Beautifully Broken Issue #22: The Banal Cult of Luxury Brands
Beautifully Broken Issue #22: The Banal Cult of Luxury Brands
IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD
Happy Saturday! Welcome to the new, compact format of Beautifully Broken.
IDEAS: The Banal Cult of Luxury Brands
Here is the thigh bone of St. Agatha of Sicily, and a fragment of the finger bone of St. Aloysius of Gonzaga. Here is some medieval thinking for you: remnants of the bodies of holy people are supercharged with power that connects us directly to god. Relics therefore granted prestige to the church, the religious leader and the community that held them. From our modern, civilized, enlightened perspective such an idea seems ridiculous. It comes from another world, another time where people couldn’t see as clearly as we see now.
Now go on social media and click on a few videos of supercars and fancy watches and notice how your feed is flooded with popular celebrities talking about their favorite luxury watches, cars and handbags and how those items define them and their achievements.
If you think worshiping the toe bone of a saint is strange (assuming you got the real one and not one of the many fakes that were being sold in the Middle Ages), then consider how strange it is to define yourself based on your choice of sparkling wristwatch. Is it that we, for want of a spiritual existence, now worship money (and what it can buy)? Now we worship as a member of the cult of St. Rolex, Blessed St. Ferrari, Holy Lamborghini, Sacred Vacheron Constantin, Divine Louis Vuitton.
What a waste of time and energy. You can miss your whole life distracted by sparkling baubles, chasing fool’s gold.
I wonder, how would consumer brands and corporate entities be regarded by the medieval mind? I think they would see them as evil spirts, demons even. If that sounds like primitive, unenlightened thinking then consider for a moment what a brand is and what a corporation does.
A brand is a symbol that represents a product or service that has lasted long enough, and accumulated enough power to burn its symbol into the minds of the popular consciousness (“Coke is life”). Brands are owned by corporations.
What does a corporation do? It's a great imaginary entity that consumes human energy, the entire working lives, the creativity and industry of thousands of people in exchange for the promise of material prosperity. The deal, of course, is that the person must always add more value, give more of themselves to the entity than the entity gives back in exchange otherwise the corporate spirit cannot continue to grow and expand.
So what’s the difference between the cult of saintly relics and the cult of luxury goods? The same human instinct is at play – the need to collect, to show off and display, to mutually express admiration over a physical object and its story, but in one model they are directed towards a spiritual focus for communal benefit and in the other the instinct is directed towards self-glorification, perhaps even a communal fragmentation – because when you have something your neighbor does not jealousy and its negative consequences arise.
Human instincts remain the same but how they are utilized transforms depending on culture, geography and the historical period. It’s hard to see ourselves, we take our beliefs for granted. We can however, look at other cultures, beliefs and historical periods to help see our own situation more clearly. So let's pretend we are in the middle ages for a moment. How can we ward off the evil spirit of the cult of luxury goods?
Cast aside any thoughts of possessing more resources than you need to survive. Focus instead on family, friends, your vocation, and giving back to your community. These experiences and relationships are notoriously difficult to possess, sell and mass market and so are intentionally downplayed in modern life as being unimportant, indulgent, and less relevant than owning the right objects. We’re even told the contrary: that owning the right things will enhance our relationships and vocational activities, or even worse that our friendships, relationships and vocation will fail unless we are associated with the correct brands.
How to sum it up in a simple mantra? A prayer of action to keep us safe from hungry demons who want to get their claws into our minds and wallets: Less is more. Go deep, don’t invest in a shallowness. Share, don’t horde.
HEADLINE FICTION #8: Spiritual Vehicles
Here's a new format for short fiction that I've invented. It's a 70-word story in three panels with a pattern of 7-16-47 words, where the first 7 words form a headline style title, the 16 serve to fill out the headline information a little more and the final 47 contain the meat of the story and resolution. I think I'll call it "headline fiction". These micro stories of mine are based on dreams (and nightmares!).
ART TO MEDITATE UPON
For the Love of God by Damien Hirst
Art informs the soul, it's a transmission from one human to another. It's unselfish, enlightened, there's a selfless goodwill to it because the intention is to communicate something important from within to the world beyond the self. If there's something in a gallery that doesn't do that then it's something other than art: propaganda, advertising.
Here we have something that could be read as an artistic memento mori. Perhaps the message is that all the money in the world can't beat death? Perhaps not.
Art is as much about context and intention as the physical artwork itself. I went into this a few issues back on the topic of the legacy of fascist art and architecture.
Here is what the critics of the day had to say on Hirst's diamond skull:
Ralph Rugoff of the Hayward Gallery in London criticized the work as a mere decorative object, saying "It's not challenging or fresh. It's a decorative object which is not particularly well done."
The Australian art critic Robert Hughes described the skull as "a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality." Hughes added that "as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers".
Lastly, Richard Dorment, art critic of The Daily Telegraph, wrote a review that is on the money, with the exception of second guessing his correct first instincts because of a reverence for Hirst as an artist:
"If anyone but Hirst had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Asprey or Harrods might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron. But not just anyone made it - Hirst did. Knowing this, we look at it in a different way and realise that in the most brutal, direct way possible, For the Love of God questions something about the morality of art and money."
For The Love Of God is an exercise in vanity, an attempt to capitalize on the success of his previous The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which comprised a shark in a glass tank filled with formaldehyde. This work was the wet dream of high-rolling corporate executives who saw their own psychopathic energies embodied in the form of the shark and wanted to possess it as a trophy like a lion's head mounted on the wall.
For The Love Of God failed in this attempt because the $50 million dollar asking price was too rich for the market it was aimed at: rich people who want to show off and can't tell the difference between art and advertising. Even they, it seems, have a limit when it comes to common sense.
WISDOM OF OTHERS
St Columba’s Island Hermitage, Unknown Author. Excerpt from A Celtic Miscellany: Selected and Translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, Penguin Classics 1972
A characteristic of early Celtic Christianity is the fervour of asceticism practised by the monks and ‘saints’.... The Celtic hermits went to the most desolate wilds and ocean rocks to win salvation in their own way; three of the poems translated here are put in the mouths of these hermits, and are evidently the work of men who knew at first hand what they were writing about. It is a marked feature of this body of Irish literature that the writers had an intimate affection for wild life and wild nature, such as we may find elsewhere in Christian sources perhaps only in the story of St Francis.
St Columba’s Island Hermitage
Delightful I think it to be in the bosom of an isle, on the peak of a rock, that I might often see there the calm of the sea.
That I might see its heavy waves over the glittering ocean, as they chant a melody to their Father on their eternal course.
That I might see its smooth strand of clear headlands, no gloomy thing; that I might hear the voice of the wondrous birds, a joyful tune.
That I might hear the sound of the shallow waves against the rocks; that I might hear the cry by the graveyard, the noise of the sea.”
“That I might see its splendid flocks of birds over the full-watered ocean; that I might see its mighty whales, greatest of wonders.
That I might see its ebb and its flood-tide in their flow; that this might be my name, a secret I tell, ‘He who turned his back on Ireland.’
That contrition of heart should come upon me as I watch it; that I might bewail my many sins, difficult to declare.
That I might bless the Lord who has power over all, Heaven with its pure host of angels, earth, ebb, flood-tide.
That I might pore on one of my books, good for my soul; a while kneeling for beloved Heaven, a while at psalms.
A while gathering dulse from the rock, a while fishing, a while giving food to the poor, a while in my cell.
A while meditating upon the Kingdom of Heaven, holy is the redemption; a while at labour not too heavy; it would be delightful!
- Irish; author unknown; twelfth century.
PHOTO HAIKU
The Greatest Treasure Is Overlooked
Great gold of the sun
reflects the precious heart-mind —
free for those who see
Ideas To Live By In The Coming Week
Try selling a valuable but otherwise useless item (for instance a Rolex that could be replaced with a Casio that does a better job at keeping time) and give them money to a charity. Ah, the feeling of lightness and pleasure at having done some good.
Resist the urge to buy new things to temporarily relieve the feeling of anxiety of human existence. Try sitting quietly with the negative feelings until they subside or transform into their opposite. So much cheaper and much more effective.
Revel in the gold of nature. Each day the sun rises from the dead, warms the world, feeds us and teaches us the meaning of life. The greatest luxury is right there for free, how can a man-made bauble compete? Nature and the universe is giving you all the status you will ever need, you just have to recognize this and take it.
Peace Now,
Morgan ,
27th July, 2024
