Conform and Rule

Reflecting back on my journey through some aspects of modern theory I will not be modest and quote my own blog: ‘I feel I am missing on something and planning to read more, but will I? To be frank, I don’t know - it is comfortable and what is more important widely accepted to be lazy’. Now I am ready to give a definite answer to this question: yes, I will and I am already reading more because I have realised what I was missing. The mechanism of personal development was wound up. I glimpsed so many potential answers to every aspect of life, so that the tragic side of the development seemed as a fair compromise for this knowledge. I held my breath and jumped into the abyss regardless.
The topic I will discuss in this blog is the synthesis of few issues covered earlier. Two past blog entries (on Terry Eagleton and Ayn Rand) gave me the impetus for writing this ‘extension’. I will try to address consumerism as the tool for society conformation.

Industrial Revolution with its cheap widely available products triggered consumption paranoia across all social classes. Spending and consequent consumption of more than one’s basic requirements became part of the nature of even the poorest. In fact, as Thorstein Veblen indicated in his 1899 ‘The Theory of the Leisure’, often the basic needs were compromised for so-called ‘wasteful consumption’. Displaying one’s social status via material goods became the sign of the times. Obviously ‘display status’ almost certainly was not the true representation of the real social status. Empty stomach and general lack of money were generously compensated in the only one fashionable frock. That psychological tendency of the person to appear well off despite the odds was accepted as‘normality’ across the societies. It triggered the assumption that individual fulfilment should be associated ‘with the survival of the system’ (Eagleton, T).
From there it rolled… in Western Europe and America. Socialist Russia held back substituting capitalist goods with visions of socialistic future. Nonetheless, time and change of the political regime erased all the dissimilarities. Across the world we are consuming, consuming, consuming as there is no tomorrow. Why? We have to offset the shift of our values towards materialism and stuff intellectual and spiritual void with more goods. The simple fact that the things we change are still look and function well makes me to wonder how far we have gone or have been led to.
Human weakness for self-indulgence and of course, formed through out the years positive attitude to conspicuous consumption made us an easy mouldable ‘material’ for capitalistic structures. We are spoiled for choices everywhere. The market is overflowing with goods and services. Even the simple food shopping might result in hours of choice torture. However, it seems to me like quite a good strategy for time waste: more products equal more time spent thinking about the product, equal less time spent on actual mind challenging analysis of the situation. New generation can not imagine themselves without a new gadget/item of clothing/piece of jewelry/shoes etc every month. The time in between purchases is spent in research of the following item to buy,
Constantly popping out myriads of new trends and never ending reminders of urge to be 'cool' and 'up-to-date' mean that individuals, concerned about 'display status' mentioned earlier, are being in continuous process of dreaming and planning the ways, how to get the desired product. The circle is eternal: new trend - process of dreaming - purchase - new trend etc. That consumer strategy is genius as it keeps billions of minds free of critical though. Elisworth Toohey ('Fountainhead') mediocrity* became a strive for 'originality'. We have so many original characters/goods/ideas nowadays that all of them are literally blurred into mediocre background. The world bright with advertisements is constraining us from analytical though destructing to harmless dreaming about next 'must have'.


* From his credo: Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed

On ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos

Many left their home in the quest to find the American Dream. Everything was possible in the new free country. Once in the USA, some were buying the dream for ‘5 bucks a day’ working as a machine with fifteen minutes lunch break and three minutes toilet brake. Some, as Henry Ford, were selling the dream ‘sucking every ounce of worker’s life off into production’ for ‘5 bucks a day’. Some, as Frank Lloyd Wright, were materialising the dream of those who achieved it. Some, as Thorstein Veblen, didn’t care to get ‘5 bucks a day’ or materialize their dream, they were far more interested in analysing the relationships of those who sold the dream, who achieved it and those who is still in, perhaps never ending, process of achieving (‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’, ‘The Theory of Business enterprise’).

This is a snapshot of beginning of the 20^th century USA society pictured by Dos Passos. Everyone is moved by the same goal, though everyone chose own way to realise it.

In the end everything comes to a single nod of personal values and development abilities in Faustian sense. I can’t judge Ford for exploiting the men: they came to work for him by their own good will, they were paid handsomely. I can’t say he made a tragic sacrifice of all this men’s life, making them work as a machine producing machines, for the sake of the bright tomorrow. Not at all. On the contrary it was the men who chose not to open Pandora box of development and to avoid probable tragic consequences. Here we see the personal choice of intellectually (and in some cases morally) easy life. All, Ford, Wright, Veblen, the workers at the Ford factories, started essentially from the same level with the same ‘dream’. That makes the USA case unique. It was the clean start for absolutely everyone: no old little worlds, no family with the prejudice customs. The new world was already established, the only decision one had to make is how to achieve the American Dream.

Need, Want, Guilt and Care. On ‘The Tragedy of Development’ in Marshall Berman’s ‘All That is Solid melts into Air’

Development… I have never thought of the development as a tragedy. And yet, it is the most dramatic eternal tragedy of the world. Development rests on constant thought and hence continuous evolvement of one’s knowledge to the point of the destruction of old ideals. Once thought is triggered the development process begins with an inevitable dramatic end, as the development is not possible without the destruction. New spiral of knowledge must rest on the grounds cleared of any previous thought, values, etc, then and only then it would be considered ‘new ‘in oppose to ‘evolved’. This process is one directional: once it has started it can only progress forward without rest (as rest is equalled to end/death) till the end. Development opens Pandora box which is never destined to be closed again. Destructions, personal tragedies and sacrifices are balanced with the final goal of new better world, a hope at the bottom of Pandora box.

The Faustian paradox (or tragedy) of the development is that the better world can not be achieved with the good intentions. The ugly compromises (often self-destructive) have to be made. Gretchens, Philemons and Baucis, the figures impersonating anything old, be it good, loved or cared for, have to be sacrificed to clear the site for the new spiral of knowledge.

Parts of Goethe’s tragedy are applicable on the development of nations and countries (‘Faustian model of development’ according to Berman). However, it must be noted that in Faust case the word’s development was en extension of the self-development and fulfilment achieved with the ‘underworld’ powers offered by Mephistopheles. Relatively wide knowledge of Faust tragedy enables many to speculate and justify the sacrifices made to achieve ‘the honourable aim’. Today’s ‘developers’ have never been visited by Goethe’s symbolic women*: Guilt and Care. They have seen Need just for a second. Want though became their moody driving and ordering lover which didn’t leave the outer world even for a moment.

So are we witnessing the final metamorphosis of Faustian development? I doubt so. It is more like a Hollywood adaptation of the story: we keep the concept of enormous indeed very real sacrifices (slave-like builders of Dubai, destruction of the whole villages along with ‘modernisation’ of their inhabitants, etc) for some ephemeral promises or vision of the better world.

* Need, Want, Guilt and Care are four symbolic women appeared to Faust when he almost grasped his own tragedy. ‘These are the forces that Faust’s program of development has banished from the outer world; but they have crept back as spectres inside his mind’ (Berman, 1988, p. 70)

On ‘The Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand

This week portion of theoretical reading was substituted with the portion of theoretical watching. I will analyse ‘The Fountainhead’, a 1949 American movie based on the bestselling novel by Ayn Rand.

Well, it certainly is a very 40s American drama. Saying American I mean inevitable clash of the ‘good and bad’ with absolutely necessary spine love story line and ‘happy ending’ for the ‘good’ characters. Saying very 40s, I mean a high level of the moral propaganda and clear separation of all roles into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ without any gradation in-between. Only good and bad, plus and minus, black and white. Actually in Rand’s case ‘the black (bad/minus/negative)’ is interpreted as greyness, similarity and conformity. ‘The good’, on the other side, is represented by selfish, individualistic non-conformist principles. Two antagonist characters are Howard Roark, a talented architect, rejected by the society for his believes that individual must be a ‘prime mover’, and Eliswroth Toohey, an architectural critic with collectivist visions, who runs a newspaper column. Both are extremely one-sided, supporting only their ‘good’ or ‘bad’ side of the argument throughout the film.

I found Elisworth Toohey character is fitting extremely well in our 21^st century context, in spite of all his one-sided flatness. His great in their evilness believes that a society that must be ‘an average drawn upon zeroes’, and that it is easy to rule if everyone is like one another (Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed) are pretty much the credo of today’s power holding individuals. To re-phrase the well known strategy, divide et impera (divide and rule), - conform and rule. To me this is an absolute summary of today’s politics. The planet is dying (oi, there is no room for hesitation, if it is really true, how can someone possible be hesitant in this dreadful situation (!?), so don’t think and just accept: the planet is dying and it is partially your fault!) all of us have to unite (hmm, more like conform to me) and fight collectively the global warming. Well, ok, I must recycle, otherwise my rubbish will not be collected, and this issue is not even the question of personal believes any more – you and I will recycle or die from pest infestation. The ‘collective mould’ is also defined by: ‘5 a day’, paranoia of cleanliness and disinfection (how, again, people used to live without Dettol and all this 99.9% still alive bacteria around them??!), personal opinion on X-factor, strive for organic produce (and what is the definition of ‘organic’, hash! – no questions, just know that if something is organic it is definitely good for you). I think I will stop here, otherwise the blog will become boring and moody :).

On character of the Professor Silenus in ‘Decline and Fall’ by Evelyn Waugh

What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! […] How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! This half-formed, ill-conditioned body! This erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of engine, and between them men, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!

Quite a statement by the Professor Silenus*! Clearly Silenus adores machines and their efficiency. The admiration is so great that it even overshadows the simple fact (and without a doubt, a very sad fact for the Professor himself) of his human origin. Here, I might classify Silenus either as a hypocrite or as an intellectual lunatic in the process of realisation of his own hypocrisy. But what has been done is done: he proclaimed to hate human kind. Sooner or later he would have to cope with both: the ‘vile’, imperfect world and duplicity of own values. This dreadful scenario might be resolved in few ways. The first, and the easiest one, is to spare oneself from everything at once (the myriad of methods can be employed: poison, sharp razor, etc, etc). The second one, is to adapt to the world’s imperfections, simply to give up one’s believes. And the third is to try to purify the world to suit one’s aspirations. The character of the spirit of the Professor Silenus or indeed his real-life prototype Le Corbusier without a doubt would select the most ambitious solution to the personal problem and would take a mission to change the world.

This is my take on Corbusier’s work. In the end of the day, it was, first of all, the personal matter of resolving the collision of polar values. The world change was just a tool to prove or persuade that individual ideals can and should be accepted on the global scale. Corbusier’s fascination with the machine and the consequences of this facination briefly discussed above represent the dramatic difference between origins of European and Russian Modernism. I will discuss this dissimilarity in a separate blog.

*By the way Silenus in Greek mythology is forever drunk part man, part beast creature, companion of Dionysus. The name also refers to the double nature of the Professor, a human who hates human kind.