[This] character orientation… is rooted in the experience of oneself as a commodity and of one’s value as exchange value…

“[This] character orientation… is rooted in the experience of oneself as a commodity and of one’s value as exchange value… "Success depends largely on how well a person sells himself on the market, how well he gets his personality across, how nice a “package” he is…a stockbroker, a salesman, a secretary, a railroad executive, a college professor, or a hotel manager must each offer different kinds of personality that, regardless of their differences, must fulfill one condition: to be in demand… “The marketing orientation … does not develop something which is potential in the person (unless we make the absurd assertion that ‘nothing’ is also part of the human equipment); its very nature is that no specific and permanent kind of relatedness is developed, but that the very changeability of attitudes is the only permanent quality of such orientation. In this orientation, those qualities are developed which can best be sold. Not one particular attitude is predominant, but the emptiness which can be filled most quickly with the desired quality. This quality, however, ceases to be one in the proper sense of the word; it is only a role, the pretense of a quality, to be readily exchanged if another one is more desirable.” ~ Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 76-77