Post

At the Postmodernism exhibition at the V&A, Jenny Holzer's 1985 piece in which the words 'protect me from what I want' were displayed on advertising hoardings is seen as an attempt to make us question how we feel about the voice of authority in advertising. This work illustrates what is for me one of the enduring strengths of Postmodernism, as it is only through a postmodern critical framework that we begin to question the linear inevitability of capitalism that is the backbone Modern thought and confidence. Of course much has already changed since Holzer's piece was created: most notably we are much more aware of the consequences of our consumption. This knowledge doesn't stop us from consuming at an accelerated rate even though reason would dictate that it should. We are irrational consumers and we are encouraged to be.
I recently heard a Labour politician complaining that the high cost of fuel was endangering business and therefore jobs in his constituency. This seems like a perfectly reasonable point until one asks what he wanted to achieve by it. I think the simple answer is he wanted some sort of government assistance in the lowering of the fuel price. But the price of oil is never going to go down, not in real terms, so any subsidy (in whatever form) the government applied would only be a short term solution. Moreover, it would simply be saving the problem for later when it would be worse. The answer to the problem is that the businesses in question should have built the increase in the oil price into their business plans, otherwise they are badly run businesses and they will ultimately fail. Leaving these companies to the ravages of the market would be a harsh solution, but if they failed because of their inability to adapt to economic realities the resulting reduction in greenhouse gases would be good for the environment. This is a solution to both the economic and environmental problems; it is actually the purely capitalist solution, but of course in our society it is viewed as an unacceptable solution because a vocal minority lose out. I am not by any means advocating pure capitalism as the solution to our planet's problems, I am simply illustrating the lengths to which people go to stop it appearing as nasty as it is, even when they're supposed to be socialists. This is because they have no concept of an alternative. Not that I'm saying I do; I don't.
All of the 19th and 20th century 'alternatives' to capitalism retained one essential component of that system: the requirement for continual growth. It is this requirement that we cannot ween ourselves off: even as our population growth stagnates, growth is driven by our accelerating consumption. In the Modern world (and still to an extent in the 'developing' world) this growth was driven by production, but in the postmodern world that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century people had to find new ways of generating the growth that was required. Ultimately what we are left with is a bizarre fantsay ecomics that swirls around funny ideas and obsessions, and would be amusing if it didn't have such a dreadful impact on people's lives. This is not just the fault of the bankers, we are all complicit in denying the realities of our economic situations. Why? Because we are addicted to consumption. We can't help ourselves. Like severe drug addicts we are willing to deny the consequences of our actions because we are consumed by the actions themselves.
So what is the solution? I don't know, I'm as caught up in the whole thing as you. But I think it's time to start asking some questions, the sorts of questions that that politician should have been asking. Questions that will have answers many people don't like.
Hopefully they won't all be serious questions. Hopefully not everything I write will be this pretentious. I'm promising nothing.