The chronic unhappiness, humiliation, and despair of 1st world existence go neither unnoticed nor un-addressed. Vaneigem gives credit to the humanists for expressing their desire (and sometimes even acting upon it) to reduce the amount of suffering we feel. Unfortunately, because their critiques never escape the perspective of power, and thus cannot apprehend the essential nature of the situation, they can only make the problems of suffering worse (Vaneigem 35):

Here, Vaneigem compresses a fourfold critique into a single impassioned diatribe. He at once levels a blow at reformist efforts to halt the bloodshed, reaffirms what is truly important (the quotidian), defends his desire to critique the affluent society in lieu of 'real suffering', and pushes for a more radical solution to the problems of suffering and humiliation.

In applauding the understandable desire never to repeat the massive acts of destruction which woman has leveled against itself as no other creature could, Vaneigem congratulates the reformists on comprehending the least difficult point of his critique – a future society should aim to eliminate man's oppression of man; an aim to which current governments seldom even pay lip service. Implicit in his applause lies a grave disapproval, a disapproval of the humanists' own humiliation, which prevents them from understanding the importance of everyday life. Surely, a world without atomic bombs is a better one, but if it is a world without joy, we might as well die of radiation poisoning all the same – and hopefully more quickly. Vaneigem's argument here brings to mind the famous Situationist maxim he quotes in his introduction "Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails a risk that we shall die of boredom?" (Vaneigem 18). The economic reality through which we see the world, including ourselves, misses those aspects that cannot be counted. Thus, if woman has enough food, shelter, and money, she is considered well-provided for – is that not the promise of the welfare-state? But Vaneigem would rather see a psychological welfare program, to help people realize their own creativity, spontaneity, and poetry (to which he devotes a chapter in Book 2). Thus, his dictum "let no one say these are points of secondary importance" defends against the argument that anybody who spends so much time worrying about the tribulations of the middle class in the industrialized world can know nothing of suffering – can know nothing of hunger or cold or disease, precisely because of the welfare-state that Vaneigem attacks.

Vaneigem responds with the claim that mental health, the health of life and love, is just as important as basic 'human rights', and should be understood as such. If not, the clamoring masses of the third world are going to be even more unhappy when their countries develop into first world-type states. Alternately, as Vaneigem writes later, "who could dare to suppose that the peons and Indians of south America will be satisfied with land reform and lay down their arms when the best paid workers in Europe are demanding a radical change in their way of life? The revolt against the welfare state will set the minimum demands for the world revolution" (Vaneigem 74). That is, a revolt in the most privileged sectors of the world will convince all those people less privileged that their time for revolt is long overdue. This, of course, is precisely the Situationist project – not a band aid like an international arms treaty or the donation of medical supplies to dying children, but a total revolution of the spirit, a realignment of priorities, and a reversal of perspective.

Anything less falls under the category of the "multitude of irrelevant struggles" and spectacular antagonisms which the spectacle favors in place of a true critique. The true struggle only sells in two flavors – the project to build the new world and the project to destroy the old one. Building the new world is Vaneigem's project – the project of love, poetry, and universal self-realization.

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