Zerzan's Running on Emptiness has an interesting few pages on Rothko, abstract Expressionism. They've pointed me back to Dore Ashton's book on Rothko. The idea that a world of images (corporate or otherwise) was an indication of a "spiritual lack"; that what was required was a clean break from reification and representation. Materialism, measurement, the reign of quantity are all a congealing of what is essentially fluid, formless, and uncontained. That the absence of images might in fact be liberating is not something the modern west can countenance.
In addition there was a small chapter on illness (anxiety, stress, suicide, depression) and how this might-and here one has to be cautious- be partly a result of the lack of meaning or purpose in a society that is hooked to fleeting, trivial, and banal representations/images. The need for an alternative digital or virtual reality because the one that you actually inhabit doesn't open onto anything greater or different from the acquisitive and shallow self. Whence the great proliferation of pornography, drug-induced fantasies and escapism. Or, more plainly: medication to just get through the day. This does strike you (a point obliquely made by Avner Offer in The Challenges of Affluence, namely: as societies become richer and richer there's a corresponding growth in addictions (porn, food, gambling, consumption, drink etc.) which really begs the question: what of the much vaunted freedoms of the market?).
Related to this, perhaps: Is fundamentalism and extremism a response to and/or a symptom of the nihilism of late modernity?
In addition there was a small chapter on illness (anxiety, stress, suicide, depression) and how this might-and here one has to be cautious- be partly a result of the lack of meaning or purpose in a society that is hooked to fleeting, trivial, and banal representations/images. The need for an alternative digital or virtual reality because the one that you actually inhabit doesn't open onto anything greater or different from the acquisitive and shallow self. Whence the great proliferation of pornography, drug-induced fantasies and escapism. Or, more plainly: medication to just get through the day. This does strike you (a point obliquely made by Avner Offer in The Challenges of Affluence, namely: as societies become richer and richer there's a corresponding growth in addictions (porn, food, gambling, consumption, drink etc.) which really begs the question: what of the much vaunted freedoms of the market?).
Related to this, perhaps: Is fundamentalism and extremism a response to and/or a symptom of the nihilism of late modernity?
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