Exhibition
The world today
is no theater where actions and feelings
are represented and interpreted,
but a market
on which intimacies are
exhibited, sold, consumed.
The theater is
a site of representation,
whereas the market is
a site of exhibition.
Today
theatrical representation
is yielding
to pornographic
exhibition.
—The Transparency Society, The Society of Intimacy p. 34, by Byung-Chul Han Stanford University Press 2015
These words of the Korean born German philosopher are rock-hard, like flint. Do the words identify the disconcerting sense of drift? Are we not often within sight of others holding tightly to the debris which they have lashed together in order to remain afloat? According to who you talk to “things do not add up.”
The currency is seriously inflated on account of pandemic aid, borrowed to keep the economy afloat. There’s a war which America is a major sponsor. We loathe to see an entire people slaughtered and their country erased from Europe. Waging war is very expensive. Again funds are borrowed. The cost of everything goes up, — groceries, rent, gasoline.
In recent memory, and accelerating the net effect of circumstances is the weakening of public institutions, of private ones as well. An institution, whether public or private constitutes a theatrical stage, upon which a few or even many thousands of employees or bureaucrats each fulfilling his/her role with purpose, all together — delivers an outcome essential to all of us, to society. When institutions are weakened by severe budget cutting, or by diminished public support on account of a drumbeat of social media propaganda, or by… There are many angles of assault. Institutions become weak, uncertain, unstable venues for anyone who has prepared to fulfill a role.
***
There are innumerable small communities, often in rural areas where the business district is substantially abandoned, with many shuttered, derelict store fronts. Even here in the Fox River Valley, an unusually prosperous community west of Chicago, there are pockets, visible signs of slow-motion failure.
What is to be done, if the cost of education is out of reach, if available employment does not pay enough to cover living expenses plus the payback of what was borrowed? What about establishing a household, marriage, the cost of raising kids… Yes, everything matters. Things add up, or things devolve…
Does one join the exhibition, become a brand, commodified, without a stage, subject to abuse in order to survive?
One thought on “Exhibition”
Part I
The changing of the guard, the shuttering of windows as younger generations search for a new path, giving up their parents perceived old ways, leaving them to gnaw at their own memories; this is not new. I find it difficult at times to distinguish between what is the standard transformation between being a 20 something and my current march toward decrepitude. Has society reached a point of no return or is it the same progression as was seen from Big Band to Rock & Roll? Damn those kids.
Part II
The tethers that bind us to each other, the strings that keep us from floating into the darkness of oblivion are critical to life, to pleasure, to communication, to touch and warmth. Some people can exist without the experience of having others near by, but that is the rare exception. These tethers have been a part of humanity since the beginnings of consciousness, yet I see them breaking, eroding on a grand and global scale. I can’t tell if this sense is just my older self facing mortality, knowing that that darkness will consume me soon enough, or is it something deeper and much darker that is engulfing our species as a whole. I wish I could tell the difference.