Global Pause - Rethink the Future

If to be market oriented means to be a consumer, then we are primarily a product or commodity of our way of life. We look at the possibility for art in light of surpassing this reduction. For it is only through an artful way of giving and receiving ourselves will the possibility for art be given like a commodity is today.

Possibility always has context from which it arises. What is considered possible invariably is entertained as a "thought crime" from the prevailing world view. If our context is a "market oriented way of life" what thought crime must be entertained to overcome the pervasive cynicism our way of life engenders.  To entertain being at odds with what is currently given does not involve senseless violence but rather how we play host to a disease we take exception to.  It always must come back to what we accept for ourselves and being open to receive ourselves in a different way.

To be market oriented is to accept the"want of self" as an unquestioned given, as this orientation reduces the scope of ones agency. We look at how "enterprising the good" overcomes this impoverishment by harnessing creativity beyond the model of the good life that is touted and secured against "the they", to potentialise the they as the means of surpassing this want that is currently accepted as a given. 

To value what is otherwise made secondary or subordinate to our time is critical if we are to animate a new way of doing things. We relook at what we can value in light of a gratitude possible when the exception to an exchange occurs. To give thanks is to move beyond cynicism and reflect upon absence to see what is possible to us now.

A market orientated way of life, begs the question exactly what it is we are orientated to! If we say we are orientated to the satisfaction of our wants then we conceal from ourselves what is at issue in this orientation as time underwrites all exchanges, or all satisfaction of our wants. Where is this orientation to our time? Where is the market for our time when we secure it as a supplement or economic good? We take a closer look at this issue to reveal the civilisational impasse we are grappling with in more detail.

We explore how the exception can weave itself into commercial activity potentialising both consumption and production through the culture that emerges outside the market. This new way of cooperating rations the potential of the exception occurring through the acts of people whom give their time to nurture the very culture that makes this possible. What occurs is the incremental un-marketing that enables us to give and receive in an entirely different way.

As values are contested in "the market" any transvaluation of values needs to be engendered in this arena of human activity. Yet how can the latent creativity be potentialised when "marketing" & "branding" is the language used. How can we elude the accusation of seeing every offering as just another way to sell our arses. We approach the question of cynicism through the exception and how the circuit breaker enables us to get over ourselves to start to animate creation, rather than accepting the world as a given. 

We start to tease out the potential that is open to us. We do this by looking at the nature of the exceptions we make when making decisions according to our values exemplified in "conscious consumption". We see this trend as harnessing the latent agency though not to the degree necessary to initiate the emergence of a new way of life from the holding pattern of consumerism and relating to each other through our wants.

When time equals money we ensure want persists irrespective of whether we glory in the signs of our supposed transcendence wealth comes to symbolise. We can only approximate the sovereignty we seek to emulate as we do not create through making an exception to a way of life that make our temporality a thing and so perpetuates the holding pattern of consumption where we consume the want of this self, through the visions we entertain. 

The good of visibility underwrites the models legitimacy to orientate human activity into the holding patterns of ever increasing acquisitive consumption. We look at why visibility as a good needs to be overcome to move beyond the order of the model that currently predominates.