I read a really sad quote from Adorno from Dialectic of Enlightenment the other day that is relevant to this and I feel like spamming around a bit TWO WORLDS Here in America there is no difference between a man and his economic fate . A man is made by his assets , income , position , and prospects . The economic mask coincides completely with a man ' s inner character . Everyone is worth what he earns and earns what he is worth . He learns what he is through the vicissitudes of his economic existence . He knows nothing else . The materialistic critique of society once objected against idealism that existence determined consciousness and not vice versa , and that the truth about society did not lie in its idealistic conception of itself but in its economy contemporary men have rejected such idealism . They judge themselves by their own market value and learn what they are from what happens to them in the capitalistic economy . Their fate , however sad it may be is not something outside them they recognize its validity . A dying man in China might say , in a lowered voice Fortune did not smile on me in this world . Where am I going now ? Up into the mountains to seek peace for my lonely heart . I am a failure the American says , and that is that .