The post went viral. Not because it was new, not because it was particularly incendiary, but because it struck at the precise moment when Attachment Theory, as an idea, was reaching its fever pitch—peaking like a commodity, like a category, like a meme coin people had decided, all at once, to go all in.
The way ideas provide people with a framework, a narrative, a way to make sense of their suffering, to follow a trajectory. First, they exist as theories, clinical tools, studies in developmental psychology. Then, they spread. First to self-help books, then to Instagram slides, then to TikTok influencers, selling how to heal your attachment wounds in five easy steps. They start to behave less like theories and more like brands, less like ideas and more like merchandise.
And when an idea becomes a brand, it begins to function like a financial asset. It requires confidence, faith, continual investment. It cannot be questioned without risking its value. It is no longer something to be discussed, examined, held up to scrutiny—it must be believed in.1
That was what struck me, in the responses I had. Not the disagreement. Disagreement is normal. Expected. But the particular kind of panic, the sheer repetition of the question: Do you believe in Attachment Theory? Not, Do you think the framework is useful? Not, Do you think the evidence holds up. But, Do you believe?
This is what happens when something moves beyond the realm of science and into faith. You do not ask someone if they believe in a psychological framework unless, on some level, that framework has stopped behaving like a theory and started behaving like a religion. Like a cult.
It is not hard to see why people need it to be true. The world is chaotic, and Attachment Theory, like all successful ideologies, offers a way to impose order on that chaos. It promises that the patterns in your relationships are not random, that they were set in motion in childhood, that your wounds have a name, a cause, and a cure. It tells you that healing is always possible. That if you do the work, if you regulate yourself, if you take the right courses and read the right books and adjust your nervous system accordingly, you will one day become secure.
And security, as an ideal, sells. There is an entire industry built on it now. A booming economy of coaches, influencers, membership platforms, each one promising to guide you toward the final, coveted goal: secure attachment. What was once a clinical observation about infant-caregiver dynamics has been repackaged as a spiritual quest, a personal brand, a five-week program priced at $499. The messaging is unmistakable: you are broken, but you can be fixed. You are wounded, but you can heal. The problem is you, and the solution is work.
It is, in other words, the Protestant work ethic, repackaged for the Instagram age. Arbeit Macht Frei,2 except instead of laboring toward salvation, you are laboring toward emotional legibility. Instead of proving to God that you are worthy, you are proving to the market, to potential partners, to future employers, that you are secure enough to be loved, to be trusted, to be taken seriously. This is why Attachment Theory, in its current iteration, is not just a theory—it is an economy. It behaves like currency. It requires constant reinvestment. It relies on confidence. It must never be questioned too deeply.
And yet, there is something fundamentally dishonest about it. Because what it sells is not security but the pursuit of security. No one actually wants you to reach the end goal. The moment you do, you stop being profitable. You stop needing the books, the courses, the coaches, the subscriptions. The system does not benefit from your healing—it benefits from your continued sense of lack, your sense that you are almost there, that you just need one more piece of knowledge, one more exercise, one more investment.3
This is why the backlash was so immediate, so fervent. The sellers do not take kindly to heretics. It is one thing to debate the finer points of Attachment Theory, to discuss the nuances of secure and insecure attachment. It is another to point out that the entire thing now functions as an ideological apparatus, a pyramid scheme, a system designed not just to explain suffering but to profit from it. To suggest that security itself—the thing people are spending so much time, so much money, so much energy chasing—is a manufactured ideal, a metric of compliance, an emotional version of a credit score.4
Because what does security really mean, in this framework? It means that you are predictable, that your nervous system does not overreact, that you are well-adjusted, well-regulated, easy to love, easy to work with, easy to be around. It means that you do not burden others with your volatility, your grief, your rage. It means you are stable. Manageable. Safe.
And who has historically been asked to be safe? To regulate themselves, to temper their emotions, to ensure that they are not too much, not too reactive, not too angry?
Who has been told, over and over, that before they can ask for dignity, for justice, for anything at all, they must first become more secure?
It is not hard to see why this logic maps so seamlessly onto empire, onto Zionism, onto every settler-colonial project that has ever justified violence in the name of security. Stability, as a concept, has always belonged to the oppressor. The function of security has never been to protect the vulnerable—it has been to contain them. To make sure they do not resist too violently, do not grieve too loudly, do not disrupt the order of things.
This is what the attachment industrial complex does not want you to see. That its framework does not exist in a vacuum. That its fixation on emotional stability is not just a psychological goal but a political one. That the entire economy built around it—its courses, its memberships, its coaching programs—is selling you not healing, but compliance.
And so they ask, Do you believe? Because belief is what keeps the structure intact. Belief is what keeps the money flowing.
But I do not believe.
I do not believe that stability is inherently good. I do not believe that security is an unquestionable virtue. I do not believe that emotional regulation, in a world that is fundamentally violent, is always a moral imperative.
I believe that anger is sometimes necessary. I believe that disregulation is sometimes rational. I believe that there are systems in place—capitalism, empire, white supremacy—that have conditioned people to believe that their suffering is a personal problem, a result of individual wounds, rather than the inevitable consequence of structural oppression.5
And any theory, any framework, any ideology that tells you to fix yourself before you can challenge the system—before you can even name it—should not be accepted. It should be interrogated, not integrated. Torn open. Held to the light.
Because if survival demands your adjustment, your compliance, your self-repair, then maybe the sickness was never yours to begin with.
Maybe the sickness is Empire
Maybe the sickness is this cult.
Maybe the sickness is Attachment Theory.
Sylvia Wynter’s critique of secularism operates within her broader examination of how Western modernity constructs the human through a racialized, colonial framework. In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”, Wynter argues that the category of “Man” as the universal subject of liberalism is not a neutral or secular category but one rooted in a Christian-humanist teleology that privileges European ways of knowing and being. This means that even when secularism presents itself as detached from religious frameworks, it remains deeply embedded in a Christian epistemology, shaping how legitimacy, rationality, and even critique itself are structured.
In relation to the idea that a brand functions like a financial asset requiring belief, Wynter’s insights reveal how secular ideologies—such as liberal democracy, human rights, or market capitalism—often operate with the same structure of faith as religious doctrines. These systems demand confidence, self-sustaining legitimacy, and the exclusion of alternative modes of thought that might destabilize their internal logic. Just as medieval Christian theology required belief in divine sovereignty, modern secularism often demands belief in progress, in economic rationality, in the supremacy of Western epistemologies. When an ideology is branded—whether it be capitalism, liberalism, or even self-optimization—it ceases to be a subject of debate and instead becomes something to be protected, invested in, and policed.
Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257-337.
The phrase Arbeit Macht Frei (literally, "Work Makes You Free") is most infamously associated with the wrought-iron signage at Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen. Originally, the phrase was coined in the 19th century by German nationalist Lorenz Diefenbach, whose novel of the same name promoted the idea that diligent labor led to moral and personal redemption. Later, it was adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by segments of the German nationalist and right-wing political sphere, reinforcing the Protestant-inflected belief that labor had an intrinsic moral and purifying function.
Under the Nazis, however, Arbeit Macht Frei was perverted into a cruel, cynical lie. The slogan was placed at concentration camps as a grotesque parody of the Protestant work ethic, reinforcing the illusion that prisoners could work their way to freedom, even as they were systematically enslaved and exterminated. The phrase thus became emblematic of how ideological slogans can mask structures of domination and death under the guise of individual moral striving.
In the modern context, Arbeit Macht Frei becomes a haunting parallel to contemporary self-improvement ideologies. The Protestant work ethic, famously analyzed by Max Weber, argues that diligence, discipline, and economic productivity are not just practical virtues but moral imperatives. Capitalism secularized this ethic, replacing salvation with economic success. Today, self-optimization culture extends this logic into the realm of emotional labor: your ability to regulate your emotions, heal your traumas, and become a legible, desirable subject is framed as a moral duty.
In this sense, the digital economy has simply repackaged the ideological function of Arbeit Macht Frei. You are no longer laboring toward divine grace, but toward emotional legibility—proving to partners, employers, and online audiences that you are stable, whole, and secure enough to be loved and taken seriously. Like all markets, this one thrives on confidence. It requires belief. It must never be questioned too deeply.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner, 1930.
The creeping of economic language into every aspect of life—emotions, relationships, mental health, even identity—reflects the broader shift toward marketized subjectivity. South Korean economist, Ha-Joon Chang, has spoken about how neoliberalism has conditioned people to see everything in market terms: education as an investment, relationships as social capital, self-care as return on investment. In 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, he critiques the way economic logic has infiltrated domains that were once considered separate from market concerns, arguing that not everything should be subject to cost-benefit analysis or productivity metrics.
What this passage identifies is the economy of lack—the idea that the system does not want you to feel secure, only to chase security. This logic underpins much of contemporary self-help and therapy culture, which, instead of genuinely resolving issues, operates more like a subscription model. The moment you believe yourself to be enough, you stop consuming. The market benefits from your almost-there-ness, from the idea that you just need one more book, one more course, one more exercise. This is not just capitalism at work but a deeply Protestant-inflected economy of salvation—except instead of absolution, you are promised endless, incremental self-improvement.
Chang, Ha-Joon. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
The West is quick to point fingers at China’s social credit system, framing it as a dystopian nightmare of state control, a mechanism for enforcing ideological conformity and punishing dissent. And yet, what rarely gets acknowledged is that the West has constructed its own, far more sophisticated versions of social credit—systems that are privatized, decentralized, and embedded so seamlessly into daily life that they go unquestioned.
Credit scores, LinkedIn profiles, Uber ratings, influencer engagement metrics, algorithmic surveillance—these are all forms of behavioral conditioning. They determine access to jobs, housing, financial stability, even social desirability. A low credit score in the U.S. can keep you from renting an apartment. A gap in your employment history, flagged by an AI-driven HR filter, can make you unhireable. A dip in engagement metrics can render you invisible in the attention economy. These are all market-driven compliance mechanisms, just as capable of enforcing docility as any state-run initiative.
This is where the comparison becomes particularly insidious: China’s system is explicit. It tells you exactly what it is. The West, on the other hand, denies the existence of a social credit system even as it functions in precisely the same way—except here, it’s gamified, wrapped in the language of choice, optimization, and self-improvement. You’re not being forced to maintain a high engagement score, or to curate a spotless digital presence—you want to. You need to. Because in a system where security itself is a manufactured ideal, your compliance is your currency.
To point this out—to suggest that the pursuit of security, emotional or financial, is itself a means of control—is heresy. The backlash is immediate, the sellers do not take kindly to those who question the terms of the game. The system thrives on the illusion that you are just one step away, one purchase away, one breakthrough away from the security you seek. But security, in this system, is not a destination. It is a metric of compliance. An emotional version of a credit score.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.
Structural oppression refers to the ways in which power, privilege, and systemic inequalities are embedded in institutions, laws, and cultural norms, shaping outcomes for individuals and communities in ways that go beyond personal choice or merit. Unlike personal prejudice, which operates on an individual level, structural oppression is baked into the very fabric of society, making it seem natural, invisible, or even inevitable.
One of the greatest triumphs of capitalism, white supremacy, and empire is their ability to obscure their own mechanisms. They do not simply exploit; they convince people that their suffering is a private failing. The neoliberal emphasis on self-help, personal growth, and emotional regulation reinforces this illusion—if you are struggling, it is because you have not worked hard enough, healed enough, optimized enough. The idea that trauma is purely individual erases the reality that many forms of distress are not psychological pathologies but reasonable responses to structural violence.
For instance, capitalism pathologizes burnout rather than addressing exploitative labor conditions. White supremacy frames racial disparities as cultural deficiencies rather than as the product of centuries of systematic disenfranchisement. Empire externalizes violence, teaching people to see police brutality, war, and border regimes as isolated incidents rather than interconnected expressions of global hegemony. This is why dysregulation—whether anger, grief, or despair—is often the only rational response. To expect people to remain calm in the face of structural harm is not just cruel but ideological—it serves the very systems that demand compliance.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
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