Luxury Fashion

Putting together ones life with the modern world.
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Insanus
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Re: Luxury Fashion

Post by Insanus »

I think it's just a tool for differentiation among others. Our culture buys and sells disposable identities and in our ill condition identification with a valuable brand might simply be a desperate attempt to be worth something oneself.
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Cancer
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Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:45 pm
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Re: Luxury Fashion

Post by Cancer »

I'll try to clarify, in a non-snarky way, what my negative reaction to the opening post was based on. I do not think that Nefastos' use of "alcoholic" as a term of disparagement was intended to be hurtful to people suffering from addictions. But I also don't think that intention is always the most important aspect of the message being conveyed. From that post, there emerged an image that "stupid young people, who probably suffer from a common form of addiction, behave in ways which I personally find annoying, and this points to one of the biggest problems of our times". Those random teenagers were being used as an example of something supposedly horrible despite them having hurt no one. If one were to approach them and ask, say, "did you know that those Gucci bags are made by slaves, whose suffering you could therefore be contributing to?" and receive an answer indicating indifference, one could properly complain about nihilism. But it isn't the actual social and environmental problems of producing Gucci items (or really almost anything in the current system) that Nefastos was focusing on, but the outer appearance of said teenagers. There is a tendency for occultists in general to go around assigning labels of "profane animalistic nihilist, who suffers because they want to suffer" or whatever to people whose lives they know nothing about and who are just doing harmless things, like partying (covid-concerns notwithstanding). To me, this seems rather hypocritical when coming from people who claim to base their entire worldview on empathy and the idea that thoughts make reality.

In sum, wanting nice things - including associations with prestigious brands - is fine. We all have irrational, problematic desires, and it is not those desires themselves which cause suffering, but the actions that we take based on them.

ps. To add something positive as well, I think the discussion about advertising is really interesting and relevant. We are so numb to our senses being invaded by manipulative messaging that most of us aren't even able to be horrified about it anymore. I'd much prefer having all the ads replaced by graffiti, for instance.
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Smaragd
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Re: Luxury Fashion

Post by Smaragd »

Cancer wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 2:47 pm From that post, there emerged an image that "stupid young people, who probably suffer from a common form of addiction, behave in ways which I personally find annoying, and this points to one of the biggest problems of our times".
For me the image emerged thus: "those young people have become surrounded by these particular kind of difficult forces that partly hover behind both alcoholism and Luxury Fashion, how do you see yourself afflicted by these forces?". Where goes the line of others getting to define the meaning of your words? Projection is a term related to this problem. It's definitely a question we are in need of investigating in today's world. Perhaps another topic on this?
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Insanus
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Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:06 am
Location: Helsinki

Re: Luxury Fashion

Post by Insanus »

Cancer wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 2:47 pm
In sum, wanting nice things - including associations with prestigious brands - is fine. We all have irrational, problematic desires, and it is not those desires themselves which cause suffering, but the actions that we take based on them.

ps. To add something positive as well, I think the discussion about advertising is really interesting and relevant. We are so numb to our senses being invaded by manipulative messaging that most of us aren't even able to be horrified about it anymore. I'd much prefer having all the ads replaced by graffiti, for instance.
It's really difficult to make a split between desire and action without assuming exceptionally great amounts of self-awareness and resistance from everyone. It's not uncommon to act in trance first and realize why later, if it's not something massively out of norm. It's how we mostly are. When we consider these manipulations, advertisements and the like as something that gives a form to our desire and artificially excites us the problem is not that wanting nice things should be canceled but that the want itself is created for us in advance just like the nice things are. Luxury item is not inherently worse than some other product in this regard, but since there the brand basically is the product, it represents this empty seduction nicely. I know I'm stating the obvious, just wanted to continue something about advertisements because it's a topic that I also find very interesting.
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