Liv Strömqvist is brilliant, why beat around the bush. We can add many things to this phrase, such as its ability to handle the best philosophy of the moment (Bauman, Zizek, Eva illouz or Byung-Chul Han), mix it with the garbage of the networks and expose in comic format how this society has converted the feelings in business. But we’ll come back to basically the same thing: brilliant. Your new book, The voice of the oracle (Reservoir Books) puts the experts on target, personal coachers and dispensers of advice that govern our lives today. Strömqvist, a Swede born in Lund in 1978, also does podcasts.
Ask. He starts the book with advice: “Don’t follow any advice.” Isn’t it contradictory?
Answer. It’s for us to think twice. Advice and constant improvement of life have become a commodity. We have them for everything: for your beauty routine, your face, your creams, your habits, your way of working, your diet, raising children, how to feel better… There is an endless industry of advice to make you feel well all the time in which someone is always selling you something, creating the need.
P. Because?
R. The nature of capitalism includes finding new niches to exploit. And we live in a time when business can reach areas where it was not. You can do business with so many things! In recent months, self-proclaimed “coachers mental” that advise you, tell you what to think about different things and their objective is to have the largest possible number of followers. I see a trend: now they talk about childhood traumas and explain that everything can be a consequence of them and that you need a mental coach to cure them. There are traumatized people who need to go to a psychologist, of course, but what is happening is that they manage to turn it into a mass phenomenon. For them, the more people feel this way, the better, they get more followers and likes, That is their incentive under economic logic. The danger is that people are seeing themselves as victims, they enter the algorithm and listen to that kind of thing. The combination of networks, the Internet and capitalism creates a culture that must be critically analyzed and that is what I try to do in my book.
P. The networks, the culture of likes do they hurt us?
R. It has brought many and very different consequences, very profound changes in society, in how we relate, and I believe that we cannot yet see all the consequences. Some are positive, others negative, but it is important to debate and analyze it critically.
P. It brings us a reflection from Bauman: Before we blamed ourselves for having a good time and now we blame ourselves for not having a good time. What has happened for this enormous change?
R. There are many things. One is the marketingthe tendency to sell everything, including fun. An advertisement shows you people on vacation enjoying certain types of clothes or soft drinks and they do not appeal to what they are selling you, which is the clothes or the soft drink, but rather to friendship, to enjoyment. The pressure to feel joy increases.
P. Is it a result of capitalism or also the end of the role of religion?
R. Yes, also, that religious view that it is a sin to enjoy something and that is good is over. But there is another threat and that is to apply the logic of achievements to feelings. Seeing joy as an achievement, as an objective that you can plan and control, at the same time causes pressure to achieve it. Thus you approach joy in such a wrong way that it practically disappears. It is seen on the networks, where people portray pleasure and happiness under the reign of control and always thinking that someone is watching you.
P. It also highlights that we have forgotten the pain, the death, the disappointment.
R. In today’s society it is difficult to process the horrible fact that we are mortal. Bauman’s theory is that the solution for modernity is to divide this fear of death into small parts and try to control them: what I eat, what I do to be healthy… Fighting death has become the meaning of life. Before, death was seen as a hanged man, now as a jailer who watches over you all the time.
P. Why graphic novel?
R. I started very naturally, as a way of expressing myself. I studied politics, sociology and philosophy at university, I work on the radio in comedy programs and I have tried to write a book with only text, but it always turns into a comic. Furthermore, we live in an era in which we communicate a lot through photos and comics use it. If I am going to discuss networks with you, incorporating the image is effective. Something happens when you read and see something drawn, everything slows down. The comic is an interesting way to debate.
P. You lived and studied in Salamanca for a semester. What is your memory of Spain?
R. I had a great time, so many students, parties, clubs… I was 19 years old. In Sweden everything closes very early, but there was a nightclub that closed at 8:00, so I could stay out all night, then sleep for an hour and go back to class (laughs).
P. So you didn’t learn Spanish, but you did learn to dance?
R. That, exactly, yes (and he laughs again, after doing the entire interview in English).
