The rate of homogenization toward world monoculture proceeds apace. To the young, the ever-adaptable agents of culture, it is like water to a fish, the very medium of existence.
Marketing has become dynamic. Companies do not expect to be marketing the same reliable product for years but are working on a new model, from shoes to computers, before they release the current version. Not only does this satisfy the narrative of progress, but creates a dynamic obsolescence that drives the old products out of the market and into the landfill. The new version is marketed as better.
The process of ideation and recognition dismisses most of what one is tempted to see, which is itself the merest fragment of cosmic actuality, and, apart from buying the new product, the individual spends his 30,000 days digesting only the tiniest changes in routine, such as the remarkable weather, an unusual act of rudeness or kindness, and the more or less predictable particularities of the inbox.
The individual assures the process by recognizing old events and applying a canned comment that identifies the usual solution to be applied, which is reliably in the form of classification and dismissal. This prerecorded library of advice is cultural, with the individual tasked with adding a short list of independently-learned, non-fatal lessons.
To the person who craves a place to stand, culture becomes unrecognizable overnight. Cultural ideas are snatched up, gobbled down, commercialized all over, and thrown away, subsumed within the process that converts the exceptional and the original into a price tag flittering seductively on its string, eventually dumped.
Boomer is often convinced of his centrality. Things further from him are smaller. Things close to him are larger. He is the largest thing of all. He buys things for himself. He equips himself for the tasks that he would like to do. He buys books that he would like to read. The rugged individual devolves to the merely self-indulgent.
Sometimes Buffy buys him a shirt that makes him look like everyone else at work, at concert, or on the trail. Buffy knows that reinforcing the centrality of the male gives her a measure of control in a relationship. Her mom taught her to practice on her Dad. Although she has her doubts about him in the long term, she practices on Boomer. She is gratified that Boomer responds appropriately.
Boomer purchases his gifts more randomly. He wants to prove that he can easily provide the objects of her desire. He wishes to lure her into his world. He tells her that her opinion is important, the price he paid is not too much, and that he can afford the price of fame, Coca Cola on the beach, Mercedes on the country road, and drugs if she’s unconvinced. The harder and smarter he works, the more pleasure he can buy for her. He worries that his gifts are out of fashion, stupid, and boring.
She consoles him, telling him that they are really beautiful when they are not. After all, it’s the thought that counts. She tells him that he spends too much money on her and that he is really very sweet.
This part of the ritual is very important although she does not believe a word of it. She is so sophisticated in her giving that she must use all her skills to assuage his fears and not appear condescending. They will have sex tonight and that seems to reassure Boomer. And so it goes.
The high-level designers of the systems are trapped within their own creations. They work long hours, take big risks, and mortgage everything to maximize their leverage. Time equals money. And change is everything.
Inasmuch as art evolves culture, it does so by cognition, recognition, and destruction. The highest and fastest art provides for its own destruction. There is no substance, no form, only style and fashion, the smoothly integrated motions of creation, criticism, and abandonment. If it’s been seen before, it’s bad. If it already has a name, issue a sigh of exhaustion. Thus ideas are made to come and go efficiently.
Uncoupled from the craving for the Absolute, we devolve to the rhetoric of consensus, derision, ridicule, victimology, and propaganda, abandoning the tedious debate over the truth-value of statements in favor of the price. Fashion, the knowledge of what’s in and what’s out, is everything.
The difference between what the consumer has and what the consumer wants drives the economy. Without the consumer, who is also the designer and deliverer and cashier, we would not have the time or the use for art and philosophy. If we stopped buying cars we don’t need, the world would end.
Consumerism’s ultimate religious appeal, of which the café is a convenient alter, is that we are near the center of the universe, among the most important of objects. He is god and the universe is his supermarket. Everything, even gifts for others are purchased for his glorification.
All the signposts of the new religion point down this road, which ends conveniently in the spacious parking lot of the mart of self-indulgence, which includes the cathedral of the self. Anyone can dream of becoming the Christopher Columbus of the breakfast nook, the Madonna of the nail-salon, or the Leif Erikson of sporting goods. The effort to achieve the single, necessary, best solution drives cultural homogenization and simultaneously elicits the confused cry for freedom and individuality.
We must hope they continue, each and every one of them. If they stop buying the shoes that they do not need, the die-off will begin and we won’t have time for philosophy.