He defined these rigid postures that prevented people from feeling pleasure as Character armor. Reich's analysis of fascism can be applied to every nation today. The citizens of modern society need their character armor to adapt to the mechanical rhythm of daily life. It prevents them from feeling the pain of losing their communities and their spontaneous animal existence. Not feeling the pain of losing a fluid existence, the armored person also does not see what they lose.
Character armor keeps people from feeling own fluid existence and their community.
So they see pleasure only indirect - in things totally outside of themselves. The image of the innocent is an image of a sensuous being with the sexuality moved to a mystical plane. The capitalist accounting of the free market uproots each superstition and archaic value. The world economy shows us that the earth, the air, the oceans and ideas all have prices fixed by mining rights, pollution rights and intellectual property. Pure morality reduces all thinking to atoms of choice.