"Kingdom Come"

_Credits: A Fascist State? Another Look at Kingdom Come and Consumerism, Mike Holliday (7 July, 2010)

_This is an article that is very interesting to read. I picked it because I heard that Ballard's "Kingdom Come" is about shopping centre, I don't think I am interested in whether it is Fascist or not. However, from it, I learnt that Nazism is actually a psychological 'revolution' - and it makes me wonder "are we not still going through that right now somehow?"

"Why do I dislike the Bentall Centre so much? Because it’s so… cretinous. [The consumers] seem to be moving though a kind of commercial dream space and vague signals float through their brains." [‘JG Ballard: The Comforts of Madness’, interview in The Independent, 15 September 2006.]

"If there is no principle restricting who can consume what, there is also no principled constraint on what can be consumed: all social relations, activities and objects can in principle be exchanged as commodities. This is one of the most profound secularizations enacted by the modern world … [and] places the intimate world of the everyday into the impersonal world of the market and its values. Moreover, while consumer culture appears universal because it is depicted as a land of freedom in which everyone can be a consumer, it is also felt to be universal because everyone must be a consumer: this particular freedom is compulsory." [Don Slater, Consumer Culture & Modernity, Polity Press (Cambridge), 1997, p 27.]

"Consumerism rules, but people are bored. They’re out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along. … They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad." [JG Ballard, Kingdom Come, op cit, p 101.]

"Therefore the conventional ways in which we viewed the world, which had been buttressed by traditional social structures and conforming behaviours, have weakened their hold over us. The external environment has become fictionalized, and ‘reality’ – that which is of most significance in our lives – has retreated inside our minds, to be represented by our hopes, desires and obsessions." [Some of Ballard’s clearest comments on the fictionalization of the external world and the interiorization of reality as a consequence of increased prosperity are to be found in an unpublished interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, c1974, available at http://www.jgballard.ca/interviews/jgb_cbc_ideas_interview.html, accessed 6 May 2010.]

"Nowadays, an understanding of events and objects cannot simply be read off from the external world, nor can we link them in a straightforward temporal manner."

"In the 1960s and 1970s, Ballard chose to emphasize the use of our imaginative powers as a way of providing us with different perspectives and of transcending our conventional outlook on the world." !!! <3

"Using the imagination and following one’s obsessions may, perhaps, be rewarding, but it certainly doesn’t sound easy psychologically, more like hard work."

"The reasons for concern are clear: if we do not use our imaginations and obsessions, we are at risk of being governed by forces outside ourselves which still operate, such as capitalism or purposeless social conformity. Ballard has drawn attention to the way in which moral structures and decision-making powers have been externalized out into the environment by technology – from traffic lights to CCTV cameras – providing us with a safe passage through our lives, [‘Interview by Graeme Revell’, Re/Search 8/9: J. G. Ballard, Re/Search Publishing (San Francisco), 1984, p. 46.] and in like manner we may find it psychologically easier to decline the freedom to utilize the imagination that comes with a safe and prosperous, but individualistic, society. People might instead be content to be governed by forces of social conformity, and to let themselves be directed by their emotions – which Ballard thinks of as tending to reinforce existing social conventions and as restricting, rather than expanding, the possibilities for action." (This is what I tried to say in my earlier post as well...)

"Peter Stearns points out that the growth of consumer behaviour was closely connected with the decline of long-established social structures under the pressures of industrialization and urbanization. In earlier times, social hierarchies were much more rigidly observed, and any crossing of social boundaries or individualistic behaviour tended to be viewed negatively, especially by the upper-classes. The latter had luxury, i.e. their wealth was displayed, rather than consumed, and in standard formats with an absence of individuality or any concern about fashion. [Peter N Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire (2nd edition), op cit, pp 1-14.] However, once this social edifice began to lose its grip, consumer behaviour helped people cope with the resulting uncertainty and insecurity about social status, and with the disruption to established patterns of behaviour, by providing alternative ways of fulfillment and by enabling an individual to demonstrate personal achievement, no matter how limited." (worth thinking about - it might be somehow true...)

"I buy things in order to try and reassert my identity, but as the marketplace grows I am offered an increasing variety of goods and services, and associated ways of living, from which to choose. Now my identity is even more in question, because it is something that I myself have to select and realize. The impact is heightened as the material prosperity of society increases – even something as basic as food becomes no longer a matter of survival and physical well-being, but a decision about life-style." [Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics, Polity Press (Cambridge), 1994, p 224.]

"Yet the evidence is that people with a rich variety of social connections are less likely to suffer depression and anxiety than those without. [Michael Marmot, Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing Directly Affects Your Health, Bloomsbury (London), Chapter 6; Robert H Frank, Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp 86-88.] As well as support that I might obtain directly from others, I am better able to cope if I am ‘not just the local lawyer, but also the coach of the cricket team, the friendly neighbour, and the person who always sings at the christmas party’, as a setback in one role is of less significance to my sense of identity and self-esteem. [Daniel Nettle, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, Oxford University Press, 2005, p 180.]

"The more we are allowed to be the masters of our fates, the more we expect ourselves to be. We should be able to find education that is stimulating and useful, work that is exciting, socially valuable, and remunerative, spouses who are sexually, emotionally, and intellectually stimulating and also loyal and comforting. Our children are supposed to be beautiful, smart, affectionate, obedient, and independent. And everything we buy is supposed to be the best of its kind. … [Hence,] almost every experience people have nowadays will be perceived as a disappointment, and thus regarded as a failure – a failure that could have been prevented with the right choice. [Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Harper Perennial (New York), 2004, pp 210-211.] In such circumstances, the temptation is to seek comfort and easy pleasures. But experimental psychology suggests that the systems of the brain which control desire are not the same as the systems that control pleasure. [For example, when rats have their brains stimulated to eat food, they don’t show the typical ‘liking behavior’ that normally accompanies pleasurable activities – indeed, if anything, they show ‘disliking behavior’. Conversely, the rats can be drugged so that they have no desire to eat, but show liking behavior when a sweet solution is put onto their tongue. See also Daniel Nettle, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, op cit, Chapter 5.] Hence, some things – sex, good food – will both activate desire and bring pleasure, but others – such as a bigger, higher-definition TV – may provoke desire but not add much to our happiness. Biologically speaking, happiness is a spur to action, not some end-state that we are programmed to seek out, and this is reflected in the wealth of data indicating a lack of correlation between absolute levels of income and happiness (other than at extremely low levels of income), whether it be between different societies, different individuals in the same society, or individuals over time. [Daniel Nettle, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, op cit, pp 48-52, 70-75; Robert H Frank, Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess, op cit, pp 71-74.]"

"...in a world that no longer makes sense, emotions appear a surer guide than reason."

"‘What’s the point of privacy if it’s just a personalized prison? Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation. … Shared dreams and values, shared hopes and pleasures’, claims Sangster in Kingdom Come." [JG Ballard, Kingdom Come, op cit, p 85. It is interesting to note that Fromm uses the term ‘automaton conformity’ to describe the form that the attempt to escape from freedom takes in modern democracies (as opposed to fascist dictatorships); see Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, op cit, pp 159-178.]

"The fictionalization of the external world means that Ballard’s ‘exit door’ through the use of our imaginative faculties is gradually closing, as these powers of the imagination become colonized by the fantasies around us and by our own emotions. This enables consumerism to satisfy our needs, not directly via the goods and services that we purchase, but indirectly by meeting our psychological requirements through our involvement in the activities of consumer society – shopping, media, leisure. The disassociation between our desires and pleasures – which might be seen as threatening the consumerist system once we discover that satisfying our desires is unfulfilling – can now be bridged: we desire the goods and buy them, but our rewards come from elsewhere, from our very participation in the system itself … from our attendance at Ballard’s Metro-Centre."

"The ambiguity of Ballard’s narrative is in keeping with the self-reflexive nature of the society that he is describing, where the transgressive gesture rapidly becomes another media item that can be purchased for cash, and an attempt at escape puts you right back at the centre. Any effort at political action or opposition becomes pointless, because this is not – on Ballard’s view – a conspiracy of false needs and false consciousness: by accepting the emotional lie and the feel-good fairy story, we are ourselves complicit in the consumerist society. But if this is right, then we can see the point of Ballard’s long-held insistence that we must, as he puts it, immerse ourselves in the most dangerous elements and hope that we can swim to the other side [See, for example, ‘An Interview with J. G. Ballard’, Mississippi Review op cit, p 33. And the following brief quote well-illustrates Ballard’s reasoning: ‘I certainly do believe that we should immerse ourselves in the destructive element. Far better to do so consciously than find ourselves tossed into the pool when we’re not looking’, interview in The Paris Review #94, 1984, p 143.] – a view that infects both the ‘extreme hypothesis’ of Crash and the studied ambiguity of Kingdom Come.