Notes on 'Notes on the Death of Culture' (or: the End of Eroticism)

One sign of decay is the proliferation of, as it were, 'secondary markets': notes on 'notes to..'.
Derivatives, in other words. You can't but help think that the history of capitalism involves greater and greater levels of abstraction, a movement away from the real (economy) to the frivolous, stylish, fashionable. At the root of it-putting my religious hat on-has to be credit/interest/usury. What is, ultimately, being purchased here is time (Le Goff: Your Money of Your Life).

[The fact that one can talk of a religious sensibility that one can 'put on', like a hat, and then discard at a later stage is also, perhaps, symptomatic of the times we live in].

Not incidental to that trend is the hyperinflation of the word (or, more accurately: babble): "light literature" and criticism, analysis and the deconstruction of "texts" accompanied by a pseudo-intellectuality and "passion" for cleverness, playfulness and obtuseness. But if it's all a game then why bother in the first place? 

'Shallowness' doesn't quite cover it because implicit in the idea of shallowness is the counter-vailing notion of 'depth'. When there is only the surface, when there are no second spaces (as it were, as it is), then a kind of nausea can follow, but one is more likely to witness or experience a stupefied indifference. The metropolis and the blase attitude. Yeah, like, whatever. 

Everyone today wants to be a clown, an actor. Not a "stone," but an actor. Just watch TED and you'll see academics craving for attention. "Visibility" is what they call it nowadays. Or "cyber presence". But politicians and other charlatans, too. You sometimes wonder if you were the only one who was serious. The seriousness with which people devote time and energy to accumulating possessions has always ended up in frivolity and boredom (luxury as the beginning of capitalism as well as its ultimate symbol).

"Everything is a puppet show that can use very cheap tricks to win the favour of a public greedy for entertainment." 

The playful banality of the dominant culture, in which the supreme value now is to amuse oneself and amuse others, over and above any form of knowledge or ideals..to forget serious, deep, disquieting and difficult things and to indulge in light, pleasant, superficial, happy and sanely stupid pursuits."

~~~