The Market ideology is the new global ideology, creating as much object-bondage on a global scale as perhaps the world has ever seen at one time. We are, as subjects, bonded and bound by the commodities we have created, that we have poured our life into. Perhaps it is because we know we have spent our life and poured our joiussance --- or juice --- into those objects, and that is why we become so commodity fixated, object-bound. We "know" that it was our very "life" that we poured into those commodities. We can only get that life back by consuming other objects which contain someone else's lifeblood.
No longer is there necessarily a direct one to one relationship between putting our life and energy into an endeavour and seeing the results of those efforts be our continued sustenance through the procurement of necessities. It is such that our energy and our very life and living has become ever more distanced and detached from the procurement of necessities in a direct manner. We are becoming lost in the objects of production, and yet those objects are not the objects that feed and house us, clothe and nourish us, warm and care for us. We receive capital for the commodities we produce and then enter the Market with our capital reserves so as to procure necessities. In this way, we all live under the directives of capital and the wide girth of the Market itself. We can no longer procure our own sustenance apart from the Market; this is how powerful and all-encompassing the Market has come to be. Marx states that "...each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form; it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones." When I was asking friends, colleagues and associates, during the writing of this book, "what was not an issue up for discussion in public circles",i.e., what was untouchable --- I came to see that the globalization process is the issue that is not up for discussion. Whenever we talk, or are told about global resocialization, we always seem to come back to the point that it is inevitable and that this is the "evolutionary process" in progress; that "free trade and open markets" are the wave of the future. As Marx said more than a century and a half ago, each new ideology "is compelled... in order to carry through its aim... to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society... it has to give its ideas the form of universailty..." And this is exactly what we see and hear on a daily basis in relation to the ideology of Market-driven Globalization and Resocialization. And we might as well even begin to call it what it is: "The Re-Socialization of the Globe through the proselytizing means of Market Ideology driven by the Myth of Eternal Progress".
Globalization has become like a new religion. And it is an ideological force that confronts us all directly and indirectly. Globalization, though little unknown, is not a noble endeavour but a greedy swell. Markets expanded so as to take advantage of cheap labor and untapped resources. This is colonization in process with the effect of turning all nations into potential imperialistic structures bent on seeking greater gains for the chosen few. Fragmentation. Rampant dislocation. Unequivocal marauding of the actual world for personal and corporate profit. Gain here, through loss over there. Capitalize. How far have we really come? Body parts are now commodities: new faces and breasts, penile implants and organs --- executed Chinese prison laborers being sliced and diced for their organs. The unborn is even for sale; aborted fetuses. Egg and sperm, new commodities that are supposed to reflect the donor/profiteer. Here image rules, appearance dominates, "object-bondage" the state of the world market. Call it what you like --- another manufactured image, another exchange of value, trading goods in the marketplace --- the fact remains that the Market Ideology has leveled all players from science and art to philosophy and religion, from education and entertainment to necessity and the mother of invention. The new totality is none other than the Market; and all of us are in bondage to the commodities, those objects we trade life for, that devour us as we devour them, that suck dry the rivers and the lakes, distance the three realms from each other (I, we, it) and call the world of commodities (its) our new social sphere. Some like to play the game as if having more capital somehow frees them from being enslaved in "object-bondage" with all the lesser rats who live life as the shadowy dregs of society. The other side of the tracks. But commodity enslavement takes on several faces, the two main faces being enslavement to commodities through lack and enslavement to commodities through appearance. The first is bound to commodities by their absence; the second is bound to commodities by how when the subject is adorned with them it makes that subject "appear". What is shared in both cases, is that the enslavement is to commodities, and this "object-bondage" is consequential --- it matters little in a metaphysical and/or psychological sense how the enslavement looks on the outside. The fact is the enslavement to commodities, period. It is not so much how that enslavement looks, whether it is pretty and glamourous or ugly and destitute. At the same time that we have this metaphysical notion of the essence of "object-bondage", or what I have termed here, commodity enslavement, there is also an "appearance manufacturing", or iconographic porn that attempts to create ogle-eyed voyeurs out of us --- but just as often results in disgust and depravity. This iconogrpahic porn is an industry in and of itself, playing on and attempting to render malleable the psyches of the consumers the world over. Where psychology, behaviourial sciences, media outlets, and the markets converge is where we find this realm of iconographic porn --- or, the prostitution of images, the manufacturing of appearances. After studying how the general population responds to various stimuli in a Pavlovian manner, and how repetition conditions those responses --- it was not long before the manipulation of the subject rendered the multinational conglomerates more and more autonomy to effectuate change in the psychology of potential consumers. The manufactured icon or image attempts to stimulate repressed libidinal energies in the targeted consumers --- or demographic group. As the emotional discharge that follows psychological contact with that image or icon becomes ever more directly associated with those images and icons, the fundamental joiussance, or juice of life, becomes downloaded into the superstructure that supports that image or icon, thereby assuring the continuation of that particular form of iconographic porn. This is a cycle that plays itself out day after day after day. In effect, our erotic capacity becomes wasted on images and icons. The mutlinational conglomerates continue to twiddle the knobs of the consumer's psyche through image and tone. Market ideology determines that economic growth and an ever expanding market share are what alone determines progress, so there are, in effect, no limits to what the players in the Market will do to grow their share of the commodified lifeworld. Here again the objectivist doctrine serves the technocratic juggernaut of progress and cultural relocation and ecological displacement. Science and rationality know how bring about repeatability. Return investment is "creating" loyal customers. Repeatability verified through addiction to patterns and habits. Call it science. "How are you addicted?" Marx pointed out that "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.". Marx is not making a distinction between the forces of material production and the forces of intellectual production. He essentially states that, though appearances may be otherwise, you can be sure that the ruling intellectual ideas of any epoch are ideas that foster the modes of material production of that same epoch. Or stated more simply, the intellectual ideas that are sown throughout a culture are exactly those ideas that the dominant material forces of that culture want to see upheld by the people. In this way, and not without a bit of irony, we can see how we are all more or less ears and voices for the propaganda of the elite class when we spout globalizing rhetoric. And to suggest that there is no "elite" anymore, well this connotes someone who is utterly blind to the present situation of the peoples of the globe, and that wide discrepancy between classes that still holds water in more than just a theoretical sense. The notion that classes still exist should not surpirse anyone. The Global Resocialization project will not result in a classless mass. In fact, we could say that the gulf between various classes is growing wider, and that the fragmentation of classes ends up resulting in a growing sense of alienation between classes. The commonality of being-human is tossed aside so as to fixate on economic demographics and where "I" fit in. The fact of the matter is that there is an ever-increasing fragmentation of the lifeworld; rather than the oneness afforded us by globalizing tendencies. The alienation of the subject-world from object-world, which we have discussed as the "death of the subject" through "object-bondage" and "commodity enslavement": Fragmenting. The imagined postmodern subject does not know itself apart from commodities, from the objects it is enslaved to --- those objects that have come to be the sole signifiers of I-dentity. When postmodern theorists and authors speak and write about this "death of the subject" they are not doing so as if there were something to replace it... In other words, for them the "subject is dead"... never to return either. I propose a different perspective, one in which it appears that the subject is dead only because of these commodity fetishes that have developed throughout the whole modern to postmodern epic-saga. The subject died through neglect, as Marx cautioned --- heedlessly it would seem: "...it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself --- his inner world --- becomes, the less belongs to him as his own...". Precisely because we have given all of our attention... in fact, our very life to the production of commodities, we now believe and seem to think that we are dead without objects. The bondage to objects, the enslavement to commodities is the only life we have known. We are ex nihilo --- nothing --- without our commodities. This, then, is why the postmodern assumption as to the "death of the subject". The proposition, as put forth here, is that the subject is not so much dead as that it has been, and is still to a great degree, enslaved and ensnared in the objectivist tendencies of the modern and postmodern trajectories. In the same way that science deemed the "death of the subject" necessary so as to arrive at truly verifiable and authentic objective truths, so too did the subject have to die so as to be able to produce more objects --- those commodites, the residual atrifacts of the scientistic leaning to 'technical' and instrumental' logic at all costs --- even unto the death of the I and the We. Last stand. ----Walter Truett Anderson
If we take and build upon the assumption that 'culture and consciousness do in fact reflect each other' we come across some very interesting trajectories, vis a vis culture and consciousness. First and foremost among these trajectories, is that there is no discrepancy between where we are at internally as conscious participants and where we are at externally as cultured participants. In other words, where we are at "out there" is also where we are at "in here". And though there may in fact be many fine distinctions we can draw that illuminate some of the differences we are all privy to, and embody as diverse beings in many distinct cultural settings, when we take the mask off and look beneath what we want to see --- or don't want to see --- we find out that there is a Global Re-Socialization process underway --- and right now! This not only means that there is a new mass populist culture beckoning on our collective doorstep --- it also means there is a movement of consciousness --- en masse --- that coincides with this fermenting populist culture. One is the force for the Other; the Other reflects the force of the One. What I have been attempting to allude to in this text, is that "how" we languauge the world, and what assumptions that languaging rests upon, may not, completely at least, be those conscious processes that we often assume them to be. In other words, "how" we language the world, and what assumptions that form of langauging is based upon, may not be information that we are at all subject, in a manner befitting total disclosure. We could rightly say that those who know more about "languaging processes" than we do, can or could certainly take advantage of our langauged blind-spots --- ones that we never imagine that we have. When, and if, we are not conscious of the blind-spots that we possess, then we are caught up in a potential double-bind. First, we are unaware of these languaged blind-spots, and second, we actually have these languaged blind-spots that we are unaware of having. So, there are perceptual, conceptual, cognitive difficulties that we are faced with: first, becoming aware that we all do indeed have languaged blind-spots, and second, adjusting our perception, conception, cognition processes to account for those langauged blind-spots (and not assuming that there are none, which is the greatest seduction of all in relation to language). Lets look to spiritual traditions and contemplative practices to see what they have to say about potential perceptual blindspots. One of the first things that stands out is that a great many of the meditative and contemplative traditions are not formulated around a total transformation of the subject, as such. We could say that it is more about "illuminating the processes of the subject", and how those processes flow and break in relation to and with the Other, with world. Or, stated another way, we could say that the contemplative and meditative traditions are not always concerned about bringing on an alteration of the vessel, but rather with cultivating an awareness of both the limits and capacities of that vessel. In this sense, after immersion in a meditative or contemplative practice, the subject becomes illumined to its own processes of languaging, and how that languaging process relates to perception, conception, and cognition. What we see, how we see, and the interpretation of how what we see informs our experience, and therefore our interpersonal, or intersubjective relations; this all becomes the primary component of most, if not all, meditative and contemplative praxis. The illusion that meditative and contemplative practices result in an overwhelming transformation of the subject in time is an illusion that results in more harm than good (precisely because such a transformation is a crapshoot at best and is most often out of the subjects ability to bring about in a conscious manner). The grandiose expectations and the mythical stories of this, that or the other experience simply serves to distort the fruit of authentic contemplative praxis. We could say that the spiritual literature is full of highlights... because these make for better reading --- as the grandiose somewhat serves to fictionalize the non-fictional accounts of moment to moment cumulative alteration --- slowly over time. It is not a stretch to say that we are all fascinated by the outstanding, the apparently superhuman realizations and results of spiritual practice tempt us... dangle like a carrot on a stick, and get the rabbits attention. While this is good for attracting our attention, these also become a long-term deterrent on the path. The bona-fide fruit of contemplative praxis is not some superhuman this or that, but the realization of our humanity and the consequences of this moment in time as it relates to the context we are immersed in. We could say, that becoming more and more ordinary --- losing, surrendering, or giving up those grandiose expectations and superstitions --- is more in keeping with the fruit of contemplative praxis than a lightning-like transformation of the subject that makes for a good story.
----Ray Grigg
The fundamental is not a removal or a distancing from this, just as it is, this here, where we are and what we are right now. No, this is the Buddha Land, the Kingdom Come, the Pure Land, the Primordial Palace of Wisdom and the Greatest Truth of the Kosmos. And what we assume to be apart from us is exactly what distracts us from realizing our Innate Condition, which is One with the Gods, at Peace with the Kosmos, ever present to the Justness of Suchness --- All, just as it is... just this. Yes, this right here. None but this. We are "actually" riding that donkey that we are looking for. We could say this in so many ways, and still not or never realize that the Ground of our Being is that which we are seeking for; so as to fill the manufactured holes in tired self. Yes, we are riding upon that donkey that we are looking for. It matters little the form of our seeking, externally, "out there". For reconciliation and reunion are not won by effort, they are realized as the prior Presence of God-with-Us... even now. The donkey that we are looking for is supporting us. The God that we are looking for is with us, beneath us as firm support in all of our journeyings. We have not left Home, have not left Eternity, have not left Divinity, have not left Truth or Love behind in some magical kingdom or fairie-riddled land of stardust and sparkles. We bring IT, because we are expressions of IT, are supported by IT --- even as we apparently wander away from IT so as to look for IT. But IT can never be lost to us who are essentially IT.
Aye, I go to the valleys and IT is there.
Aye, I die a thousand deaths, in a thousand ways and IT is there
Running, IT greets me before I arrive.
Aye, I live a thousand lives in a thousand ways
So, why is it so dangblasted hard to notice? To know this? Our main suspect is this Marxist notion of "object-bondage". Being the conditioned "commodity slaves" that we have become, we are all about looking for IT in an "object", or as an "object". We have become so object oriented. We have objects that we want to acquire and objectives that we want to realize, and then we have the objective of wanting to become more objective. Now that's "object-bondage"! The fact that we want to realize IT as an object, and within the domain of an objective, is most likely what results in those perceptual / conceptual blind-spots that prevent us from ever realizing the divine ass upon which we sit. It is not a very popular position to state that we are all conditioned. We like to imagine that we are above being conditioned by circumstance and culture and language and the like. But are we? Hardly! We are embedded within conditions and circumstances. It has been proven time and time again that we are conditional beings in our present configuration and form. This means that we can become conditioned and that we can also transcend conditions. By introducing or immersing ourself in otherwise "new" and/or "alien" conditions, we alter the form of our conditioning. And depending upon how deeply conditioned we have become --- how deep those grooves of habituation have become --- this determines the success of depatterning/repatterning. It is not so much that we want to get beyond all conditions --- for this is a conditional realm, and all who come here must deal with conditions --- it is that we want to "illumine the conditions that we are engaged with and enfolded in". Once again, it behooves us to point out that we are just becoming more familiar with the "conditions" as they are --- in this there is a taste of freedom; for we no longer expect what cannot be delivered to us by conditions, by objects, by our bondage and servitude to commodities. It is freedom.
There are many ways of formulating the experience of life, and what one language means is never totally conclusive and just for all subjects or groups of subjects. Quite literally now, it takes all of Life to tell the Whole Story of Life. To borrow a pharse from postmodern jargon: "The Kosmos is Its own Narrative", and gives birth to both Its own narrators and literary critics as well.
To suggest is to create.
----Stephane Mallarme The Colonizer of lifeworlds cannot help but define. To rule is to define. The War for Reality, if there is one, is a war for the definition of Reality. It is that simple. "You are this and not that. I have the authority, as Colonizer, to say so." Life-Worlds thus become measured, ruled, judged, whittled down into definitions by the Colonizers who always have their agenda and extremely authoritarial voice that trumpets tones of oppression and fascist rule over the colonized Other. Who is this Colonizer but us? Do we not seek our own definitions of this, that, and the Other? We most certainly do! The external Colonizer is merely a reflection of the internal complement that ebbs and flows in tides of rising and falling emoto-currents within, around, and about us all. The oppressed is none other than you and I, none other than him and her, these and those. The oppressor/oppressed dynamic is an aspect of the experience of Being-in-Existence. A well-worn aspect at that by now! Yes, we have all placed labels on that which is slayed by our definitions, if only for our eyes alone. And yes, we have felt the imprisonment of definition, the tomb of too-confined a notion, the mausoleum of meaning. Death by definition; you are this, not that. Our drive for certainty: Oh, we so want to know. "Who are you really?" "What is this really about?" "And be specific please." To know is to be able to define, in definitive terms. "It is this and not that." And to be able to define in definitive terms is to trade reality for symbol, a word for the 'thing-in-itself'. For how do we express our definitions if not in some form of language? How do our "what it all means" spread if not by tongue or symbol --- spoken and shared? Whereas allusions and pointing-tos, metaphors and figures of speech, open up possibilities, the definition of a dynamic in definitive terms closes around that lifeworld and clutches the morphological field of interrelated flows into an abstract term. "You are a boy, a girl, a dog, a hopeless wretch, a rotten whore, a greedy son of a bitch." You are this and not that. Always have been. Always will be. Death by definition.
The Colonizers rule in imperialistic fashion --- owning the rights to dictate and define the terms as to how the living shall abide in the possessed lands. While living within the dominion of the Colonizers it is virtually impossible for us to get outside the system so as to make a determination as to what the system is about; the now-system that is the Market; the commodified and colonized lifeworld of mere objects, its, consumer demographics and purchasing traits, just data --- information as commodity, as what it all means. Every one of us lives with the implied threat of taking up the colonizing position, thereby relegating the colonized to further oppression. Our smallest, most innocuous contribution becomes a contribution to the engines of colonization; where we serve an imperialistic queen and know it not; where we speak the tongue of oppression and resound with the tones of "object-bondage". The constancy of living within the dominion of the Colonizers resolves into a situation where the further colonization and commodification of the lifeworld is "just the way it is". The dull yet piercing drone of the buzzsaw of colonization consumes the shadowy voices that whisper no more, but howl in agony beneath the weight of an oppressive regime. The cha-ching of the cash register drowns out the inhumane consumption of those colonized worlds south of the northern tier of riches: the wild Other, the indefinable and indefatigable Other, the crazy crimson hue of a bloodletting land sprayed dead with pathogenic particles, and only the most proper and fitting political stances. In this space the digital whirl resolves our subdued conflict by projecting simulations of the once was and is no more. Surrealistic portrayals of an ancient past that may have been yesterday blanket the discrepancy. We are not sure any longer... We are just not sure... And yes, somewhere down that road the faint glimmer of recollection haunts the machine-driven eyes of a cyborg-like existence. The biological substrate has already been replicated into a malleable force that can be engineered so as to empower the agenda of the Colonizers. The wild Other continues to howl in rage; in fits of fury, and in distant echoes that speak of a thousand tongues dying in the Name of One; that of the Colonizers. The wild Other groans in a fateful passage that slips us all into the longest night we have ever or will ever know. The Kali Yuga opens its celestial season on the stage, singing the dirge-song, and we all know what that means: that the fateful turning has just begun. It has all just begun. It is to be my suggestion throughout these texts that we will be required to take up the various languaging injunctions. If we are at all going to have the possibility of knowing the direct apprehension that will precede any communal confirmation, then we have to take up the injunctions, becoming the experimenters, suggesters, possibility mid-wifes ourselves. As I see it, each is called to experience for him or her self these injunctions; only then can we confirm, deny, or elaborate upon what has been apprehended and shared. First is the experience through injunction, confirmation or denial follows. This is how we build up and/or tear down consensus, community, and culture; it always has been; always will be that way. Experiment. Experience. Confirm, deny, and elaborate. Consensus fostered. Community avowed. Fragments endowed. Splinterings levied. Associations and alliances renowned. Culture... Culture... Culture...
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