Freud also said we choose our own neuroses. Capitalism is the neurosis of humanity.

Freud also said we choose our own neuroses. Capitalism is the neurosis of humanity.

We constantly feel stressed, overwhelmed and guilty.It's our own fault if we're unhappy. It means we made a bad decision.

One of the greatest gains of capitalism is that even the proletarian slave feels like a master. He believes he has the power to change his life. We are propelled by the ideology of the self-made man: we work more, we consume more and in the end we consume ourselves. The consequences are burnout, bulimia and other lifestyle diseases.

We can live a more relaxed life. We can accept that our decisions aren't rational, that we are always conditioned by society; that we lose something every time we choose something else, and that we can't truly control the consequences of our decisions.

When I speak about the "tyranny of choice," I mean an ideology that originates in the era of post-industrial capitalism. It began with the American Dream - the idea of the self-made man, who works his way up from rags to riches. By and by, this career concept developed into a universal life philosophy. Today we believe we should be able to choose everything: the way we live, the way we look, even when it comes to the coffee we buy, we constantly need to weigh our decision. That is extremely unhealthy.

We still can't control the consequences our choices will bring. Not only do we want freedom of choice, but we also want a guarantee that whatever we choose will be exactly as we envisioned it.