The Goose That Laid The Golden Turd

BY Jasmine McGowan

When Dionysus granted Midas the mystical power to turn everything he touched to gold, his gift to the king was every capitalist’s ultimate fantasy – economic immunity. However, as the king would soon find out, the promise of boundless wealth would prove of little comfort to him as he unthinkingly transfigured that which was most sacred to him into mere commodity. What Midas learned, for the benefit of all humanity, was a lesson reiterated many times by the Beatles… money can’t buy you love. The morally encrypted fable of King Midas teaches us to quell the materialistic impulse of our collective id with the truism that greed is ultimately a weakness.

Who then, I ask, would be tempted to consume a $25,000 chocolate sundae with edible 23-carat gold sprinkles currently available in a trendy New York eatery? In the current global climate of economic polarisation, what does it mean, philosophically, that this dessert even exists? The phenomenon of excess and gluttony in the upper echelons of wealthy society is by no means new. One needs only to read of the orgastic bingeing and purging feasts of ancient Greece to note that this tradition has been around forever. Melbourne sociologist John Carroll believes, however, that the hedonism of our contemporary elites is both witless and devoid of moral obligation. In his 1998 book Ego And Soul: The Modern West in Search of Meaning, Carroll contends that Karl Marx’s caricature of the obese, greedy and morally vacuous capitalist has finally come to fruition, his consumptive vulgarity the signifier of humankind’s descent into the nihilism described by Nietzsche in his ‘Death of God’ parable. As Carroll explains, Nietzsche claimed that the “loss of faith in a transcendental power” implicit to a secular modernity would eventually rupture the moral barometer innate to humankind apropos to the death of God, which, in turn, would signify an era of moral relativism. With no guiding principles, a “collective conscience” ceases to exist. Virtues such as empathy and self-sacrifice become superfluous in an age of the individual and his ego.

Likewise, psychoanalyst Carl Jung noted that, “when the gods are killed they are reborn as diseases”. For Jung,

individuals without belief, in order to give shape to what they do and how they live, will find themselves trapped in self-absorbed compulsions, depressions, anxieties – psychopathology as the modern form of illness (Carroll 1998, 93).

This loss of meaning and purpose in a secular society leaves a gaping hole in the spirituality of the Western individual that the capitalist project has keenly observed and happily accommodated. Upward mobility, signified by the products of a consumer-driven marketplace, is the essence of the success and ascent of the modern individual ego. Commodity culture is, seemingly, the only true path to enlightenment and fulfilment in the modern West. The golden dessert, like any other excessive commodity, is simply an analogy of this psychopathology. It’s not about consuming the dessert because it is the most delicious dessert money can buy; it’s about being able to buy it. It is the definition of ‘conspicuous consumption’. It is making a statement about who you are and, perhaps, how far you have come. Originally when 2pac and Snoop Dog waxed lyrical about Cuban cigars and Hennessy cognac, their conspicuous consumption was a parody of their access to the white man’s treasures. Further down the line and in the hands of artists such as P Diddy, this once subversive use of the oppressor’s accoutrements has become mere pastiche. Conspicuous consumption of this nature is a spectacle indicative of the escalating and unchecked consumerism of our time.

Carroll asserts that “the consumerist reflex is inherently melancholic”, suggesting that the modern subject is destined to repeatedly and endlessly mourn his or her spiritual vacuousness through the acquisition of arbitrary material items. It is not enough to attain success – you must constantly signify it to those around you through your possession of desirable items, the Louis Vuitton bag, the perfect tan, the wrinkleless forehead… Yet there can be no place of complete fulfilment. A melancholic will never attain peace or satisfaction, yet they are destined to compulsively mourn it. Their desire is what Jung describes as the psychopathology of modern illness. It is a drama that gets replayed every day in gossip magazines. Movie stars and socialites are envied for their money, sex appeal and glamorous lifestyles, yet their continued success is reliant on their wholehearted and uncritical investment in an economy of spiritual vacuousness. Embedded within the narrative of the gossip magazine are both the reader’s envy and their thinly disguised pleasure at the failings of these celebrities. These seemingly enviable lives are punctuated by alcoholism, drug addiction, and loneliness – all signifiers of spiritual emptiness. The reader fantasises about a life of glamour while subconsciously acknowledging that such a life cannot lead to fulfilment.

The yardstick for success in a secular society will always be the individual and their ego. There seems to be little space within moral relativism for restraint and empathy, traits seen as the parochial juggernauts of outdated spiritual values. Spirituality, however, does not need to denote a gloomy image of piety and worship; rather it should provide a check against the West’s escalating hedonism.