Before the dopamine hit: what self-care meant before capitalism

Self-care existed long before capitalism learned how to bottle it, price it, and sell it back to us at whatever our stress levels will tolerate. Yet the common cultural imagination struggles to picture it as anything other than a bank balance hit as we drift towards that new thing that promises to fix your nervous system, a £20 face mask made in the same factory as a £2 one or a house plant that will wilt under the kitchen window because its job was never really to survive. It was there to placate you for about five minutes.