From days in the clouds
Why is it that once to 618, double 11, everyone is so excited and happy
Maybe it's because we've been poor for too long in the past.
the various material deprivations of the past years,
All unfulfilled desires,
In the end, they all became the consumption enthusiasm that is now cursed.
One
Why can consumption and profligacy bring us pleasure?
A generation of French erotic novelists, poets, and philosophers, Georges Bataille, pondered this question.
He believes that there are two types of consumption:
One is productive, consumption necessary for survival and development;
The other is unproductive, a consumption that is not intended for production, but for recreation or decency.
In the pre-capitalist era, there was a widespread notion that decent people were only fit to spend money, not to earn money; to earn money was labor, and to work was to be enslaved, and it was unseemly.
"Decency" is what Bataille calls "supremeity."
"Supreme" means that consumption is not for production, not for "usefulness."
For example, grand festivals or the construction of the Leshan Giant Buddha cannot increase social wealth, but only to spend excess wealth – and war is one of the most extravagant forms of consumption of excess wealth.
People are willing to squander their wealth on unproductive consumption in order to prevent their supremacy from being forgotten in productiveness.
In other words, people love to use their own consumerity against their productivity.
If the consumption and profligacy of the past had a certain meaning of liberation, today's mass consumption has basically become productive consumption.
—— It is a kind of eastern effect on the consumption of supremacy under the premise of maintaining the order of production.
Consumerism has brought all things, activities, and relationships into the framework of consumption, binding the general public to a greater extent.
Thoreau said that people can only cycle endlessly between acquisition and enjoyment, production and consumption, never stopping.
The work-consumption-cycle leads to physical and mental exhaustion, which gives rise to concepts such as minimalism and renunciation.
In the long run, the relationship between people and things will also have a deep impact on the relationship between people.
Japanese finishing expert Marie Kondo advises people to say to old clothes when they throw them away: "Thank you!" The moment I bought you, it made me feel heartbroken! Thank you! Tell me what kind of clothes I don't fit anymore! ”
- And then throw it away.
It's the same with people.
When we break up with a lover, we can also say to him: Thank you, the moment I met you, I felt the heart. Thank you for making me realize what kind of life I am no longer suitable for.
- And then leave.
Two
Social traditions over thousands of years have often measured a person's value in terms of the wealth he has produced and accumulated.
For example, we often praise a person as "very capable", but we have never heard of praising a person as "quite capable".
Think about when we were young, when we read novels and played games, parents would most likely scold angrily: clean these things that do not hit food.
They think you should do math problems, physics problems, not have fun, or even study literature, art and other useless things.
Why?
Because most people's minds are from the perspective of production, they judge the success of a person's behavior through the input-output ratio.
Bataille has made an important subversion of this deep-rooted concept, considering social life and human values from the perspective of consumption.
He believes that when you consume and entertain, you are a person.
Your value is reflected in the waste of your own life energy, not the accumulation of material wealth.
In Bataye's eyes, love is not a sexual relationship, but a passion.
When we fall in love, our purpose is not to reproduce, but to be happy and desired.
In short, some of the seemingly useless things are exactly what Bataille advocated.
He promotes irrational, non-instrumental, non-computational behavior.
Bataille also believes that orgasm is only once when a person dies, and that the process of death leads to orgasm.
For example, when the prisoners of the late Qing Dynasty suffered a sweet, happy and great pleasure, the executioner used a lot of knives to make the death process luxurious and rich, for the sake of "inner experience".
Bataille believed that the prostitute was essentially a gift, a gift based on the dual principles of attrition and risk-taking: the prostitute received a lot of money, and she would spend it on extravagant consumption that made them more attractive and increased their attractiveness.
And what about marriage,
Although marriage is a legal act of transgression, the woman in marriage also assumes the role of reproduction and labor.
That is to say, although she is a useful productive force in the eyes of her father and brother, her husband will extract her from this chain, enter another useful chain with her husband as the core, and play its productive function.
Three
Batayer, known as the "philosopher of the stool".
He believes that once the energy exceeds what is needed, we cannot conserve excess energy like a camel.
For example, what is it like to have excess energy?
------------ Go to the toilet when you're full, and others tell you, don't go to the toilet, save the energy. Can you save it?
You have to excrete it.
Therefore, once the national or local wealth exceeds the amount that keeps it functioning properly, it will certainly be consumed in various ways.
For individuals, luxury goods and art are very important ways of consuming.
......
And of course there's love.
Both love and art are expressions of excess energy, and both have a certain sacrificial meaning.
Bataille, who speaks a lot about marriage and prostitution in Pornography, argues that the key to this is transgression.
The essence of transgression is to lead to another world.
The original social system of mankind was to guarantee production.
People need order to work, which requires marriage to ensure that energy is not overexpended outside.
Prostitution is actually an energy-consuming thing, so keep it out of order.
But the original purpose of prostitution was to detach one from labor, from the rational, calculating world, in search of another world, the divine world.
- This is what Bataille said.
The same is true of art, which is the second negation of man.
The first denial is that man works apart from animal nature.
Bataille said that man is to make a second denial, that is, art, that is, man must return to animality.
In the barbaric state of the animals, there is a substance: man breaks away from the world of labor and enters the game.
Bataille is one of the philosophers who talks the most about pornography and sex.
The so-called "food color, sex also." ”
His philosophical expressions are very fond of expressing them in terms of sex.
In sex, there is a moment when you feel that you may die, and you want to die.
This close combination of death and pleasure is Bataille's most beloved metaphor for life.
And laughter and tears.
In the moment of laughter and tears, we cease to exist in ourselves, thus freeing ourselves from prescriptiveness as human beings.
The same goes for art.
When we are fascinated by works of art, forget about everyday life, forget who we are – we jump out of life, out of life.