Metaphors

How the metaphors of a particular age (and in these times, this always has to be how the age reflects the particular mode of capitalism that’s dominant at the moment…) are constrained/shaped/informed by the technologies of that age: for example…watching Koyanisqaatsi, I’m struck by the plethora of ‘production line’ and ‘sausage machine’ images that Reggio uses to emphasise how we’re dehumanised, habituated and impersonalised in so much of our everyday lives. (He also implies, through those rapidly-moving cloudscapes and slowmo shots of collapsing tenements and office buildings, that all of these – these modes of being, these solid, unimpeachable structures – are all merely tentative: when this film was made, I think it was the spectre of nuclear annihilation that shadowed all of the banal, destructive activity on the screen; now it’s more likely to be global economic collapse or some megavirus.) Anyway, the point is that we live – to some extent – locked into the ways of being/working/thinking that dominate our current culture/economic model. Having lived through a few of these modes now, I can see how provisional they are, and yet how difficult they are to step outside of: the current game invariably appears to be the only game that’s feasible and realistic if you are to earn your living and be in the world. What would the metaphors be now?