A brief note on commercialized individuality and the symbolic representation of human experience through this practice. – by Jim Swill

Anti-social desires are satiated by symbolic representation. When there is hostility against our government we are given violent programs: video games, cinema, and music. In Roman times tactics such as “bread and circus”, as well as gladiator fights, soothed social unrest and political involvement, turning a potentially uproarious and participatory society into docile observers of the spectacle.

New Age marketing is moving towards minimalism. From cell phones, to cars, to Ipods and computers, even furnishings are now embraced into the vein of minimalist artwork. It comes as no surprise in a time of such rapid information trade and over-exposure. It appears to me that for well over a solid decade the idea of consumerism has gradually developed lingering negative attributes. Americans’ awareness of consumption is also more glaring in a time of such economic decline. Spending down, worldly possessions losing value to the necessities, and community beginning to bud, nearly revitalized. What better way to postpone corporate abandon than to attribute a sense of individuality as well as literal physical space to products? Insecure times would naturally induce community bonding, but it has now become diluted.

Security is now measured in privacy, individuality, idolatry, conformity in very subversive manners. Global village has manifested in internet social networks: information free to roam, people’s voices heard for the first time openly and searchable. The symbol of community replaces community, TV outdated, voluntary subjugation to advertisements within the confines of your digital personal area. At this point in time even preteen generations are accustomed to the idea of individuality. This idea of individuality is a weapon. Community is how people hold power. A symbol / idol of community replacing human interaction are in some sense of the phrase “mind control”. Whether it is deliberate or not, this system is just one of many human kamikaze missions our commercial age has embarked upon. More so with global village symbolism is the possessions. Less material is simply now a representation of transient freedom to my generation. But true knowledge is never obtained through such procedures. True knowledge can never be truly understood in the sense of the word when the actual experience variable of the life is removed. The catalogue of experience, the symbol of experience, in endless data and information. Information is not knowledge.

I believe that this wave of information is in turn being turned into over saturation which inevitably leads to somewhat of an overload, resulting in a state of being unsure and undecided about every last facet of existence. This leads to a hypothetical mind state, and instead of actually consciously advancing, we deny all things of conviction. We become addicted to sarcasm out of fear, which breeds cynicism, which breeds hatred, anger, resentment, jealousy, and then finally the ever fleeting idea of community is destroyed out of sheer fear of the human experience, the human interaction. The symbol of experience, the symbol of life, will never compensate for the basic skills lost in our dependency to information trade that is channeled through commercial agencies. Commercial agencies are autonomous entities, they are not human, they are the quintessential example of human error. A modern day Tower of Babble, a detached dictatorship, so far out of touch with human life that it must create a false world in order to survive. This digital world will never be the real world in which our instincts long for, in which our life compels us to understand. We must be there for one another; these forces will never be there for a real relation.