[matilda] [ssf] Seduced by the Image of Reality Who runs sheffield?

[worldwarfree at riseup.net]

  Seduced by the Image of Reality

When I would look through magazines as a small child, I used to think that
there must be a magical world somewhere where everything looked—and
was—perfect. I could see pictures from it in those pages, the smoky air of
dimly-lit rooms heavy with drama as the young models lounged in designer
fashions. That is where excitement and adventure is to be found, I
thought, in the world where every room is flawlessly decorated and every
woman's wardrobe is picked and matched with daring and finesse. I resolved
to have an adventurous life of my own, and began looking for those rooms
and women right away. And though I've discovered since then that romance
and excitement rarely come hand in hand with the images of them that are
presented to us—usually the opposite is true, that adventure is to be
found precisely where there is no time or energy for keeping up
appearances—I still catch myself sometimes thinking that everything would
be perfect if only I lived in that picturesque log cabin with matching
rugs.

Whatever each us may be looking for, we all tend to pursue our desires by
pursuing images: symbols of the things we desire. We buy leather jackets
when we want rebellion and danger. We purchase fast cars not for the sake
of driving fast, but to recapture our lost youth. When we want world
revolution, we buy political pamphlets and bumper stickers. Somehow we
assume that having all the right accessories will get us the perfect
lives. And when we construct our lives, we often do it according to an
image, a pattern that has been laid out for us: hippie, businessman,
housewife, punk.

Why do we think so much about images today, rather than concentrating on
reality, on our lives and emotions themselves? One of the reasons images
have attained so much significance in this society is that, unlike
activities, images are easy to sell. Advertising and marketing, which are
designed to invest products with a symbolic value that will attract
consumers, have transformed our culture. Corporations have been spreading
propaganda designed to make us believe in the magic powers of their
commodities for generations now: deodorant offers popularity, soda offers
youth and energy, jeans offer sex appeal. At our jobs, we exchange our
time, energy, and creativity for the ability to buy these symbols—and we
keep buying them, for of course no quantity of cigarettes can really give
anyone sophistication. Rather than satisfying our needs, these products
multiply them: for in order to get them, we end up selling parts of our
lives away. We keep going back, not knowing any other way, hoping that the
new product (self-help books, punk rock records, that vacation cabin with
matching rugs) will be the one that will fix everything.

We are easily persuaded to chase these images because it is simply easier
to change the scenery around you than it is to change your own life. How
much less trouble, how much less risky it would be if you could make your
life perfect just by collecting all the right accessories! No
participation necessary. The image comes to embody all the things you
desire, and you spend all your time and energy trying to get the details
right (the bohemian tries to find the perfect black beret and the right
poetry readings to attend—the frat boy has to be seen with the right
friends, at the right parties, drinking the right beers and wearing the
right informal dress shirts) rather than pursuing the desires
themselves—for of course it's easier to identify yourself with a
prefabricated image than to identify exactly what you want in life. But if
you really want adventure, an Australian hunting jacket won't suffice, and
if you want real romance, dinner and a movie with the most popular girl at
your school might not be enough.

Fascinated as we are by images, our values have come to revolve around a
world we can never actually experience. There's no way into the pages of
the magazine, there's no way to be the archetypal punk or the perfect
executive. We're "trapped" out here in the real world, forever. And yet we
keep looking for life in pictures, in fashions, in spectacles of all
kinds, anything that we can collect or watch—instead of doing.

WE LOOK FOR LIFE IN THE IMAGE OF LIFE.

Watching from the Sidelines

The curious thing about a spectacle is how it immobilizes the spectators:
just like the image, it centers their attention, their values, and
ultimately their lives around something outside of themselves. It keeps
them occupied without making them active, it keeps them feeling involved
without giving them control. You can probably think of a thousand
different examples of this: television programs, action movies, magazines
that give updates on the lives of celebrities and superstars, spectator
sports, representative "democracy," the Catholic church.

A spectacle also isolates the people whose attention it commands. Many of
us know more about the fictitious characters of popular sitcoms than we
know about the lives and loves of our neighbors—for even when we talk to
them, it is about television shows, the news, and the weather; thus the
very experiences and information that we share in common as spectators of
the mass-media serve to separate us from one another. It is the same at a
big football game: everybody watching from the bleachers is a nobody,
regardless of who they are. They may be sitting next to each other, but
all eyes are focused on the field. If they speak to each other, it is
almost never about each other, but about the game that is being played
before them. And although football fans cannot participate in the events
of the game they are watching, or exert any real influence over them, they
attach the utmost importance to these events and associate their own needs
and desires with their outcome in a most unusual way. Rather than
concentrating their attention on things that have a real bearing on their
desires, they reconstruct their desires to revolve around the things they
pay attention to. Their language even conflates the achievements of the
team they identify themselves with with their own actions: "we scored a
goal!" "we won!" shout the fans from their seats and sofas.

This stands in stark contrast to the way people speak about the things
that go on in our own cities and communities. "They're building a new
highway," we say about the new changes in our neighborhood. "What will
they think of next?" we say about the latest advances in scientific
technology. Our language reveals that we think of ourselves as spectators
in our own societies. But it's not "They," the mysterious Other People,
who have made the world the way it is—it is we, humanity ourselves. No
small team of scientists, city planners, and rich bureaucrats could have
done all the working and inventing and organizing that it has taken for us
to transform this planet; it has taken and still takes all of us, working
together, to do this. We are the ones doing it, every day. And yet most of
us seem to feel that we can have more control over football games than we
can over our cities, our jobs, even our own lives.

We might have more success in our pursuit of happiness if we start trying
to really participate. Rather than trying to fit images, we can seek
exciting and rewarding experiences; for happiness does not come from what
you have or how your appear, but from what you do and how you feel. And
instead of accepting the role of passive spectator to sports, society, and
life, it is up to each of us to figure out how to play an active and
significant part in creating the worlds around us and within us. Perhaps
one day we can build a new society in which we can all be involved
together in the decisions that affect the lives we lead; then we will be
able to truly choose our own destinies, instead of feeling helpless and
left out.

What's the point of doing anything if nobody's watching?

We all want to be famous, to be seen, frozen, preserved in the media,
because we've come to trust what is seen more than what is actually lived.
Somehow we've gotten everything backwards and images seem more real to us
than experiences. To know that we really exist, that we really matter, we
have to see ghosts of ourselves preserved in photographs, on television
shows and videotapes, in the public eye.

And when you go on vacation, what do you see? Scores of tourists with
video cameras screwed to their faces, as if they're trying to suck all of
the real world into the two-dimensional world of images, spending their
"time off" seeing the world through a tiny glass lens. Sure, turning
everything that you could experience with all five senses into recorded
information that you can only observe from a distance, detached, offers us
the illusion of having control over our lives: we can rewind and replay
them, over and over, until everything looks ridiculous. But what kind of
life is that?

"What's the point of watching anything if nobody's doing?"