Health & Culture in Capitalist Realism
One year after coming across Mark Fisher, I finally read Capitalist Realism. It's one of those books where I felt compelled to to stop, underline, re-read and think about what the author is saying every few pages. Sixteen years after the book was first published, Fisher's ideas about ecological disaster, mental health, culture, the education system, politics and bureaucracy, remain strikingly relevant. His examples are Britain-centric but his points remain valid in the context of any capitalist country.
This book also serves as an accessible starting point if you're interested in philosophy but struggle with the technical nature of most philosophical works. He mentions a lot of philosophers and their theories but prior knowledge of these is not needed to grasp his arguments.
If you want to learn more about his ideas, outside of his written work, this video is a great starting point.
Health
What we see instead is a reductive, hedonic model of health, which is all about 'feeling and looking good'. To tell people how to lose weight, or how to decorate their house is considered acceptable; but to call for any kind of cultural improvement is to be oppressive and elitist.
Culture
On the one hand, this is a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate - the extirpation of the long term extends backwards as well as forwards in time (for example, media stories monopolize attention for a week or so then are instantly forgotten); on the other hand, it is a culture that is excessively nostalgic, given over to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty.