LE COMMERCE

Barbra Kruger's strikingly red typography declared: "I shop, therefore I am." A public expressionism that now effortlessly lingers in our thoughts, luring us to scrutinize the significance of possessions and the extent to which they define us. To play into the hands of the constantly conniving, greedy machine of capitalism is seen as an unequivocal sin by others who play knowingly into it all the same. If the market mechanisms of yesterday are going to be seen as the market mechanisms of tomorrow, then why not at least play into the fleeting pleasures that are offered by a system? It's unfair to constantly complain of a soulless corporate hellscape and then become enraged at those who can at least be blind to it.

Carl Sagan remarked that,

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”

Within the overly glossy pages of existential angst, we relentlessly seek meaning, as if the incessant penning, editing, and revisions of the footnotes of our lives could somehow render us immortal. We catalog our accomplishments, our friends, our travels, our experiences. Yet, when we begin to do so with our materials, it's avarice! You take stock of your possessions and a moral outrage is declared in your honor by men still feverish with thirst for not having drunk deeply enough from the cup of life's bittersweet brew.

But what are these possessions, really? They are emblems of our status, signifiers of our greatness, or simply just colorful distractions from the overbearing boredom that engulfs us all. Perhaps it's all just a cosmic joke, foisted upon us by an uncaring universe. Yet, even as we recognize the fleeting nature of life, there is not great satisfaction in the tiny sips of pleasure that we steal from a world of fleeting materiality. If it's fleeting, then it’s seemingly a waste to be concerned with anything but the exhilaration of now.

Stretching from the bartering days of ancient civilizations, now turned to dust, into the merely more recent opulent status symbols of Rome, and then onward to contemporary consumer culture. Our deeply rooted desires can be traced seamlessly throughout. Each era, molded by historically distinct values, now molds our collective interactions with possessions in return. Influenced by the rippling undercurrent of societal change and the passage of time, shopping extends beyond the acquisition of goods and actually forms an essential facet of our species’ history. Embracing the concept of materialism as both a product of—and influential force on—humanity, there’s a confrontation with the singularity of economics. Make any argument you’d like on the similarity of a dog’s bark to a cat’s meow, or a man’s gestures to a mushroom’s spores, the concept of economics is uniquely and solely tied to the societal development of our species. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe declared the famous theory of design,

"Less is more."

And then he continued to define the International Style of Architecture that dominates the skylines of global metropolises. Humans are engulfed in the material because they’ve become defined by the material. A single tip in the scales of supply and demand by a small group of simple agrarian men who one day just opted to sit down and rest in the same spot for a period of time. A break from a hunt led to an epiphany! They soon discovered they gathered more resources here than they did while moving constantly out there. Economics was not born out of civilization, finance does not exist in the shadowy pulpits of Wall Street. Civilization was born out of the existing market powers that be.

Surrealist Salvador Dalí declared,

"Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams."

A man deemed by cultural normalcy to be so outside the realm of reality that he was declared literally on top of it. A man who had the perspective to look down on the total realm of realism, and he opted to sleep for twenty-two hours. A rest where he inevitably still navigated the space between the tangible and the intangible all the same, an omnipresent attachment between our consciousness, an unconsciousness, and the material world.

“In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

An excerpt of what President Nixon would have said to the American public had the Apollo 13 mission gone wrong and left three men in the throes of a foreign vacuum. Three men with families risked everything to reach for a celestial body they had gazed upon countless times from the safety of Earth. In pursuit of greatness, they embraced the void.

A dismal reflection on human courage that unexpectedly found resonance with me, as I recently visited an art museum. Surrounded by stunning masterpieces, I admired the boundless creativity and skill that artists had poured into each work, transcending the mundane to grasp at eternal beauty. Yet, as I stood before an exquisite pictorial painting, I felt like I could be anywhere else. Art so often tries to capture the frozen depictions of time, as if we could plead and give anything to just freeze it for one moment of calm. Such a desperation to be bigger than we are for no reason beyond that it’s because of who we are. Human ambition is often just an egotistical need to place our immaterial selves into such material depictions. Yet, it is those narcissists who choose to consume for their own personal pleasure. There is a beauty in the transformation of permanent void into timeless wonder. However, when you are creatures haunted by the finality of the bounds of time itself, timelessness then feels pointless.

Then, let us not forget the words of the great poet Rumi, who offered a presumably comforting reminder:

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”

Such a concept does not invoke loneliness, but it does invoke terror. A terror that out of all men, the universe would place its hopes and dreams into me. For being human, I am placed with the burdensome expectation to similarly dictate and define my own corner of the tapestry of time like those who so needlessly clamor past me to do the same.

A constant clamor. A far cry from a food surplus. Ancient Rome serves as a timeless testament to civilization’s boundless ambition and graceless demise, reflecting the heights of philosophical prowess and the depths of hubris-fueled catastrophe. As the sun set on the Roman Empire, its grandiosity and excess gave way to a new dawn. The powerful minds of Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius remain as beacons of wisdom illuminating the journey of mankind towards self-realization and growth. Surely these revered names have fulfilled their quota for future generations.

Yet, the respect for these men fades as they flee to exist in a larger than life manner. Let us look back a little further to Chrysippus. A name that will ring no bells, but who earns envy from me. He was indeed a philosopher and a proud Stoic at that, but I care not for his philosophy of life but for his philosophy of death. He did not die in a blaze of fiery legacy like the exhausted names of the Classics, despite that his life was truthfully one of great importance. He made contributions to the foundations of logic, ethics, and mathematics. Yet, he also reportedly died from laughing so hard at his donkey eating a fig that he himself choked to death. That’s the earnest and most blissful way to go.

In the echoes of this fascinating history, we come across the often-cited phrase from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "Et tu, Brute?" symbolizing the ultimate betrayal that led to the assassination of the great Caesar. The very material decimation of a man believed to be immaterial, and the collapse of a divinely entangled institution.

We follow this trend to an equally chilling scene with the would-be assassin of President Reagan, John Hinckley Jr., who gunned down the president as a desperate bid for the attention of actress Jodie Foster. Yet, somehow a motive and display equally as critical as the grand treasonous showcase at the Roman senate. All the same they are a showcase of an individual's hunger for notoriety and significance. A needless propensity to consume so they may be consumed in the epochs. Regardless of an individual's background or motivation, the thirst for a lasting legacy is thoroughly human.