Выкладываю здесь свою англоязычную рецензию на книгу немецкого журналиста и публициста Михаэля Наста "Generation Beziehungsunfähig" ("Поколение неспособных к отношениям").
About Michael Nast’s book “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” (Generation Incapable of a Relationship).
Many are totally mislead by the title of the book, just the way I myself was, expecting the whole of this essay collection to be concerned with relationships in their romantic-sexual dimension. But that’s not the case. Probably the most suitable commentary on the title is to be found in the text itself, as Nast uses the title-formula to describe the state of a modern person in relation to THEMSELVES: not being related to your actual essence, not being connected to what you really are. The categorical behavioral imperative we grow up with tells us to be a successful salesman of your own self: this is supposed to secure an endless expansion and improvement of your consumption patterns and thus to make you happy. Consuming more material things, more pleasures, consuming more people around you. We are producing our public image through social networks, we make career, we “accomplish” something which make our market price grow; we constantly prove that we “can”. These are the outmost priorities.
About Michael Nast’s book “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” (Generation Incapable of a Relationship).
Many are totally mislead by the title of the book, just the way I myself was, expecting the whole of this essay collection to be concerned with relationships in their romantic-sexual dimension. But that’s not the case. Probably the most suitable commentary on the title is to be found in the text itself, as Nast uses the title-formula to describe the state of a modern person in relation to THEMSELVES: not being related to your actual essence, not being connected to what you really are. The categorical behavioral imperative we grow up with tells us to be a successful salesman of your own self: this is supposed to secure an endless expansion and improvement of your consumption patterns and thus to make you happy. Consuming more material things, more pleasures, consuming more people around you. We are producing our public image through social networks, we make career, we “accomplish” something which make our market price grow; we constantly prove that we “can”. These are the outmost priorities.
