(C)copyright Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Staction,curator
Image: Maturity waiting to happen, by Pizzaonious
It may be a long way to Tipari, but it is a longer road still to maturity. Maturity is the long-awaited condition that we hope age and experience will create - unfortunately, not always so.
In the American experience, maturity is perpetually delayed by entertainment – a process that keeps you from confronting yourself. The business of having to grow an economy cannot have its potential customers sitting around contemplating life. Economies require infusions of cash for new products that somehow always seem to resemble the old products they replace- without this infusion they die.
There is some good in this process. It brings some innovation and increases the so-called standard of living. And, if it does none of these things, it always creates the illusion that growing is good and necessary for our well-being.
The distinction between need and want is the problem that marketers face everyday. If you are lucky, or smart enough, to have a product that people need, you do not have to work as hard as the rest of us.
Most of us have to create the illusion that what people want is also what they need. That is the little kept secret: Making something no one needs, and making that something that everyone wants is the gateway to success. We call this successful marketing. Without it, we would all be in big trouble.
As time goes by actual products run their course. The natural progression of continually making the same look like the new runs out – there are only so many products. Thus was born the service industry. Now we have always had necessary services, but as an industry, we matured. There are only so many necessary services. The rest we call entertainment. In the United States we also call it politics.
The service industry creates distraction: works of art that only exist for the moment. This makes the artist, Christo, a prophet. He said, “Do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they’re finished.” Does anything better define the service industry?
Now even contemplation is a product. Create a culture where every waking moment is necessary to survive, and top it off with products that require constant reinventing. Nice work if you can get it.
And we wonder why maturity is a delayed process.
Brother Giovanni, reporting for Pizzaonian Newsertainment Network, Diverti Mento, director
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