Notes from the Underground

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I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.

All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

 
One of my favourite moments in film is in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Brian admonishes his followers to understand that they are all individuals. All of them repeat this precept as one, save one lone voice who denies that he is an individual. I was reminded of these recently when I came across a set of reviews for Heath and Potter's critique of countercultural culture jamming as being simply a form of consumerism (providing the aesthetics for an otherwise homogeneous society) which undermines or even replaces progressive politics. From these I found my way to this rather impressive website:

"In the era of the new conformity, the ideal is reversed. Outer individuality obscures inner conformity.. Television quickly became the perfect medium to preach the pop theme of the exceptional individual. TV features recurring characters whose lives are at once more exciting, triumphant, and difficult than ours ever could be, despite seemingly humble and unpromising jobs and situations... preaching incessant selfhood, a recipe for individuality that calls for just the right amounts of rebellion, free will, style, and, ultimately, acceptance... The paradox of “natural” is the paradox of having to follow a communal and well-travelled path in order to arrive at individuality. You must lead your own independent life, outside the old bonds of family, tribe, religion, origin and class; and you must do this within the new guidelines and rules which the state, the job market, the bureaucracy, lay down.

Those of us who are shut out from actually participating and making meaning through localized cultural exchange depend mainly on prefab fun to legitimize our lives. As a result, the conformist individualist wants—needs—constant stimulation and satisfaction. A desire for opportunities to articulate our individuality is the legacy of a pop culture that then tries to satisfy such a desire with ever-more-immersive attractions. These attractions are so extreme and over the top that they make it even harder for us to imagine anything we can do in our daily lives that can match that level of intensity. Thereby, we feel even more devalued and distanced from our normal selves."


There's much here that I find congenial. I've long observed that the various uniforms of the counter-culture represent a form of affiliation that is considerably more rigid and coercive than anything the mainstream is capable of producing; for its practitioners such cultures represent a rather queasy mixture of simultaneously asserting alienation and affiliating themselves with a specific sub-culture. In truth, the ruthless individualism of punk lyrics was always the clear precursor to the atomised society that followed. Equally, my view of religion has always been shaped by Kierkegaard's account of the the fable of Abraham and Isaac, where unquestioning devotion and sacrifice is seen as the hallmark of belief. As loathsome as I find fundamentalism, I have some difficulty seeing liberal religiosity with its selective approach to only the most congenial of doctrines as having a great deal to do with belief.

However, as an atheist I also find it impossible to envy the belief of the religious and equally difficult to care whether religious belief is eroded in the face of individualist consumerism or otherwise. By the same token, the limited individualism of modern society is infinitely preferrable to the form of coercive communitarianism that the author of the above piece occasionally seems to evince a sympathy for. These arguments always tend to remind of Anthony Giddens idea of the post-traditional society. Giddens argues where tradition dominates, individual actions do not have to be analysed and thought about so much, because choices are already prescribed by the traditions and customs. In a post-traditional society, identity becomes a more reflexive, constructed affair, a narratitive that we at least have some scope to remake:

"The more post-traditional the settings in which an individual moves, the more lifestyle concerns the very core of self-identity, its making and remaking... The range of lifestyles - or lifestyle ideals - offered by the media may be limited, but at the same time it is usually broader than those we would expect to just 'bump into' in everyday life. So the media in modernity offers possibilities and celebrates diversity, but also offers narrow interpretations of certain roles or lifestyles - depending where you look."


Update: A furtherpiece on Heath & Potter, and their view of the counter-culture as a form of conspicuous consumption:

"There have been two attempts to forge a transformative Left. The first, Communism, ended in tragedy. Heath and Potter say the second, the counterculture, is farce. It has "almost completely replaced socialism as the basis of radical political thought."

Rebellion is a very good way of setting yourself apart from the masses, whether it's by being cooler or morally superior or just better informed than other people. It's a search for prestige in the most basic sense…. You can see the almost unassailable sense of superiority that's associated with the vegan, organic-vegetable-shopping, back-to-the-land, Guatemala-handcraft-wearing, anti-globalization activists. They clearly think that they're better than the people who do not share their system of values. So, because other people don't like being characterized as brainwashed cogs, they wind up promoting competitive consumption... Consumerism…always seems to be a critique of what other people buy…. [The] so-called critique of consumerism is just thinly veiled snobbery or, worse, Puritanism."


The overall point is, I think valid, though some of the implications teased out from these premises seem rather less so. Is the real reason we don't have a thirty-five hour working week or strict pollution controls on car usage really to do with unrealistic counter-culture demands or, as seems more likely, that the adoption of a bohemian lifestyle simply works as a salve for not being concerned about these things in the first place.

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posted by Richard 7:13 pm