gamethe game of endless extraction and consumptionand who themselves have profited so handsomely from that game. And it perpetuates that very same game, only with a green gloss. Heres how. First, the very phrase move forward sounds reasonable. In fact, in one sense, it is the only option: one cannot go back to the past. Whats more, it is very agreeable: Yes, we burned fossil fuels and warmed the planet. Yes, we consumed voraciously. But we cant go back and undo our wrongs. No point in trying. All we can do is, well, move forward. If the phrase move forward has a modern ring to it, thats because it is the quintessential rhetorical expression of progress. Progressives never look back. Theirs is a steady march forward, right up that ridge, never looking back or down or sideways. Second, the phrase is suspicious because those who use it do not spell it out. Move forward is a journey metaphor. Were all on a path to our destinationa distant mountain peak, sayand weve been stopped by a fallen log or weve slipped on loose grave. Gotta pick ourselves up, dust of, and get going again forward, of course; on the same path, of course. No mention of other paths. No questioning whether this path or this mountain is the right one. Third, to proclaim the need to move forward is to claim that what we have always done is what we will always do, what we must do. And what we must do is stay the course. Progressives (and they span the political spectrum, from left to right) use the phrase to justify the status quo. It justifies the current path and absolves of responsibility those who tread this path. It lets off the hook those who have promoted endless growth and mindless consumption, who havent a qualm about displacing the costs onto the poor and weak and onto future generations, who have manipulated and deceived others for self-gain. And, fourth, the move forward order is convenient, especially in a society dedicated to progress, to seeing bounteous plenty in the future and backward misery in the past . It is a convenient rhetorical tool for painting opponents (including those of us who question the path of continuous industrial expansion and the mountain of consumer goods) as antiprogress, as neer-do-wells acting against all that makes modern life good. But all kinds of progress are hidden in the moving forward rhetoric. Failures are excused, misdeeds forgiven. Everything continues, unchallenged, unchallengeable. And for defenders of endless industrial growth, commercialization, commodification, and consumerism, it means business as usual, just greener and more efficient. What to do? First, whenever the term is used, assume, until proven otherwise, that it is self-serving, self-justifying, and manipulative. It cannot, needless to say, be a basis for getting on a sustainable path. Second, do not let apologists for the status quo get away with painting the alternative to their path as going backward, turning off the lights, crawling inot the cave and shivering in the dark. There are other paths and other mountains and new valleys. They exist. And so they are possible. One might call these alternative paths restrained consumption, healthy community, sustainable living.

And this Consumerism has changed into a nuance of commanded enjoyment, where our desires are biopolitically controlled and we enter predetermined channels of behavior established by a consuming paradox Stavrakakis 2006 (Yannis Stavrakakis, is a Greek political theorist. A member of the Essex School of discourse
analysis, he is mainly known for his explorations of the importance of psychoanalytic theory for contemporary political and cultural analysis. Objects
of Consumption, Causes of Desire: Consumerism and Advertising in Societies of Commanded Enjoyment. Pages 83-103.)

Recent Lacanian theorizations of consumer society have highlighted these political implications of consumerism, and especially its central role in instituting and reproducing the social order in late capitalism. Todd McGowans recent book The End of Dissatisfaction? deserves much praise in this respect. McGowan starts by registering the enjoyment explosion surrounding us in consumer society and develops the hypothesis that it marks a significant shift in the structure of the social bond, in social organization (1). In particular, he speaks of a passage from a society of prohibition into a society of commanded enjoyment(2). While more traditional forms of social organization required subjects to renounce their private enjoyment in the name of social duty, today the only duty seems to consist in enjoying oneself as much as possible (2). This is the call that is addressed to us from all sides: the media, advertisements, even our own friends. Societies of prohibition were founded on an idealization of sacrifice, of sacrificing enjoyment for the sake of social duty; in our societies of commanded enjoyment the private enjoyment that threatened the stability of the society of prohibition becomes a stabilizing force and even acquires the status of a duty (3). This emerging society of commanded enjoyment is not concomitant with capitalism in general; it characterizes, in particular, late capitalism. In its initial phases, with its reliance on work ethic and Max Webers delayed gratification (Sennett 31), capitalism sustained and necessitated its own form of prohibition (McGowan 31). Simply put, early capitalism thwarted enjoyment to the same extent that [many] traditional societies did (31). Indeed, the classical bourgeois attitude - and bourgeois political economy - was initially based on postponement, the deferral of jouissances, patient retention with a view to the supplementary jouissance that is calculated. Accumulate in order to accumulate, produce in order to produce (Goux 203-4). It is the emergence of mass production and a consumer culture that signifies the beginning of the turn to the command to enjoy, but it is only with late capitalist globalization that the transformation is completed (McGowan 33). In The System of Objects, Baudrillard had also described this shift from an ascetic model of ethics organized around sacrifice to a new morality of enjoyment: the status of a whole civilization changes along with the way in which its everyday objects make themselves present and the way in which they are enjoyed . . . The ascetic mode of accumulation, rooted in forethought, in sacrifice . . . was the foundation of a whole civilization of thrift which enjoyed its own heroic period (172). In societies of commanded enjoyment duty makes sense predominantly as a duty to enjoy: duty is transformed into a duty to enjoy, which is precisely the commandment of the superego (McGowan 34). The seemingly innocent and benevolent call to enjoy! - as in Enjoy Coca-Cola! - embodies the violent dimension of an irresistible commandment. Lacan was perhaps the first to perceive the importance of this paradoxical hybrid when he linked the command enjoy! with the superego: The superego is the imperative of jouissance - Enjoy! (Seminar XX 3). He was the first to detect in this innocent call the unmistakable mark of power and authority. Thus Lacan is offering a revealing insight into what has been described as the consuming paradox: while consumerism seems to broaden our opportunities, choices and experiences as individuals, it also directs us towards predetermined channels of behavior and thus it is ultimately as constraining as it is enabling (Miles 147). The desire stimulated - and imposed - by advertising discourse is, in this sense, the desire of the Other par excellence. Already in 1968, Baudrillard had captured the moral dynamics of an obligation to buy, and recent consumption research is becoming increasingly more alert to this forced choice of consumerism: It is now something of a duty to explore personal identity through consumption

(Daunton and Hilton 31).18 In late capitalist consumer society this is the interpellating command that constructs us as social subjects: thus, apart from products and advertising fantasies, what is also manufactured is consumers (Fine 168). It is here that the triumph of advertising is located, as Adorno and Horkheimer already knew: consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them (167).19

The command to enjoy is just a form of power which makes us obey to this enjoyment, thus making the command to enjoy the root of all consumerism and without recognizing it through the psychoanalyst lens and diverting the jouissance; we cannot properly destroy the consumerist paradox Stavrakakis 2006 (Yannis Stavrakakis, is a Greek political theorist. A member of the Essex School of discourse analysis, he is mainly
known for his explorations of the importance of psychoanalytic theory for contemporary political and cultural analysis. Objects of Consumption, Causes of Desire: Consumerism and Advertising in Societies of Commanded Enjoyment. Pages 83-103.)

Let me make clear, however, that what we encounter here, albeit an important moral shift, is not some kind of radical historical break of cosmological proportions. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the administration of enjoyment and the structuration of desire are always implicated in the institution of the social bond. Every society has to come to terms with the impossibility of attaining jouissance as fullness; it is only the fantasies produced and circulated to mask or at least domesticate this trauma that can vary, and in fact do vary immensely. Prohibition and commanded enjoyment are two such distinct strategies designed to institute the social bond and legitimize authority and power in different ways. Nevertheless, in both cases, certain things remain unchanged. What remains the same is, first of all, the impossibility of realizing the fantasy: The fundamental thing to recognize about the society of enjoyment is that in it the pursuit of enjoyment has misfired: the society of enjoyment has not provided the enjoyment that it promises (McGowan 7). We have seen throughout this essay how dissatisfaction and lack remain firmly inscribed within the dialectics of late capitalist consumerism. But if this is the case, then the command to enjoy is only revealed as a more nuanced form of prohibition; it continues - with other means - the traditional function of symbolic Law and power (39).20 This was something also observed by Baudrillard. In our consumer societies, authority and symbolic power are as operative as in societies of prohibition: enforced happiness and enjoyment are the equivalent of the traditional imperatives to work and produce (Consumer Society 80). Indeed, McGowan uses the word obedience to refer to our attachment to the enjoyment commandment. The command to enjoy is nothing but an advanced, much more nuanced - and much more difficult to resist - form of power. It is more effective than the traditional model not because it is less constraining or less binding but because its violent exclusionary aspect is masked by its vow to enhance enjoyment, by its productive, enabling facade: it does not oppose and prohibit but openly attempts to embrace and appropriate le sujet de la jouissance. 21 However, in opposition to what McGowan seems to imply, recognizing the extent of our obedience to this enjoyment commandment cannot be enough to find a way out of this obedience (194). Not only is this novel articulation of power and enjoyment hard to recognize and to thematize; it is even harder to de-legitimize in practice, to dis-invest consumption acts and dis-identify with consumerism. However, without such a dis-investment and the cultivation of alternative (ethical) administrations of jouissance, no real change can be effected. These two interrelated tasks comprise the very core of our ethico-political predicament in late modernity.

Consumerism causes a sense of fear in individuals, where we securitize ourselves through a need to cover up these fears in a form of destructive consumerism McGregor 2003 (Dr. Sue McGregor is Coordinator, Undergraduate Peace and Conflict Studies Program

Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Date made 2003. Date retrieved May 18, 2013. Consumerism as a Source of Structural Violence. http://www.kon.org/hswp/archive/consumerism.html)

Unfortunately, this practice creates a false, temporary sense of inner peace because the religion of the market (a system of beliefs) co-opts aspects of humanity and spirituality. People eventually begin to think that things are out of whack, that their priorities are mixed up, that their moral center is being lost so . . . they spend more to cover up the fear. To exacerbate this fear, technology has left people isolated with no sense of belonging. It has cocooned them to the extent that they are blinded to their destructive ways. Wisalo (1999) suggests that such destructive consumerism occurs because of humans' insecurity in their hearts and minds. Ironically, people allegedly consume to gain this security. He says that people feel they can become a new person by purchasing those products that support their self-image of whom they are, want to be, and where they want to go. Unfortunately, this approach to becoming a new person, to developing a sense of self, is unsustainable. People "under the influence of consumerism" never feel completely satisfied because owning something cannot help meet the security of heart and mind, the deeper needs of humanity. Constantly spending and accumulating only gives short-term fulfilment and relief from the need to have peace and security in life. Consumerism is the misplaced belief (myth) that consuming will gratify the individual. In this sense, it is an acceptance of consumption as a way to self-development, self-realization, and self-fulfilment. In a consumer society, an individual's identity is tied to what she or he consumes. People buy more than they need for basic subsistence and are concerned for their self-interest rather than for mutual, communal, or ecological interest. In a consumer society, whatever maximizes individual happiness is considered the best action and that line of thinking gets translated into accumulating goods and using more services (Goodwin, Ackerman & Kiron, 1997). Society has even gone so far as to understand consumerism to be a vehicle for freedom, power, and happiness. It supplements work, religion, and politics as the main mechanism by which social status and distinction are achieved. Although people perceive each of the isolated (a) personal moments of consumption, (b) working within the home, and (c) engaging in cultural endeavors as very private, they are actually very public actions, inherently tied to global economic and political processes.

And this consumerism creates an invisible violence through the institution of modern slavery to the commodity McGregor 2003 (Dr. Sue McGregor is Coordinator, Undergraduate Peace and Conflict Studies Program
Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Date made 2003. Date retrieved May 18, 2013. Consumerism as a Source of Structural Violence.

http://www.kon.org/hswp/archive/consumerism.html) Persons living in a consumer society live a comfortable life at the expense of impoverished labourers and fragile ecosystems in other countries. Too often, they conclude that they must arm themselves to protect their commodities and the ongoing access to them. This position justifies war and violence (Cejka, 2003). The "veil of consumerism" enables them to overlook the connections between consumerism and oppressive regimes (governments, world financial institutions, and transnational corporations) that violate human rights, increase drug trade, and boost military spending (Sankofa, 2003). This disregard is possible because consumerism accentuates and accelerates human fragmentation, isolation, and exclusion for the profit of the few, contributing significantly to violence (Board of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, 1994). Society has ignored the "new slavery" and the resultant disposable people through ignoring the implications of consumption decisions on third world citizens, the next generation, and those not yet born (Sankofa). This ignorance of structural violence maintains the systemit outweighs nuclear war and is linear Mumia Abu-Jamal 98 activist, former Black Panther member, prisoner
(A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE, accessible at

http://www.angelfire.com/az/catchphraze/mumiaswords.html,

It has often been observed that America

is a truly violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of social and communal 20,000 people are killed by others, and additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the nonlethal violence that Americans daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent features of living in the midst of the American empire. We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By "structural
violence that occurs daily in the nation. Every year, some violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those

class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective
York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This

excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the

wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New

form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. [Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of the social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense selfhatred was often manifested in familial violence as when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other.

This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized in substandard educational systems, and un- understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on the spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -that we can recognize and must react to it. This fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor. It is found in every country, submerged beneath the sands of history, buried, yet ever present, as omnipotent as death. In the struggles over the commons in Europe,

when the peasants struggled and lost their battles for their commonal lands (a precursor to similar struggles throughout Africa and the Americas), this violence was sanctified, by church and crown, as the 'Divine Right of Kings' to the spoils of class battle. Scholars Frances FoxPiven and Richard A Cloward wrote, in The New Class War (Pantheon, 1982/1985): They did not lose because landowners were immune to burning and preaching and rioting. They lost because the usurpations of owners were regularly defended by the legal authority and the armed force of the state. It was the state that imposed increased taxes or enforced the payment of increased rents, and evicted or jailed those who could not pay the resulting debts. It was the state that made lawful the appropriation by landowners of the forests, streams, and commons, and imposed terrifying penalties on those who persisted in claiming the old rights to these resources. It was the state that freed serfs or emancipated sharecroppers only to leave them landless. (52) The as now. It was

"Law", then, was a tool of the powerful to protect their interests, then, a weapon against the poor and impoverished, then, as now. It punished retail violence, while turning a blind eye to the wholesale violence daily done by their class masters. The law was, and is, a tool of state power, utilized to protect the status quo, no matter how oppressive that status was, or is. Systems are essentially ways of doing things that have concretized into tradition, and custom, without regard to the rightness of those ways. No system that causes this kind of harm to people should be allowed to remain, based solely upon its time in existence. Systems must serve life, or be discarded as a threat and a danger to life. Such systems must pass away, so that their great and terrible violence passes away with them.

Structural Violence is a direct result of the ignorance that permeates from consumer society, and is the worst impact as it normalizes

structural deficiencies to different races, women, people of different sexual orientation, etc. McGregor 2003 (Dr. Sue McGregor is Coordinator, Undergraduate Peace and Conflict Studies Program
Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Date made 2003. Date retrieved May 18, 2013. Consumerism as a Source of Structural Violence.

http://www.kon.org/hswp/archive/consumerism.html) Johan Galtung (1969) first coined the term structural violence intending it to refer to the presence of justice (positive peace) to balance the prevailing focus on negative peace, the absence of war and violence. Whereas direct violence and war are very visible, structural violence is almost invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions, and regular experience. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary, the way things are and always have been done. Worse yet, even those who are victims of structural violence often do not see the systematic ways in which their plight is choreographed by unequal and unfair distribution of society's resources or by human constraint caused by economic and political structures. Unequal access to resources, political power, education, health care, or legal standing are all forms of structural violence (Winter & Leighton, 1999). Structural violence can also occur in a society if institutions and policies are designed in such a way that barriers result in lack of adequate food, housing, health, safe and just working conditions, education, economic security, clothing, and family relationships. People affected by structural violence tend to live a life of oppression, exclusion, exploitation, marginalization, collective humiliation, stigmatization, repression, inequities, and lack of opportunities due to no fault of their own, per se. The people most affected by structural violence are women, children, and elders; those from different ethnic, racial, and religious groups; and sexual orientation. Those adversely affected by structural violence are not involved in direct conflict that is readily identifiable. Because they, and others, may not comprehend the origin of the conflict, they feel they are to blame, or are blamed, for their own life conditions. This perception is readily escalated because people's perceptual and cognitive processes normally divide people into in-groups and out-groups. Those outside "our group" lie outside our scope of interest and justice. They are invisible. Injustice that would be instantaneously confronted if it occurred to someone in "our group" is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those who are invisible and irrelevant. Those who fall outside "our group" are easily morally excluded and become demeaned or invisible, so we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer (Winter & Leighton, 1999). "Consumerism is the drug that causes people to fall into moral sleep and remain silent on all kinds of public matters. As long as their little world of peace and relative prosperity is not disturbed, they are happy not to get involved. It is against this background of consumer complacency that all kinds of moral relaxation can arise . . . . A consumer society is one that is prepared to sacrifice its ethics on the altar of the material 'feel-good' factor" (Benton, 1998). All desire is a desire of the Other---our endless desire to consume is no more than an unfulfillable fantasy---we always constantly desire more, to the point where death becomes the only cure to our desires Jeanne L. Schroeder 98 Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, COMMENTARY:
THE END OF THE MARKET: A PSYCHOANALYSIS OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 112 Harv. L. Rev. 483 According to Hegel, we seek property and engage in market transactions out of unfulfillable desire . But this desire is not, as economists pretend, a desire for material things, utility, or wealth. To Hegel, each abstract person (that is, the individual in the state of nature posited by Enlightenment political philosophy) seeks to actualize his potential freedom through recognition by others. n30 Although Hegel does not use [*496] the express vocabulary of eroticism, in Lacanian psychoanalysis this longing to understand oneself through recognition is desire (specifically Eros). We desire things derivatively as a means of achieving our true desire - the desire of the Other. n31 When we repress this derivative aspect of our desire for objects, we treat them as substitutes for our true object of desire . n32 Hegel agreed with classical liberal philosophy that freedom is the essence of human nature, n33 but thought that freedom was merely potential in the "state of nature" of autonomous individuality. To Hegel, freedom can become actualized only through the type of relationship that Lacan would call "love." n34 Hegel adopted the liberal Kantian conception of freedom as

radical negativity n35 - the total absence of constraints. This abstract concept becomes concrete through social relations. n36 By this I mean that Hegel posited that the abstract person can achieve legal subjectivity n37 (and, therefore, more complex stages of [*497] personality) only by being recognized as a subject by a person whom one in turn recognizes as a subject . n38 We are, therefore,

driven to help others fulfill and exceed their highest potential in the hope that, once they do so, they will then turn around and recognize us as their equals. Such a relationship of mutual recognition in which each party helps the other become more than they were originally is "love." n39 Man's desire is "the desire of the Other" in both senses of the expression - we want to have the other, but, more importantly, we want the other to desire (recognize) us. In our search for recognition, we create legal and other rights not to claim them for ourselves, but in order to bestow them on others in order to increase their dignity. The regime of abstract right - property, contract, and market relations - is the simplest and most primitive manifestation of this dialectic of desire. n40 The desire of the Hegelian (Symbolic) marketplace is the Lacanian concept of Eros. Eros is an attempt to achieve perfection through an immediate relation with another - the perfect complementary soulmate who will serve as the yin to our yang. n41 As the myth of Orpheus shows us, Eros is creative, but only insofar as desire remains unfulfilled . To achieve one's desire is death; Eros always threatens to become Thanatos, the death wish . n42 Hegel understands that the paradox of desire is that to be true to one's desire, one must prolong it , by at least temporarily postponing its [*498] consummation. Indeed, it is precisely its postponement that creates desire.
When I say that Hegel postpones the consummation of desire, I mean that in order to ensure that both parties to the dialectic of recognition remain free and that neither party subsumes the other, Hegel insists that relationships be mediated - that the lovers be kept apart. In the regime of abstract right, this mediator is property. n43 In abstract right, abstract persons seek subjectivity through mutual recognition through possession, enjoyment, and exchange of external objects. n44 Similarly, Lacan insists that psychic subjectivity can be achieved only through recognition by others . n45 In the symbolic

relation he called sexuality, abstract persons seek subjectivity through mutual recognition in a regime of possession, enjoyment, and exchange of a mysterious object of desire, which Lacan called the "Phallus." n46 This necessity for mediation is one of
the meanings of Lacan's famous slogan: "There is no [direct and unmediated] sexual relationship." n47 [*499] In other words, although Hegel and Lacan might at first blush seem like radically different thinkers, closer examination reveals that their theories are linked by the recognition that subjectivity is intersubjectivity mediated by objectivity. n48 They also both agree that the freedom at the center of human subjectivity is radical negativity. n49 Hegel emphasized what might be called the comic side of this dialectic. n50 In comedy, conflicts are resolved in a happy ending (traditionally including the marriage of two or more of the protagonists). The Hegelian dialectic shows how the contradictions within the abstract person in the state of nature are resolved through social relations, including the market and the family . Moreover, the negativity in the center of the human soul is optimistically seen as the absence of constraints that makes freedom possible, and as the space that permits growth and creativity. In contrast, Lacan emphasized the tragic side of this dialectic. In tragedy, conflicts prove to be irresolvable, and result in the death

of one or more of the protagonists. The negativity or "split" that lies at the center of our psyche is seen pessimistically. If Hegel emphasizes that relationships occur, Lacan emphasizes that these relationships are always imperfect and mediated, desire is always postponed, and man is in a constant state of yearning. Love is always, to some extent, unrequited - there are no perfect soulmates. We can bear this pain only by adopting one of a number of delusions that Lacan identified with sexual identity. The contradictions of personality cannot be permanently resolved. The dialectic of desire ultimately can be solved only by death. Eros can be postponed only so long. Postponement eventually turns into procrastination. And so we must eventually give way to Thanatos. n51

Jouissance is the root cause of our drives to endlessly consume Glynos & Stavrakkakis 10 Jason Glynos is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Department of Government,
University of Essex, Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science at Panteion University (Athens) and discourse analysis at Essex, Politics and the unconscious Subjectivity (2010) 3, 225230. doi:10.1057/sub.2010.17 ebsco Given the above analysis, we can ask whether the particular moves recently in the United States to reform the financial regulatory regime and the health-care system will help rebuild, and re-establish trust in, the collective containers that will make such mourning possible. Maybe. O zselcuk and Madra suggest, however, that neo-Keynesian New Deal solutions have their limits. O zselcuk and Madra do so by relying on a mix of Lacanian theory and a non-structuralist, nonhumanist Marxism that seeks to
repoliticize the conditions under which surplus is produced, appropriated, distributed and consumed. They thereby continue in a tradition that links psychoanalyis and the economy, starting with Freud, and reinforced by Lacan in the link explicitly made by him between surplus enjoyment and Marxs surplus value. While consumption processes have been animated by an enjoyment (jouissance) that

gorges on credit because it knows nothing about rational moderation , processes of appropriation and distribution have been subject to different principles of governance. In particular O zselcuk and Madra argue that [ e]ven though New Keynesian designers differ from the Chicago boys in the way they parse out the question of when greed becomes a problem and how to govern it [with proper institutional incentives], they share the foundational figure of homo economicus as the working assumption regarding the behaviour of individuals. By according foundational status to economic incentives and processes of market exchange both approaches are understood by O zselcuk and Madra as variants of neo-liberal governmentality, thereby keeping questions about the appropriation and distribution of surplus as the untouchable limit of public debate. Instead such a regime continues to encourage individuals to fight for scarce surpluses animated by fantasy frames of entrepreneurship, growth, efficiency, upward mobility, and so on.

Thus my partner and I advocate that we psychoanalyze the consumerism underlying in USFG transportation infrastructure.

Only through psychoanalysis can we properly analyze methods of desire and drive in a status quo rooted in consumption. Thus the role of the ballot is such that the judge understands the concept of commanded enjoyment fantasies and decides to divert the jouissance which compels us to continue to follow commanded enjoyment. Stavrakakis 2006 (Yannis Stavrakakis, is a Greek political theorist. A member of the Essex School of discourse
analysis, he is mainly known for his explorations of the importance of psychoanalytic theory for contemporary political and cultural analysis. Objects
of Consumption, Causes of Desire: Consumerism and Advertising in Societies of Commanded Enjoyment . Pages 83-103.)

As Garry Cross has put it, consumerism, despite all the opposition, seems to be the ism that won (1). It succeeded where other ideologies and discourses failed. Indeed, in capitalist - especially late capitalist - societies it is the role of consumption and consumerism and the function of advertising, public relations and branding, that offer perhaps the best example of how new interpellations and commands can re-shape social structure by imposing their hegemonic grip on individual and group identifications and behavior. The question is how? How was the act of consumption instituted as the undisputable nodal point of a whole culture, a whole way of life? In this essay I will argue that the emerging hegemony of consumerism cannot be explained without taking seriously the dimensions of desire and enjoyment. Psychoanalytic theory - along its Freudian-Lacanian axis - can paradigmatically accomplish this task, revealing how the symbolically conditioned desire for consumption acts is stimulated by advertising fantasies and supported by the (partial) enjoyment entailed in desiring and consuming products as well as advertisements. Channeling desire in particular directions, consumer culture marks a significant shift in the way the social bond is structured in relation to enjoyment and reveals its central role in sustaining the current, late capitalist economic-political nexus.
Psychoanalysis is key in understanding human behavior and solving problems on a critical scale APsaA 2013 (American Psychoanalytic Association is a group of psychoanalysts who can help people with problems. They also delve into
issues revolving the concept and practice of psychoanalysis. Date made 2013. Date retrieved March 1, 2013. http://www.apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysis.aspx)

In addition to being a specialized type of therapy, psychoanalysis is also a comprehensive, in-depth theory of the mind. It has many applications. Using the uniquely psychoanalytic explanatory tools of the unconscious, transference and development, among others, psychoanalytic insight can enrich the understanding of human beings, their behaviors and motivations in a wide range of arenas from

business to politics to sports, the arts, education, advertising, the law, literature, family relations, and popular culture. While always acknowledging the uniqueness of the individual, and the infinite variation of human experience, psychoanalysis has, over the decades, developed a set of useful understandings about common human psychological experiences. For example, we know that human beings often have a powerful, unconscious need to idealize their leaders and others in authority, and that they can become angry and vengeful when idealized figures disappoint them. This psychoanalytic concept, one of many hundreds, can be extremely valuable in understanding certain political phenomena. The themes of psychoanalysis are those found in great literature power, ambition, insecurity, ideals, attachment, isolation, longing, and so on. The careful studies of psychoanalysts have enabled us to develop an explanatory theory that puts these great passions in context and allows us to predict the course they may take. Essentially, psychoanalysis is about the story of human beings, what motivates, inspires and sometimes cripples them, but it looks at these phenomena and tells a story from a unique perspective what lies beneath the surface. If we win a root cause we win---the very questioning of consumerism leads to new alternatives Jeanne L. Schroeder 98 Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, COMMENTARY:
THE END OF THE MARKET: A PSYCHOANALYSIS OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 112 Harv. L. Rev. 483
Although I end this Commentary with some practical advice, I do not attempt here to develop a new paradigm. As a Hegelian, I believe that logical analysis (that is, philosophy) is important as a means of self-understanding and as a tool for critiquing theories. It cannot, however, dictate specific policy recommendations. To Hegel, the implications for policy can be decided only by pragmatism, not logic. n16 The policy question, which can be phrased as, "If law and economics analysis is flawed, then what do you propose as an alternative?", is inapt if it suggests that the legal scholar should engage in "business as usual" until an alternative is proposed. This approach is a vulgar oversimplification of Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigms, which is reflected in the banal cliche that "it takes a theory to beat a theory." n17 Even if Kuhn is correct that, as an empirical matter, a given discipline will not reject an existing paradigm until an alternative is developed, one can often perceive that an existing paradigm is ripe to be replaced before one develops the revolutionary paradigm (or research program) that will replace it. Indeed, I would suggest that it is often this dissatisfaction with the status quo that leads the

creative scholar to seek out the new alternative.