The Art of Humanity: A Vision in Ultramarine
by Henry Williams on Thursday, August 9, 2012
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The Terminal
"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have airplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."
Robert Hughes, Television Series: The Shock of the New
Whilst sitting at the terminal waiting for the next flight to paradise, it became quite apparent that we live in a society that has been defined and re-defined by a multitude of relationships built on commerce and trade.
Since the end of the Second World War a counter-culture, the latest evolution of the business relationship, has continued to be a defining characteristic of our daily lives and social landscape.
Yet, in the 21st Century, with the advent of the technological innovations that have been brought about by the information age we have invited a character into our society capable of developing a paradigm shift away from the current dynamic where money holds a central role. That character is openness.
Money, the lifeblood of the status quo is seen by many as essential to continue living, even though, at the very least, it is only a necessary evil to continue to enjoy the fruits of another man’s labor. And yet, as if blinded by the status quo, man fails to perceive anything wrong with this state of divorce.
Man, relegated to the role of a pathological consumer, becomes an agent in a society where displaced production is normalized and sanitized. In such a social paradigm a harvest becomes an obscure word, lost to an archaic past. Openness, because of the simple and childlike vulnerability that it infers is also banished to the recess of our subconscious.
And yet, in a society where a lack of satisfaction is its greatest grumble, we must question this model built on a superficial hedonism, which runs in tandem with rampant feelings of depression and dissatisfaction. A result of our modern day harvests which are no more than short lived demonstrations of our purchasing power.
Therefore, it is our purchasing power which then becomes a tool that can enslave us to a life of lost meaning. Here choice and free-will are non-existent in a pre-determined maze dominated by shops and shopping. The decline of an individual’s ability to be self-sufficient follows, which marks the demise of the individual.
Individuality is more about what man is able to create, develop, feel and taste, and convey in a plethora of expression, rather than simply what he can purchase. We can observe how man defines its individual form in relation to the technology it adopts best.
Consciousness, after all, is simply the expression of a ripple that cascades across an individual’s neural pathways, and serves to manufacture the individual and his desires through the technology it adopts as camouflage. The anthropotrophic being, a marble geist carved out of the surrounding environment.
And so, where one path allows for growth within a state of positive freedom and open expression, the other, constantly demands tribute in return for stunted growth and shallow forms of expression.
Try to imagine a society where art has become its currency, its lifeblood and its purpose. Here humanity becomes the masterpiece with love and expression at its very core and freedom as its defining characteristic. That is what we call life beyond the bleak whitewashed Terminal, where man waits patiently for the next flight out to paradise.
© 2012 H Williams. All rights reserved