A Particular Particular
Generic statements demand support. And I’ll support that one with this: when dealing in abstractions, it is easy to lose sight of the particular data from which the abstractions were drawn. Generalization is the bane of clear thought. This notion in particular struck me the other day while walking through a dreary Italian metro station, and spotting the Nike advertisement, shown here to the left, blazing on the wall (there is a TV spot below as well).
I like the colors, the energy, the feel of “street authenticity”- an exotic taste on my Caucasian, suburban palate. However, within the advertisement campaign, this “revolution of you,” I find a consumerist, soul-fragmenting argument that injures beyond convincing people to buy shoes to feel cool. Wendell Berry writes these words:
“In our limitless selfishness, we have tried to define “freedom,” for example, as an escape from all restraint. But, as my friend Bert Hornback has explained in his book The Wisdom in Words, “free” is etymologically related to “friend.” These words come from the same Indo-European root, which carries the sense of “dear” or “beloved.” We set our friends free by our love for them, with the implied restraints of faithfulness or loyalty. And this suggests that our “identity” is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections.”
The notion that individual freedom is achieved through escape from the “restraint” of relationship with others, something to be found in isolation, is a contemporary, particularly North American conviction, though particular instances of this influence don’t often declare themselves with neon lights. And this contradicts the biblical notion that freedom, living life to its fullest, living fully as ourselves as we are made to be, can be achieved only through community (“It is not good for man to be alone” can be stated as “It is good for man to be with others”). I have been convicted of this ever since seeing Christopher McCandless’ tragedy, dying alone after seeking a personal freedom through liberation from society in “Into the Wild,” and know it to be a culture-permeating idea, yet how and where it is permeating too often eludes my perception.
This particular Nike advert woke me as I walked past. The individualistic ethos didn’t hide itself well enough. Immediately I began thinking, A revolution of me? What am I revolutionizing? My personality? My life? My identity? Will Nike help me do that? Will a shoe help me do that? Do I need new friends? Do I need friends at all? Will their shoe help me cure the dissatisfaction, the boredom I sometimes feel with my life? Maybe. But probably not. If I am to be “the revolution of me,” that means that my revolution will be by itself, apart from yours, if you even get one, and that I don’t really need you for my revolution, either. All I need are these shoes.
I’ve probably read and heard enough about the media’s negative influence on our perceptions of identity to make me want never want to watch commercials again (I’ll quickly add that thankfully, there are plenty of redeeming advertisements and movies and TV shows – the discussions on this website are proof of that). While some influences are easier to recognize than others (the objectification of the human body, for example), others are subtler though powerful nonetheless. So we train ourselves to discern, to separate the media-sheep from the media-goats. We learn life-giving philosophies from good thinkers (Wendell Berry immediately comes to mind), and we learn to live these perceptions by picking through the particulars of our experiences. We learn that it is good to be attentive. We learn that it is good to be awake.
