The Mentality of "Growth Paranoia": "Careerism"

■ "Careerism" and Max Weber's The Spirit of Capitalism

Weber characterized the mentality of capitalism as "asceticism within the secular world."
To earn more (or accumulate more virtue) in the future (or in the afterlife), one must suppress present desires. While remaining in the secular world, one rejects worldly pleasures for the sake of values that transcend it. It is an intense self-restraint exercised by flesh-and-blood individuals. A rejection of the secular from within the secular.
This mentality is what Weber described as the ethos of capitalism.
On the other hand, various religions around the world, including Catholicism, have always practiced "asceticism outside the secular world," such as ascetic practices in Buddhist temples (shaving heads, celibacy, vegetarianism, etc.), or in monasteries and among monks.

However, it was only the ascetic Protestantism typified by Calvinism that transformed into "active asceticism" (aktive Askese*) with a specific orientation within the secular world.

*Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, 1920, Bd. 1 Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligion.  Einleitung (S.257), Zwischenbetrachtung (S.538)

Only this "active asceticism" practiced by large groups of people gave birth to and launched the industrial capitalism of modern Western history.
Today’s already fully driven capitalism may no longer require such a spirit.
However, it was this ethos—one that could not have been produced by the pre-modern human affirmation of worldly life (i.e., being content with happiness in this life)—that once, and only once in history, created modern capitalism, capable of coldly severing even blood ties.
It was the ethos of "rejection of the secular within the secular" and "active asceticism," and it was born only from the ascetic Protestant sects of the early modern period.
This was Weber’s vision.
However, this was also merely the (scholarly) self-salvation of one genius—Max Weber—who, suffering under the repression of his pious, ascetic Protestant mother (and probably bipolar himself), desperately sought escape. In a sense, it was a kind of delusion.

■ The True Nature of Capitalism

For those of us living in the 21st century, the full nature of capitalism is already plain to see.
Capitalism is simply another name for "economic growth."
The spirit supporting it is not something beautiful or heroic like "active asceticism." It is, rather, what Minoru Kawakita called "growth paranoia."
If the essence of capitalism is "economic growth" and the zeitgeist supporting it is "growth paranoia," then the mentality that sustains it at the individual level is not "active asceticism," but "careerism" or "successism."
Without macroeconomic "growth," there is no micro-level "success." "Economic growth or death"—this is the stark choice now visible to the global power elite.

■ The Birth of the "Growing City"

This also explains the mental factor that set Western Europe on a different path from other regions in the early modern period.
Probably for the first time in human history, "growing and increasingly complex cities" began to loosen and dissolve the rigid hierarchical societies.
London would be the typical example.
An increasing population. Rising demand. Expanding businesses.
With these came the proliferation of "social complexity" and "opportunities for success."
Cities offered all of these—perhaps even more opportunities for marriage.
The birth of capitalism is synonymous with the birth of cities that grow and continuously generate new opportunities for success.
What drove this process was none other than the spirit of "careerism" or "successism"—the desire to climb the ladder quickly or to create new ladders altogether.