Eddie, Jameson

Jameson discusses the presence of distinct “periods” in our culture, each marked by the ‘death’ of the previous and the succession of the new. What is intriguing is how this model of death and succession permeates from the broad scope of culture into details of our modern consumerism-driven capitalist life. This, in turn, hints to us exactly why we prefer revolution to continual growth.

Succeeding periods exists among us as the more familiar term: generations. It is the natural mode of operation in nature. We see generations through our children. They grow and replace their parents. Grandchildren replace the children and that generational cycle has brought us through all of time until today. But more interesting is how the generational cycling of products keeps companies competitive in the capitalist world today. iPods are the staple of “success through succession.” The device, first marketed back in 2001, is now in its sixth ‘generation,’ though far past the sixth production model. The notion of a new generation is one of intentional design by Apple – restricting one generation to receive only correctional hardware revision or cost-cutting alterations but not substantially updating functionality until corporate tactics dictate that it is time to ‘replace’ the current generation. They would then announce a new generation of iPods and declare the current one to be obsolete. This choreographed succession has recently taken a step up, with the arrival of the new iPod Touch, which is apparently supposed to be the current, de facto, iPod. Apple now labels the previously-modern iPods with the suffix “classic” – a move that would bring a smirk to Jameson’s face, no doubt.

Generations serve the interest of companies because it defines (for consumers) what is new, what is current and what is old. It directs consumers when to buy and when a replacement is needed. In the context of cultural trends, succession allows us to know when to celebrate the new and embrace the arrival of a “better” culture which realizes what the previous has failed to address. It is like buying a new touch screen iPod on the basis that we never realized we wanted a touch screen before. But, of course, things are never so simple. Naturally, there are disputes over whether the old was truly so severely lacking and whether the new functions are really that important, or just serve to break what was not broken. Such are what fuel the different forms of conservatives and their conflicts. What I wish to bring to our attention here is not that conflict or the better choice (if there can be such a definitive answer at all), but rather the idea that succession serves to satisfy our basic need for improvement. That is, while the process of succession may not guarantee actual improvement per se, but it does give the impression that we are progressing. Keep in mind that forward progression here is not restricted to a linear progression, where further is always good. We, as a society, move in a non-distinct direction among any of the 360 degree of choices and push on forward in what we feel, as of today, to be the ‘right way.’ Should the mode of culture be a single gradient with constant changes rather than large steps of revolution, then there would be much less of a sense of improvement and achievement (even though neither may have been actually attained). Then we would recognize nothing but the constant process of change and the resulting perception would be that nothing ever changes, which is true, because that mode of continuous change is indeed not ever changing. People may, then, come to the conclusion that either there is no need to change, or the alternative, more horrific theory that there is no more room to change – and the idea of inaction and stagnation bothers us.