Exodus from the Society of the Spectacle

By: Erik Rittenberry

Photo: Erik Rittenberry

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.

— Terry Tempest Williams

I’ve always harbored the silly illusion that I was born on the wrong side of the cosmic tracks a century too late. It’s one of my most nurturing illusions that seem to feed my urge to create and to try to make a little sense of the tragic world we all find ourselves in. 

We all live in our myths. And it was Schelling who pointed out that “each truly creative individual must create his mythology for himself.” The function of our living myths is to, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “reconcile consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence; that is to say, to the nature of life.” 

Though I am part of the world, the myth is my buffer to so much of the anesthetized world I loathe. Or as the mystical poet William Blake once said: “I must CREATE a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.”

Modern culture, unpoetic through and through, juiceless and banal, with its posturing outrage and pitiless pragmatism, doesn’t mesh too well with my inner being. Rampant materialism, idiotic distractions, and lifeless conveniences seem to be the culprits to much of the modern malaise we are seeing today.

We are bent on generating more and more devastation in the name of “progress” while at the same time uprooting our own nature. And we’re proud of it, pompously so. 

Though I too take part, a bit reluctantly, in some of the comforts and conveniences that contemporary society has supplied us, I also know this way of life is an obstacle to living a deeper, more intensified mode of existence.

As Colin Wilson once wrote: “The comfortable life lowers man’s resistance, so that he sinks into an unheroic sloth…The comfortable life causes spiritual decay…” And it was Bertrand Russell who reminded us that “it is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

People today are increasingly defined and valued based on their roles as consumers rather than as active participants in society. As a result, the modern world has become an enormous arena of passive spectators, people detached from their own desires and alienated from authentic social interactions.

What Guy Debord called “the society of the spectacle” — a society where most of our social relations are mediated by images and the constant consumption of the unnecessary. “The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires.”

In this crazed world we inhabit, we are constantly bombarded with information that serves to maintain the dominance of the spectacle. Is it any wonder that our culture has grown so sterile and empty, riddled with grandiose distractions and cheap charades?

A society of increasing chronic illnesses and mental health concerns? 

Is it any wonder why the people, greatly divided and comfortably numb, have been drawn away entirely from themselves?

When the vast majority of people lose their relationship with nature, with the higher wisdom of their sacred roots, they will surely lose their relationship with each other. This is what we’re witnessing everywhere — conflict and chaos. The sad state of the world is merely a projection of our inner turmoil. 

It was Jiddu Krishnamurti who once said:

“If we are miserable, confused, chaotic within, by projection that becomes the world, that becomes society, because the relationship between yourself and myself, between myself and another, is society — society is the product of our relationship — and if our relationship is confused, egocentric, narrow, limited, national, we project that and bring chaos into the world. What you are, the world is. So your problem is the world’s problem.”

Perhaps a renunciation is needed. An exodus from the spectacle, a departure from the frenzied commotion of the asphalt world, and to take on, once again, “the pace of nature,” in the words of Emerson. 

To step out of the costume of your social self. To break away from all the frantic and obsessive activities of daily life and the dehumanizing effects of technology. To retain a sense of awe and wonder and mystery, and to revitalize once again the ancient wisdom of our blood.

To SEE is to see through the spectacle. To see through the theatrics of politics and the public narratives. 

To be truly alive is the ability to SEE through the show of our manufactured reality. And there is not a more fruitful way to restore the inner eye than to find a little silent place in the natural world where you can simply BE. 

A place that’ll evoke a sense of awe and reverence and ignite that creative fire inherent to us all. “We need to open up,” in the words of Henry Miller, “to relax, to give way, to obey the deeper laws of our being, in order to find a true discipline.”

You have to get out there in the natural world alone and see what it’s all about. Explore the forests and the seas and the meadows, and gaze up at the sun and the stars of the cosmos. You have to get out there, away from the screen, away from the endless bickering of a dead culture, and move your body, embrace a little struggle and discomfort. 

Go out and discover what it means to be a human beyond the false narratives and illusory worldviews grafted upon us by a schizoid society. 

Our true salvation as species will derive from a radical reconnection to the essential. By plunging into our depths we can recapture the light and become a much-needed beacon shining bright on the stormy shores of a sickly world. 

One of the most profound thinkers of the 20th century, Carl Jung, saw that “most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us.” 

It’s the atrophy of instincts caused by living comfortably in a manmade environment, according to Jung, that is “largely responsible for the pathological condition of contemporary culture.” The only hope for “real improvement” is a “radical change of consciousness.”

This too was believed and proclaimed by the great romantic poets. To “rise” up out of this “oblivious sleep”, the sleep of death, and to forge a new attitude to nature — a uniting of our minds to the outer universe, and to dance with a Dionysian rapture knowing full well that the “poetry of the earth is never dead.”

When you embed yourself in nature, the cultural facade crumbles and the hideous flames of the ego subside. Out here alone among the creeks and streams, the high pine forests, the sparrows and wrens, and the primeval mountains, you realize that time is merely an illusion and that eternity isn’t something beyond the moment.

The past no longer casts its shadow. The future no longer clogs the mind. And the illusory separateness between the self and the external fades away and you come to realize that the beauty and truth of the world lie in its brilliant simplicity.

The poet Gary Snyder once reminded us that “Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” Indeed, a home we’ve unfortunately abandoned with grave consequences. 

I want to end with a beautiful passage from the great Jiddu Krishnamurti: 

“It is very important to go out alone, to sit under a tree — not with a book, not with a companion, but by yourself — and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fishermen’s song, watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as they chase each other across the space of your mind. 

If you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you will discover extraordinary riches which no government can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can never be destroyed.”

Thank you so much for reading. You can find me around the internet at the following:

Medium: https://medium.com/@erikrittenberry
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