We sell our flesh, our blood; our cumulative sweat and juices are the actual life of the Market. Yes, all of us who "rent" ourselves out become so many "bonded and bondable objects"; that dance like we "know" we are supposed to in order to earn our biscuits for the day.
"What does the Market-Master want from you dear slave? What position will you assume? What body part of yours is sold out for a little juice at the bar after work? How many gallons of sweat and pints of tears a year do you trade for a few coins, for a higher credit limit on the Visa, the MasterCard? How much time do we spend sucking the company dick, just so we can have the privilege of having ours sucked after hours? And are we really as free and sovereign as we like to imagine, as much as we like to tell ourselves? Or is that some more propaganda for ya?" Free and sovereign... Free to what? Free to choose your slavery? Free to choose the lesser bondage? Free to lay claim to a piece of private property in trade for the incorporated Market laying claim to us as a piece of private property that gets spit out of the system when we are no longer productive, profitable, expedient-obedient to the corporate multi-cult bottom line? Really, how free are those whose apparent freedom in the Market comes from the sacrifice of those whose bondage and servitude is paying the difference between Southern Hemispheric loss vs. Northern Hemispheric gain; or suburban sprawl and expansive growth vs. inner city decay. The economic gains merely change venues. It is a trade-off. Someone, somewhere is paying the difference. Goods do not just fall out of the sky. Economic booms are not founded on fairy tales. There are hard, cold, brutal material realities that determine economic expansion for certain peoples. These hard, cold, brutal realities are the equivalent of indentured servitude; a new millennial example of profiteering through the "primitives"; prosperity through a kind of forced economic eugenics, where the underdeveloped are forced to take on debt in order to play with the "big boys", and then given wages and working conditions that would make the most hardened Euro-centrics weary under the burden. Author William Greider writes in his exceedingly pertinent book for our times, One World Ready Or Not, that "the rich nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the poor." Further, Greider implicates the populous of the richest nations: "Citizens on the wealthy end of the global system may claim to be innocent of these practices, but their ignorance and indifference make them complicit, too." For we are the ones who contribute to the accumulation of the outstanding debts by ever-demanding lower prices in the Market and higher returns on our investments. It is a cycle that will, that must, end. For the limits of these kinds of socio-economic practices will take us back into a type of Dark Ages, this time with much more powerful technologies at our side. (For some, that is.) When Michael Jordan endorses Nike shoes he is, in a sense, condoning the working conditions of the "Just do it" camps of child labor in Indo- and Micronesia. He is endorsing that type of child labor, those types of working conditions, and those wages. In fact, he is more than condoning it --- he is profiting from it, big time! Michael Jordan is not alone in these practices. Everyone who contributes to the economic gain of a company that profits from the indentured labor of in-debted citizens of the world is endorsing those types of practices. Everyone. You. Me. Us. All. It is because we want to profit. And we cannot profit unless we raise prices or reduce costs. If prices are raised, then we cannot as readily purchase the goods that we want, so we reduce cost. This means taking advantage of underdeveloped nations through farming out a new form of economic slavery South of the border to Mexico; or complying with Chinese forced labor camps; or endorsing Pakistani child labor. Because we want to consume. We want more. Progress. Economic gain through "object bondage", through "commodity enslavement". And, in order to get more we must reduce the costs of things.... Cheaper labor. Deplorable working conditions. Cutting corners inhumanely. Efficient economic practices. A crucifixion and hour. This our rpice for the will-to-power.
When the persistent awareness of "economic debt" is ones main reality, then all other considerations become subservient to that primary one; which is attending to the debt; taking care of the debt. The psychological lack is a deep sense of never having it. Why? Because there is this debt hanging over ones head all of the time. The fact that I am in debt creates a state of psychological conditioning where I am always in bondage to that debt. That debt is my main concern; that is, if I want to take care of my family, and if I want to have a house and a car and some consumer goods and a college education and a vacation and a nice Christmas for the kids, and..... The persistence of the in-debt-edness cresolves into this sense of never-ever arriving there; of always having farther to go; of never being out from under the potential socio-economic guillotine of indentured servitude. In essence: a persistent psychological lack exists. I am in debt. I am in debt because I am forced to go into debt in order to provide for my family. This debt is a long-term debt. It will be with me for many years. It is one of my closest companions. Mortgage. Lease. Rent. Debt. Economic prison. Free to choose what "item", what "necessity" that I will go in debt for. Harsh socio-economic reality. Forced to carry debt; so others can carry credit. A zero-sum game in the end. But in order to play someone has to carry the debt. So others get to play at being rich. Because the in-debted owe them.... For a long, long time.
It is virtually impossible in our times to provide for ourselves without "having-to" enter the Market and play by the rules of that Market; which is why we are only free within the limits of the Market embrace. We are not free to disregard the "ways and means" of the Market unless we are also freely willing to pay the socio-economic price for that disregard. The Market has its own policing force and its own example setting apparatuses all set up. In every land, in every region there are Market-access rules that we are forced to comply with if we want to reap the rewards of the Market. For instance, if we want to fully participate then we have to take on debt from one credit source or another. This creation of indebtedness becomes like a psychological engine, one which compels us to keep on keepin' on: producing, consuming, producing, consuming. Simply so we can someday get out from under the burden of societally enforced debt we become defined in terms of that debt. We make choices in relation to our in-debtedness. Our freedom is defined in relation to the debt we do or do not carry. We could certainly forego debt altogether; but this also means that we will be forced to forego many of the consumer items, if not some bare necessities as well. We cannot have it both ways: we cannot have a debt-free existence and also have all of those consumer items that we want (unless we are blessed with the gift of means). This means that we all have or will make a choice about how much to sacrifice in relation to the socio-economic system as it is currently set up. Some choose to rebel on the edges of society. Others dive right in to the center of the system because they were born to play the game; born to swim with the sharks. Most, though, just do what they can to get by --- not questioning authority too much, at least not outwardly. "Just do it!" Just take on debt. It is now a fundamental rite of passage. Forget the vision quest and the walkabout, now the trial by fire into adulthood is the taking on of debt. It is the initiation rite into the current socio-economic system. Bar none. "Just do it!" Socio-economic hazing. Political desensitization. Just do it! Take on debt. It'll make someone else rich through new forms of global usury. Transfers of capital via cheapened labor, forced on subjects through the necessitation of debt in order to procure the bare staples of existence --- food, clothing, shelter.
The flows that we bring to the Market --- flows of our labor and time, of our energy and life, of information and an innovative eye --- these are co-opted by the Market. These flows are also set to be determined by the Market as to their market-value. Again, the Market determines the value... setting the value of a flow of labor, or of a break in the flow of labor that we bring to the Market as a commodity to exchange for capital or credit. For instance, we flow an innovative idea into the Market through our place of work. This idea is flowed from us and into the corporate structure that we work for. The idea is broken up or down by management --- according to the determination of the socio-economic structure that we flowed that idea into. In other words, the flows of innovation are "territorialized" by the corporate structure after we have flowed that innovation into the structure. That corporate structure then stamps that flow, brands that flow, "territorializes" that innovative flow of information or labor that issued from, or flowed through us. In trade for this inlfux of flow into the corporate structure we receive a reflux flow of capital which we can go forth and exchange for a flow of goods, a flow of fuel, a flow of vacation experience (all of which are to be purchased in the Market). The Market is the place of any and every flow; be it religious, political, sensual, or simply survival oriented. The rivers flow for the Market in all of their hydro-electric glory. The Market has claimed the river-flows as sources of energy; breaking the flow and damming up the river-flow so as to store up a surplus of energy; a surplus value which can be exchanged in the Market for capital. All flows converge in the Market. The roads and the highways of every nation are populated by Market flows. One is going to make an investment of a flow into the Market; one is going to make an extraction of flow from the Market; one is flowing goods and services for the Market. The material referent for this would be the cargo trucks, rail cars and shipping vessels that haul and transport goods from region to region --- all over the globe. A Globally Incorporated Market determining the valuation of the flows of labor and goods, capital and access to all of the above.
The main point is indoctrination into the system: to issue an education into the nature of how one is expected to flow in the Market; as well as how one can also displace flows from one region and invest them in another for gain or loss. This is how we take the flows of labor there and displace them so that they will send flows here. This is how we stand to gain here while provoking loss there. For the system is built of winners and losers. The winners are winners because of the creation of losers. Socio-economic gains are won through the blood-sacrifice of those who "pay" for our gain by losing --- willingly or not! Flows are diverted; flows are amplified and induced like a woman in labor with child. Produce! Produce! Produce! Flows are prevented and blocked through laws and regulations that discourage the investment of flows here while encouraging the investment of flows there. Flows are felt and received through interpersonal exchange, through fluid relations that give through flow and receive through flow. Flows of human labor go into the products we receive as purchased commodities from within the Market: it is a flow of Life we are purchasing. The consumer extracts that injected flow from the commodity through "object-bondage". I attach myself to an "Object" that was the production of Nature in concert with the labor of many Being-humans. I thrive from that Object. That Object gives me Life. I extract the flow of Life injected in that Object during its production; then discard that Object as refuse when the flow of Life is exhausted from it. The embodied metaphysics of the Market. Bardo-like traits exemplified in "object-bondage" and "commodity enslavement". Life here through the extraction of flows from "commodities" produced there. Bananas. Electricity. Tea. Coffee. Sugar. Shirt. Shoes. Italian marble. Southern Hemispheric sweat, blood, and tears. Life here. The teacher flows information, moves it out into the atmosphere and allows the student an opportunity to get acquainted with the flowed emanations of spoken and written, of sound and symbol etched and gutturated as verbalization. This is the education of languaging --- the flowing of socio-cultural information through languaged terms. The flows are coded, languaged, made to communally resonate as symbols of "representation" that "image" the flows, that stand in as societal signifiers meant to refer to the real, the actual. Experience. Communal verification. Insight. Apprehension. Socio-economic expectation. Cultural dos and don'ts. Flows of languaged information given and received. Specifically speaking now, I am here flowing thoughts and impressions from the Totalistic Flow that I am immersed in now; just as you are receiving and validating this partial flow that is emanating from pixilated cyber-screen. By allowing and/or accepting this languaged flow to be a now-conscious aspect of the Totalistic Flow that you are actually and vitally embedded in now we connect across the boundaries of space-time. By Being-in-Existence we are ever-presently in/of a Totalistic Flow; we are embedded or immersed in that Totalistic Flow; we are impressed by IT; and we can also make an impression in/on that Totalistic Flow through an expression that flows outwardly from us and into the Greater River that we are ever a part of. Flows, flowing information as representatives of actual sensed and lived experience. Socio-cultural heritages living and dying; being created and destroyed; empowered and neglected. As we are impressed by the Totalizing Flow (as we all are), we then come to a process whereby we transduce or transfer/transform that impression into an expression --- one which we re-impress back into the Field, the Continuum of the Totalizing Flow. Thus the Flow flows on, ever-newly transformed, ever-newly impressed through those that are the expressed Pure Presentations of Nature's Economy birthing newer mobilities on the Gaian cosmic platform. Much the same nature and condition of flowed flowing applies to the Market (as the Market is merely an expression or built structure that "represents" Nature's Economy). The Market, as we have noted, is a now global region of flows. Flows of goods and capital, labor and information. These flows are coded in Market terms. There is a lesser freedom at work here, because we are, in Market terms, working within a representation of a representation. Or said differently: the Market is a representation of the exchange process that we are all immersed in (Nature's Economy); an exchange process that represents to us that fact that we must exchange with other beings in order to survive and to continue to live. Sustenance. Necessity. We could even say we are not our own source, that we are partial beings, that we need to be in flow with others so as to be able to procure the vitals of living. Trading this for that. Again, it is Nature's Economy. We know this; for we are a pure presentations of Nature's Economy; produced via Nature's Economy. At the same time that we are aware of the presence of Nature's Economy, embodied in such a simple process as eating or breathing, we can also become aware of the representation of Nature's Economy in and as the Market. The Market is merely a re-coded, or en-coded, system of representations that has been devised in a way to "represent" what Nature's Economy is always already being/doing. Nature's Economy is all that we have really had reference to in order to construct/create the Market. Our only reference for the Market was/is Nature's Economy, and our perception of that Eco-nomy.
What has transpired throughout historical time, is that men, and more recently women, have tried to fit Nature's Economy into ever more immaterial and abstract systems of representation. These abstarct systems, to various degrees, have most often been systems of representation through deduction. What has been deduced from Nature's organization as an Economy has been applied in a systemic manner to the culture of markets. So, over time we have come up with a lot of laws and regulations; representations; calculatable systems that have been a part of the history of the Market. Some have remained; some have passed away. Some are adjusted to fit the times, and our times are adjusted to fit the system. In turn, lots of edges, patterns and flows have had to be stripped of their natural coding so that they could be fitted into the new codes and regulations that the Market has determined are a more proper and fitting order, designed by and for "civilized" beings in the name of progress and its gods. Who could count how many formulas and codes have come and gone? So many representations of Nature's Economy have been employed for various periods of time, and have then, mysteriously fallen by the wayside. Nature's Economy has had to slowly, and without remorse, eat away at the sometimes tough hides of those representations that would make of Nature an obsolete former referent; a Nature that served by allowing for the ascension and unrepentant glory of oh so refined representational system that would deign to outshine their actual referent: Nature. But Nature persists. And the Being-human, as Nature, persists as well; representing Nature's pure presentations in so much simulated glory and amplified capacity. The world of simulacra, where "this" is meant to "represent that". Not the real however, though more manageable, amplified, reduced. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard popularized the notion of the "simulated real", writing extensively on the subject. He gives what he calls "the successive phases of the image", which would be:
----it is the reflection of a basic reality In the following stanzas we will employ the use of the above Baudrillardian phases, both in relation to Nature's economy and its representational simulation, the Market, which follows the "successive phases of the image". I will refer to the Market and its offspring as "representations", and to Nature's Economy as the production of "pure presentations"; with the self-aware Bodies that are the Being-humans as those who give birth to the representational paradigm that we are currently in the midst of.
Whereas Nature's Economy doesn't necessarily need any of humanities props in order to stay upright and functioning, the representations that are employed in/as/by the Market most certainly do. Without those Being-human props, the representations fade in so much digital dust: crumbling codes that have no more of their believers around to spout the party line; no one to call forth the representational code from out of the womb of the digital matrix and sing it alive. But when does Nature's Economy cease singing and imploring through speech and stick-symbol, leafy tome and the watery trickle that falls upon the grave of yet another representational artifice come and gone? Nature's Economy needs none of humanities props, and knows no shame in echoing that wild "I am!" in shriek and howl. Nature's Economy is. "I represent nothing! For I am a pure presentation."
Let me explain further: the flows of labor and productive output are demanded from us at certain times; we must have these flows all ready at an appointed time, and only that time --- else we are considered to be unproductive. This is a representational demand. The rhythms and flows of pure presentation are conscripted for duty in the Market out of necessity or allegiance. "Just do it". In market terms it matters little that we all flow according to innate rhythms; rhythms that are not representations but actual and vital pure presentations; meaning, they are what they are --- just that. What does matter in relation to the Market is that we dam up our flows, save them, set them aside, single them out, name them, classify them, categorize them, and then have them all set and ready for the representational structures of the productive work environment of the Market when they are demanded of us at the appointed hour. This amounts to us literally being forced to deny the innate rhythms and authentic nature of Being, just so that we can flow certain flows and repress other flows according to a societal or institutional standard that is the latest greatest offering in managerial and bureaucratic protocol. The pure presentations of Nature's Economy --- flows --- are conscripted by the Market, and forced into representational structures that by most standards are rigid and set upon someone else's notion of efficient and productive application, i.e., an ideology of producing on demand, according to a representational structure of bureaucratic hierarchy.
Again, the overwhelming sense of displacement and hyperspatial discord is an increasingly pathological sign of our times. The system is that large, with our representational structures consisting "of all of these overlapping dimensions... which makes an older kind of existential positioning of ourselves in Being... exceedingly problematic". So, how to orient ourselves amidst all of the representational subterfuge? How do we cognitively map ourselves in a world of increasing simulacra? Where Jameson points out that "in the process of becoming an image or a spectacle, the referent seems to have disappeared, as so many from ebord to Baudrillard warned us it would." So, do we orient oursleves in relation to the not-real icons of DisneyWorld? Of McDonalds? The new spiritual landmarks of the postmodern timescape? With Mickey and Minnie as our virtual guides through the digital looking glass? Looking back to "the successive phases of the image" posed by Baudrillard we note that the image culminates in that phase where the image itself becomes pure simulacra; "it bears no relation to any reality whatever". Baudrillard goes even further: "When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning." Maybe we can get a sense of why various "fundamentalisms" have taken root, digging in against the onslaught of simulation. Because this is where, according to Baudrillard, "simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum". Simulation threatens the cherished representational structures of the fundamentalists. We do not want a virtual Mohammed; a simulated Christ; a digital YHWH. Give us the real; the fundamentally real. This sort of retreat back to fundamentalism is a sort of "Custer's last stand" against the push-pull pulse of a throbbing virtuality that is ascendant in our time. The threat of Marketeers applying their demographic forecasts and their focus group reports in distinct places is not a simulated threat but an actual colonization in progress; thereby removing the real in trade for what the franchised pollsters say is desirable. No wonder the longing, plaintive looks back over the shoulder. Nostalgia is in. Once upon a time we knew ourselves. We knew where we fit in. We actually had the cognitive capacity to map ourselves in relation to the space we moved in. Actual referents served as figurative landmarks in space, which gave us the ability to orient ourselves in an existential sense. This is no longer the case in many respects. Increasingly, we come to find that what once served as a material referent for orienting oursleves is no longer actually present. Deconstruction is not just a philosophical and literary movement; it is also an indicator of the loss of certain material referents; referents which served to orient us in relation to space and time. It is the nostalgia movement which seeks to maintain and/or preserve, even recreate, those lost landmarks --- be they natural or cultural. Jameson alludes to the loss of former orienting referents when he writes, in relation to a work of art by Richard Prince, how Nature "has systematically been eclipsed from the object world and the social relations of society whose tendential domination over its Other (the nonhuman or formerly natural) is more complete than at any other moment in human history." Nature rendered as a mute background, a gagged resource; the crazy aunt locked away in the basement of culture.
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