Greetings Global Village! Thus Spoke The Spectacle is back with a brand new website, a new blog, and a series of upcoming summer shows and events. We'll be in Ohio, Missouri, and of course here at home in the belly of the beast, New York City. Check back often for news, upcoming events, the quote of the day and all things Spectacle. Whether you're a long-time supporter or new to TSTS, we welcome you to join us in this next round of Spectacle adventures.
There is no in di vide ual. It is a negation of the negation - someone at some point invented the term to express a FAILed attempt: how did this term come about? why was it necessary to divide us initially?
Same logical FAIL with the word : Iso-Lation. There is no such thing. A relation that is a non-relation cannot compute.
So we have all become individualized from birth, in the institution of the individual. Institutionalized. Selfized. Born into a false context. This is the language prison we are all striving within, the illusion of separate "individuals".
Individualization is the trauma from which the organism strives their whole life to recover from, to find community in displacement onto objects, fantasies.
Thoughts from the hive?
The division you speak of Saul, represented by the institutionalization of individuality (if I understand what you say correctly) reminds me of Erich Fromm's critique in his book The Sane Society. Fromm wrote from the standpoint of social psychology, essentially arguing that while individuation is an unavoidable and necessary stage, capitalist society is structured to prevent the individual's successful reintegration into a meaningful community, instead offering the false promise of community characteristic of the Spectacle - as you say, via objects and fantasies.
Your mention of the "language prison" we labor within brings to mind Alfred Korzybski's work in general semantics. We presented our show last fall for the Institute of General Semantics and in the process of preparing for that discussed this issue at length.