Let’s say, for arguments sake, that everything is image. The universe, history, you, me, grass, god, joy, the smell of chips etc. Any of these images can be broken down into data and transmitted as information. A large part of how these images are organised is to do with power, specifically, these days, perpetuating a neo liberal flavour of global capitalism. They’re used to make us want things. What if I don’t want to want things?
Given that all the images I have access to via my senses and in my mind have been geared to make me into a consumer, what chance do I have? I can look at all the images that flow through me, and try to take advantage of this flow to make something new, something less acquisitive. But, I wonder, can you build something less desiring out of desires? The images that constitute me have one purpose, does my awareness of this allow me to re-orientate this, allow me to spew out something less ‘purposeful’. I think not. Perhaps the constitutive locus of my own image, I, me, Dave, whatever, should not lie within the images of desire that have gone before? Lots of flavours of jelly poured into a jelly mould still make jelly. My assertion is that the only way to be less acquisitive is to try to empty the jelly mould as much as possible, to look at ways of emptying the mould, to look at where the jelly come into the mould and try to stem that flow. Feeling the jelly pour into my mould is a start, but I’m still jelly at the end of the day, just slightly more aware jelly. I want to be cake.