[Reflection] #26: The Market for Meaning, the Consolation Economy
I read a text written in Vietnamese by a communication expert that I really enjoyed. Here’s my summary of it:
He describes a crisis of meaning in the modern world: individuals, lost and without bearings, desperately seek to feel useful and recognized. From this thirst for importance is born a market of emotional comfort, where one can “buy” meaning through seminars, training, and products promising to “awaken your potential” or “find your life’s mission.”
Two groups fuel this market:
- middle-aged adults, destabilized by AI, loss of status or social role, who pay to be told they still matter;
- younger generations, disoriented in a world dominated by image and visibility, ready to buy the feeling of being “special” or “unique.”
Around them hover the meaning entrepreneurs, who turn collective distress into a commercial opportunity. The most emblematic are life coaches, those “life guides” who, often in crisis themselves, sell their own confusion in the form of motivational programs.
These practices create a consolation economy : participants don’t come to learn, but to be reassured, to find for a moment the certainty that their existence still holds value. This commerce of comfort relies less on hope than on fear—fear of being useless or forgotten—and expands as the moral fatigue of modern societies grows.
But this industry solves nothing: it offers a temporary illusion, like drinking saltwater to quench thirst. True meaning is found neither in ceremonies nor slogans, but in real experience, silent work, and authentic acts.
Yet, facing this void remains difficult: it’s easier to listen to soothing words and post a triumphant photo with the hashtag #ProudOfMe.
The self-esteem industry won’t disappear, because it doesn’t really sell hope, but the right to delay disillusionment, a reprieve from the anxiety of being forgotten.
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