Why Are Bankers Killing Themselves?

The Answer Might Surprise You by duanerousselle2013 In late 2010 segments of the world believed themselves to be witnessing the prop hetic powers of the Mayan calender. Birds began to fall from the sky. For many p eople, this signaled a dark warning: we must change our economic and political b ehaviors, in sympathy with the environment, or else all life on earth will come to an end. However naive, the sentiment was an important one - the "end times" b ecame thinkable. A rational explanation inevitably followed when National Geogra phic wrote that most biologists know that mass bird deaths are normal occurrence s. The lesson was that "[n]o matter how it arrives, death appears to be very muc h a fact of life for birds." I believe that the important shift that happened during the Mayan Calender and m ass bird deaths debacle was the return of the question of the end. Indeed, durin g the optimistic age of post-structuralism it seemed that, as Katerina Kolozova might put it, there was an impossibility of thinking about limits. Language and discourse marked the indefinite horizon of thinking - the infinite snuggled up w ith human finitude. An unfortunate biproduct of 'infinite thought' was that it b ecame impossible to think 'the end' of capitalism. Even the world of radical pol itics and philosophy became Fukuyamaian: capitalism itself became infinite. But the limit imposed itself in the popular imagination through the fantastical Maya n speculation, global warming science, and so on. In early 2012, reports circulated around the globe that there were mysterious ma ss fish deaths, bodies washing up off the coast of a lake in Nanjing, China. Thi s time a rational explanation for these occurrences was precluded by an interest ing and rather brilliant activist strategy: activists no longer discussed isolat ed occurrences (as in the mass deaths of birds) but rather tallied occurrences o f all sorts of mass animal deaths happening across the globe. One report listed dozens of isolated mass fish deaths and asked the question: "Why are millions o f fish suddenly dying in mass death events all over the planet?" In different ways the question of the end insists on being asked. On February 3rd, 2014, another mass animal death sung out for our attention. Wit hin the span of a week, as many as 5 suicides occurred by former employees of J. P. Morgan Chase & Company. These were high impact employees: a senior risk manag er, vice president, chief economist, executive director, finance professional, C EO, and so on. Before jumping ahead by speculating as to what all of these mass deaths have in common, lets focus on these, our closest animal ancestors, banker s. Some reports have indicated that bankers suffer from high levels of anxiety, provoked by long hours, difficult work, and lack of respect from the public. Rep orts have also focused on the fact that bankers are moved toward suicide because they naturally feel guilt about their role in the global economic crisis and th e economic burdens of the 99%. No doubt, a certain level of anxiety and guilt may have played a part in these s uicides. Guilt is itself a type of anxiety. Psychoanalysis teaches us that guilt is conditioned by giving ground to one's desires. Traditionally, the superego i s thought to function as a mechanism of prohibition: "No! You can not have what you desire." And so, if one gives ground to one's desire, one might feel the ove rpowering anxiety of guilt. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not matter whether or not the banker is act ually guilty. It does not matter - especially - if he is guilty for the economic crisis or for the impoverishment of millions of people. What matters, with resp ect to his guilt, is that he himself believes himself to be guilty. Those who im mediately conclude otherwise simply miss the point about guilt: guilt exists as a response to the superego injunction/prohibition and not as it were by some tra nscendental moral system outside of the banker's mind.

To complicate matters a little more, it will prove difficult to get to the root of this guilt. When one feels an overpowering sense of guilt, typically the sour ce of this guilt is absent or concealed. Recall the stereotypical husband who ab uses his wife - as he slaps he her yells, "look at what you made me do!" The poi nt is that he feels guilty for what she made him do, not for what he is in fact doing. Guilt functions in a similar way. The person who feels guilt may consciou sly describe the source of his guilt but clinical practice demonstrates that thi s is a false front, a way of absolving oneself of responsibility for the true so urce of his guilt. Those who feel an intense sense of guilt more often do not ev en know how to articulate its source. And so it is not as if the banker actually knows, consciously, the source of his guilt, that it is, for example, guilt for his role in the suffering of so many. It is much more paradoxical: the banker is not guilty for the suffering of othe rs but rather for his own failure to enjoy. Failure to enjoy what? Perhaps the r iches he and others have earned. The superego injunction is to "Enjoy!" It is yo ur duty to enjoy, to transgress the superego's own prohibitions, precisely so th at you will be immobilized by guilt. Under contemporary capitalism, the superego injunction seems to make too much sense: you must be happy, you must love your career, you must enjoy and never be upset, critical, angry, etc. Under contemporary capitalism, the superego injunction is also to enjoy your "fu n!" job. The "fun!" job is rapidly coming to the fore. Most of us can not imagin e working for a job that did not have regular outings, appreciation days, contes ts, teams, and so on. When I first met my wife, she shared a funny commercial wi th me. It was an advertisement for an educational program in refrigerator repair . The repairman said, in the commercial: "I always wanted a COOL job!" This is t he framework of capitalism today. We all want to have cool jobs, and we feel gui lty if we do not have one. Many of us even openly claim to already have a cool j ob. I presume that many of us say this in public so that the Other, the external manifestation of the superego, can see that we are in fact enjoying as we shoul d. All of us are enjoying our jobs. All of us, except for the bankers. The banker's job is a part of the older framework. The banker's job is advertised as a place of "prestige" or "status". You get the Yacht, you get to wear the nice suits, and so on. So - if the banker felt guilty, it had nothing to do with his respons ibility for our suffering. The bankers are killing themselves because they want to be held accountable for their failure to enjoy like the rest of us. As for th e rest of us, we want to believe that the bankers enjoy and are responsible to u s - as if we are all they think about.