We live in a society divorced from matter, a society where the democratization of the class based image has fueled the belief in the loss of class creating an image of equalitarian society. Yet, if we divested ourselves of this split, negated its separation through a reunification of matter and form we would be able to see how unequal we really are. We must move beyond this split and unify the divested image to the matter of society. Only though the reunification of form and matter can we advance as a society.
For only through disassociation of form and matter could we realize just how false and unsafe a world of image is. One divested of the link between form and matter is one inherently out of touch with reality, with the objective social conditions within which people live. This dissasociation relies on a world full of subjective perceptions of mistruths, lies and misinformed conceptions.
The self as an image is reproducible, it is manufactured and sold not for one person, but for the millions, what is offered to you and I as unique, individualized, is the antithesis of this, it is mass produced, standardized, subject to a routine. Life is no longer about crafting a truly authentic self, even though that is what people want.
The economic system has taken the desire for authenticity and individuality and rubber stamped it with mass produced materialism. A self for the market place means, fancy car, fashionable clothing, big screen TV - it is the commodity self, a self built around an image of material wealth.
This world of image, dominated by mass technology is totally divorced from the reality of the material world, it seems to float above the material world, smothering its existence in its wake, its model of reality appears to take precedence in the lives of people, we now communicate solely through free floating signifieds unattached to their signifiers. Reality is now dominated by image, people simulate what they wish their lives were or what they want them to be. People no longer display who they truly are. Individuals now produce their own reality via their presentation of self, via images of the world.
People now interact primarily through their presentation of self, images converse with images, signs interact with other signs. The body is now devoid of any purpose other than as a hanger for the signs of self. The interplay of signs has obliterated the importance of material reality, it is no longer able to bind people to natural limits, the world of the image knows no bounds or limits, it is a world of image that has become substance, one is now forced to play in its reality, its world, for any tie to the land is now obliterated.
We are now socialized into a world that deemphasizes the material world and concrete human interaction. We are socialized into a world of mass mediated images. The image is now autonomous from material reality, yet it begins to obtain its own material form, its own reality, one that becomes the dominant mode of thought in 21st century society. It is a society that has transformed the concept of being into having and then taken it one step further again, from having into the appearance of having.
The world of touch has been replaced by the world of sight.
As long as people equate the appearance of having with being, then the dominance of the spectacle, the dominance of disembodied images with no correlation to reality reigns supreme, and then the goal of individual emancipation is doomed. The world of spectacle allows for the obliteration of the conception of class society and the consciousness that the societal form that humans have constructed can be altered through political action.
The commodity self is a part of an apparatus of social control, one designed to focus one's concentration on their relative status to others, their material shortcomings, their failure to obtain the image of the good life - that of material wealth. It is created to blind people from the reality that an authentic and happy you is not dependent on material wealth, that freedom, autonomy, choice, security is not to be found in your current job nor the existing commodity market, it is to be found in your human interaction, in your political activism.
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