So you’re still looking outside the individual for an explanation. Where does responsibility lie?

Maybe I’m not getting it, maybe you mean a unique experience or relationship with a product.

but I believe it is worth talking about the effect of an expanding marketplace where ‘novelty’ and ‘rarity’ become the norm - as strange as that sounds. — I like sushi

I’m only playing devil’s advocate here. How could the ‘rarity’ remain the norm. When it became the ‘norm’ more would want it. So then it’s no longer a ‘rarity’. The only way to maintain it as a rarity is to make the price prohibitive to most.

But I think it has a lot to do with television, shopping malls, and our great fascination with rebellion. — unforeseen

Yes, and a corporation didn’t create that, they just tapped into it.

Yes,I understand that. My feeling is that there is something about human nature that wants this fetishism and contributes towards it.

What I’m trying to say is that there is something transactional in human nature that contributes to the Commodity Fetishism. Otherwise why do it?

If I had to guess, those desires mostly come from advertisements and other tactics businesses employ for profitability. — unforeseen

So why is it so easy to convince people that a pair of jeans with the knees torn out are more valuable than those without the knee torn out?

As such, commodity fetishism transforms the subjective, abstract aspects of economic value into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value." — unforeseen

Thanks for that. Commodity Fetishism is a perception. Perception is the transformative agent. Branding is about perceptions. Who creates the perceptions and what are those perceptions based on? There needs to be an audience for this. Where does the desire for products that are so removed from what I like sushi was referring to, come from?

Edit: you can’t sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

What is "Commodity Fetishism"? — unforeseen

I’m guessing I like sushi means an obsession with cheap, meaningless, over priced, massed produce products that contribute nothing to society.

By the way, how do I copy a profile name?

If I understand the concept correctly wouldn’t custom made products decrease, to some degree, Commodity Fetishism?[/quote]

I think a Rolls Royce car would mean, no, custom made products won’t decrease product fetishism.

That seduction feels like a revelation of the real, and to some degree I think it is, but it is also a construction of a our shared conceptual reality. We swim in an ocean of signs. As 'spirits' we are chains of signs that talk about themselves. Something like that... — Eee

Is this why nothing ever changes.

A commodity gets passed around, consumed. It has a value determined by its perceived worth.

The Kardasians are a commodity.

On an interpersonal basis I would like to put forward the idea of artistic/aesthetic qualities being a force to drive a healthier social interaction between what is made, who is making it and the buyer. — I like sushi

I think you might already see that with the organic/health market. But I don’t see it being any different in the long run than any other commodified market; branding and marketing reaching out to those who have an emotional investment in their perception of a product.

[quote="Wallows;353132"
]This is only because, as an American, I view myself as a commodity for other people or corporations. Think like the service-information based economy we are experiencing.

The demands of the economy have shifted, in a reflexive manner towards this info/service-based economy.

And, not many people have realized it, or rather it is left unsaid that my preferences are becoming commodified.[/quote]

Yes, absolutely everything has been commodified. Culture has been commodified. Even your position on climate change has been commodified.

Reputation is the selling factor for mass produced goods - Apple is an example of this (although it has waned by most people’s standards). Really I was trying to highlight how what is ‘new’, ‘original’ and ‘novel’ plays into this ‘fetishism’ as well as the distance between the manufacturers and consumers.

I think we’re really consumed by ‘rarity’ and the conflicting drives to feel/appear ‘uniquely individual’ whilst also craving to be ‘part of the crowd’. I don’t see there being any other major force behind what drive economics that doesn’t fall into one of these two broad categories. — I like sushi

What you’re really talking about here is ‘Branding’, branding of a product. Branding works by targeting an audience susceptible to, or engaged with, a product or its personality. Obviously a product doesn’t have a personality, so one is created.

On an interpersonal basis I would like to put forward the idea of artistic/aesthetic qualities being a force to drive a healthier social interaction between what is made, who is making it and the buyer. — I like sushi

These qualities you mention are already being used. ‘Artistic/aesthetic qualities are entirely subjective. Each target audience responds to its own set of ‘artistic/aesthetic qualities”.

We also tend to care a lot about people we form relationships with and get along with. How these relationships form is complex but usually out of loneliness as a driving force — schopenhauer1

I think these two points are relevant. I do think it’s very likely that loneliness, or the idea of the future alone, is the driving force behind forming relationships, and there are many varied relationships that serve the very many existential ( if that’s correct in this context) moments in someone’s life, from cuddling up to someone to sharing troubling thoughts or having a cry. I suspect a lot of men just drift into relationships, then drift into having a family. Women may have a more committed agenda, but really still having their own agenda, which might be; find a reliable, good man, get pregnant, raise a family. So as you say, not really instinct, more preference or desire.

Once a relationship is formed we have a lot invested, so we do care more about those closest to us and hope they return it. Society does present the ideal model to us as to how this works. Of course we know this model is not really true, but we persevere.

The other point, in terms of natural, is that we are no longer animals in the sense of the wild, with our natural instincts. People are so loosened from their instincts that they not only don’t run from danger, they actually walk right into it.

So, even regarding my questions about love, I have to say that preference tends to win out.

Take as an example a work that WAS NEVER INTENDED to be "art" but was deemed "art" by a viewer. Has the viewer become the artists in that case? Or is this somehow NOT "art"? — ZhouBoTong

Excuse the time taken to reply.

It might depend on the viewer. A critic might say its art, a child might say its art, a person who dislikes art might even say its bad art. But I don’t think any of them are artists. But how do I prove that? I think it makes sense at the least, or as a beginning, to say that an artist produces art, to begin with the artist.

I was wondering, if we destroyed all art, made it disappear, what would go and what would be left?

I just want to add some thoughts about whether a woman's love for children is natural or a preference.

Is the desire for love natural or a preference?

Can you chose to love someone, which would make it a preference?

Is falling in love with someone specific natural or a preference?

The person I was waiting for was late. In the end though it was fine.

See, your smothering your spirit.

I’m serious about that. Post it; does everything have a purpose?

It doesn't mean it has no purpose — Wallows

That’s an interesting point. Does everything have a purpose?

My feeling is that depression doesn’t work.

I think you’re caught in a loop, a vicious cycle as they used to say. I’m about to go out and buy myself a cup of coffee. You should do the same.

I really don’t know. Fed up at times, despondent, passive.

Eat it.

Probably.

The tacit agreement between me and Baden was that this one was final. My spectrum of human emotions has and probably be defined by this nick. — Wallows

Okay. I was playing in ignorance there.

Y’know productive means something is produced.

I challenge you to change your profile name.

One pastime to get me through the day was taking ADHD meds, and killing time reading or doing something productive. — Wallows

Define productive.

You’re the ultimate minority, aren’t you?

Yep. That’s what I’m saying about the elderly. But they get up, get out, then bitch about it. It’s good therapy.

The thing is everyone thinks their issues are only theirs, that everyone else gets by fine. But eventually you realise those issues are just the human condition and not yours alone. Growing up takes time, peak maturity happens around 40. So how can you judge from your little anthill?

Y’know, at 29 I was still full of the bullshit of my youth. I thought I was a mature male, but I wasn’t. You do seem to be pretty self indulgent and lazy. Why the hell should you try harder? You need someone wiser and more experienced than me to kick you in the ass. But you know that anyway, don’t you.

I don’t really think this adds up to much. In the end all you’re saying is that we should be good and loving, not hateful and indifferent.

I don’t get you, but I don’t know you well enough to advise you. You do seem to have quite a strong personality and equally unafraid to use it here.

I do agree about the fetishism of psychology with the past.

My point about older people, in case it wasn’t made clear enough, is that they live with their physical aches and pains, the idea that old age is not going to go away, and the long past with so many botched moments. But they get up every morning, do the same deadly routine, deal with the same problems over and over and face up to it.

I swim with a small group of older men, up to the mid eighties in age. Some have lost partners, some have cancer or suffered a stroke. They get up every morning and head down the beach, push themselves through the water and always comment on how good they feel. Bitching and arguing is also part of this process.

So what is left? What is left is procreation is simply a personal preference like any other personal preference. I want coffee, eggs, and to read the newspaper. I want this cereal and not that one. The preference to procreate is simply one other personal preference, albeit one that impacts a person's life significantly. It still does not meet the criteria of 1 and 2 which may indeed count as natural (though even 2 can be argued against). Being that it does not meet the criteria of 1 and 2, it is thus a personal preference. — schopenhauer1

Thanks for that. Quite a neat little argument. I think this is a very blurry area. Females and males might be found in different categories in terms of ‘natural’ and ‘preference’. Males may approach procreation as a ‘preference’, but I don’t know the workings of the interior life of a female enough to know where to place them. This idea of preference is obviously where the difference lies between us and animals. Contraception and abortion are preferences that can override what might be a natural/instinctive drive. From my perspective it’s hard to know if love of children by a female is a preference or instinct.

#3 leaves us both dangling, I think.

Edit: it occurs to me, though, that of course humans would find procreation an imperative and justify it as instinctive, because it justifies their existence and everything they think and do. We cannot even trust our own explanations.

The Importance of Justice
Why does is matter what is moral or not, good or bad, in the first place? — Pfhorrest

I think you have to decide whether we are in a good place or not. If we’re in a good place it’s because of how we acted morally. Those morals formed societies that allowed us to evolve and develop, they’re behind what we regard as civilisation. Justice itself demonstrates the continued belief in those morals by acting on them.

That these morals are universal is proved by the commonality of successful societies.

So where’s the good and evil? Why mention good and evil?

I don’t know how old you are. But I imagine what you feel is not unknown to older people. Being tired of life is a very common experience for them. Maybe go and have a chat with people of older age, 70 on, and see what they have to say. Of course they may not open up immediately, stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing, so you may need to persevere.