Fashioning an Education

The rudimentary nature of looks are so simple, they're often overlooked. We use metaphors like "change of face", "heart on sleeve", "big-boy pants", "big-girl hat", “playing your hand” and so on and so forth. Yet, what do these metaphors imply in an ontological way, if anything at all? 

Nearly every identifiable emotion has an associated facial structure (mask), body posture and hand gesture (costume and prop), tonal quality (presence or role), and a characteristic background or landscape (setting or condition). As in theater, these personal qualities set the cultural stage for and define the experience of the social play. To customary thought, this may seem backwards since – traditionally – these are cultural qualities set on the individual stage. But conceptualized in this way, one overlooks the simple idea that it is the individual which makes the culture and not the culture which makes the individual. A culture does not give you your face, you give culture your face and the people who constitute that culture either accept it by responding to it, or reject it by ignoring it. The individual becomes part of the culture – an initiate - once they, consciously or unconsciously, make use of the former and discard the latter. This filtering process helps create and maintain the boundaries that define a culture for what it is.

Consider how simple it is to be considered a member of a culture: attend an institution, wear particular clothing, tote a particular hair ‘style’, drive a certain car, make use of certain technologies, employ peculiar mannerisms, and speak in an identifiable manner. Kevin D. Mitnick, in his book The Art of Deception, provides numerous stories of fraud that basically owe their success to enacting this simple fact. One example is of Stanley Mark Rifkin: 

One day in 1978, Rifkin moseyed over to [Security Pacific National Bank in Los Angeles, California] Security Pacific’s authorized-personnel-only wire-transfer room, where the staff sent and received transfers totaling several billion dollars every day. 

He was working for a company under contract to develop a backup system for the wire room’s data in case their main computer ever went down. That role gave him access to the transfer procedures, including how bank officials arranged for a transfer to be sent. He had learned that bank officers who were authorized to order wire transfers would be given a closely guarded daily code each morning to use when calling the wire room.

In the wire room the clerks saved themselves the trouble of trying to memorize each day’s code: They wrote down the code on a slip of paper and posted it where they could see it easily. This particular November day Rifkin had a specific reason for his visit. He wanted to get a glance at that paper.

Arriving in the wire room, he took some notes on operating procedures, supposedly to make sure the backup system would mesh properly with the regular systems. Meanwhile, he surreptitiously read the security code from the posted slip of paper, and memorized it. A few minutes later he walked out. As he said afterward, he felt as if he had just won the lottery.

Leaving the room at about 3 o`clock in the afternoon, he headed straight for the pay phone in the building’s marble lobby, where he deposited a coin and dialed into the wire-transfer room. He then changed hats, transforming himself from Stanley Rifkin, bank consultant, into Mike Hansen, a member of the bank’s International Department.

According to one source, the conversation went something like this:

“Hi, this is Mike Hansen in International,” he said to the young woman who answered the phone.

She asked for the office number. That was standard procedure, and he was prepared: “286,” he said.

The girl then asked, “Okay, what’s the code?”

Rifkin has said that his adrenaline-powered heartbeat “picked up its pace” at this point. He responded smoothly, “4789.” Then he went on to give instructions for wiring “Ten million, two-hundred thousand dollars exactly” to the Irving Trust Company in New York, for credit of the Wozchod Handels Bank of Zurich, Switzerland, where he had already established an account.

The girl then said, “Okay, I got that. And now I need the interoffice settlement number.”

Rifkin broke out in a sweat; this was a question he hadn’t anticipated, something that had slipped through the cracks in his research. But he managed to stay in character, acted as if everything was fine, and on the spot answered without missing a beat, “Let me check; I’ll call you right back.” He changed hats once again to call another department at the bank, this time claiming to be an employee in the wire-transfer room. He obtained the settlement number and called the girl back.

She took the number and said, “Thanks.”

A few days later Rifkin flew to Switzerland, picked up his cash, and handed over $8 million to a Russian agency for a pile of diamonds. He flew back, passed through U.S. Customs with the stones hidden in a money belt. He had pulled off the biggest bank heist in history – and done it without using a gun, even without a computer…

Rifkin’s story highlights the importance of fashion in the operation of today’s society. He was taken as a member of the bank culture by his role as a contracted employee, by his virtual position as Mike Hansen – which was reinforced by the gestures of knowing the code, and by his fluency of terminology. In other words, his fashion defined his character. 

On the contrary, it was his ‘inner’ fashion that defined his outfit – his ‘outer’ aesthetic. Our metaphors of hats, pants, sleeves, and masks are in fact references to psychic equipment. Few could do what Rifkin did; not because of the insufficience of their material fashion – again, Rifkin’s success was achieved even without a computer - but because of the poverty of their psychological fashion.

While the Rifkin story does well to demonstrate the illusive nature of presentation, Postrel reminds us that “declaring surfaces false and worthless is merely another form of deception.” Certainly surfaces and aesthetics do a lot to inform, and as Liz Twitchell remarked of fashionable luxuries, they are “incredibly powerful.” Ethnobotanist Terence McKenna – whom The Village Voice called the “Copernicus of consciousness”, in his Food of the Gods (1993), remarks on the power of the esthetic: 

 

It is difficult for most people born into a society of abundance, sensual gratification, and high-definition TV to imagine the stultifying dullness of most of the societies of the past. The “splendor” of the great societies of the past was essentially just a display of variety – variety in colors, fabrics, materials, and visual design. Such displays of variety were particularly the prerogative of the ruler and the court. The novelty of the costumes and the appointments of the court was somehow a direct index of its power. Thus it was when the emerging bourgeois of the late Middle Ages began importing dyes and spices, silks and fine manufactured objects into Europe.

I can personally attest to the power of color and variety over the human imagination. My periods of jungle isolation doing fieldwork in the Upper Amazon taught me how quickly the bewildering multiplicity of civilized life can be forgotten and then hungered for almost like the withdrawal from a powerful drug. After weeks in the jungle one’s mind is filled with plans for the restaurants to be visited once back in civilization, the music to be heard, the movies seen. Once, after many days in the rain forest, I went to a village to ask permission to make plant collections in the tribal area. The only “high-tech” intrusion into the primitive circumstances of the tribe was a cheesecake calendar brought from Iquitos and profoundly affixed to the thatched wall directly behind the headman of the village. As I talked with him my gaze returned again and again to the calendar, not the content but the colors. Magenta, cyan, and apricot – the terrible and obsessive attraction to variety was as haunting as the lure of any drug!

Postrel brings up the argument of surface and substance, acknowledging a tie between the two but propagating a view that the sensual is itself of value aside from application. To objectify this subject let’s look at natural configurations. The aesthetic of a flower, its fragrance for instance, is related to its pollination; the design of a tree, related to its climate; pleasurable tastes are either acquired or index of palpability; the song of bird and the chattering of baboons are integral parts of ecological resonance and the regulation of botanical and animal harmony. There is no aesthetic for aesthetics’ sake; there is structure based on function, rooted in body – organization not for ornamentation but for operational applications. The façade of something may indeed serve an applicable operation – as in membranes - and thus derives its esthetic from said functional organization. When you have aesthetic for its own sake you have wasted resources. The stoves Postrel mentions are cute, but the people who covet those resources are harboring something that someone else could very well make good use of. Surface is the sword; self is the weapon. Yet, in favor or the merely aesthetic, Postrel argues: “Sensory pleasure works to commercial and personal advantage because aesthetics has an intrinsic value. People seek it out, they reward those who offer new-and-improved pleasures, and they identify with those who share their tastes.” Certainly this is the argument of addicts; that their addiction is justified by the pleasure derived from ritual uses. As McKenna points out, deprivation of sensual stimulation resounds in a withdrawal similar to that of a drug. The aesthetic acts upon the nervous system in a similar way that chemical compounds do; the spatial configuration produces an identifiable and evocable neurophenomenological response, which is reinforced by repeated exposure to said stimuli. McKenna’s account of Amazonian isolation shows just how similar the two really are. 

Postrel denounces critics of aesthetics such as Riefenstahl, Ewen, Bell, Adorno, Horkheimer, McNealy, Loos, and Naomi Wolf: “The preachers – secular and religions, contemporary and historical – tell us that surfaces are meaningless, misleading distractions of no genuine value… We ignore the preachers and behave as if aesthetics does have real value,” which it most certainly does; just consider Rifkin’s employment of that value at the bank. “We define our real selves as the ones wearing makeup and high heels. We judge people, places, and things at least in part by how they look. We care about surfaces.” Again, if this was not true, Rifkin would have had no success. “But we are not only aesthetic consumers. We are also producers, subject to the critical eyes of others. And that makes us worry.” We are producers in the sense that we stylize fashion to fit our particular schema, in the sense that it is our aesthetic taste which drives the industry of fashion – we produce the blueprint that marketing agencies and advertising firms capitalize on. In this way, the aesthetic component of social organization and cultural definition is a means of buying and selling your self.  

Wong and Henriksen point out that ‘all of our conscious acts, even the act of not acting, are existential choices, or “fashion statements.” To fashion something, be it an idea, an artifact, or so forth, is to give meaning to one’s existence.’ Thus, as Helen Lee discusses in her Tao of Beauty (1999), function and fashion are inherently complements; hence the alchemical axiom: as above, so below. As a Chinese proverb states, an empty well gives no water. “The concepts of health and beauty are inseparable, focusing on the total well-being of the body’s internal and external functions. To have optimum health and beauty, a great physique and youthful appearance has to start with the body’s inner health, which includes maintaining the balance of yin and yang, chi, and blood action.” 

“At times, the experience of” fashioning “can be characterized by excessiveness and easily spill over to gluttony. And, yes, shopping can be mind-numbingly dull and can resemble a trancelike state of mind. However, in the moments when shopping becomes an act of fashion-ing it is an intensely human and vital experience filled with imagination, anticipation, inquiry, and reflection.” In an act of fashioning, “we move back and forth between what is and what could be, we feel movement, growth, and greater sense of vitality.” In terms of commercial fashion, this “experience continues beyond the advertisement to the product itself. The power of the ads is related to the degree that the imaginative bridge spans reality and a conceivable possibility… To the degree that “to exist” means to live, the stretching of existence from what is to what could be is literally, to expand what it means to be alive.” Wong and Henriksen liken the experience of school to the experience of fashion: “Both involve the awakening of perception, the engagement of both thinking and feeling, and the interchange of viewpoints and experiences with others.” I would like to interject, if I may, with Lee’s insights: “When we take the time – even if it’s just a few moments a day – to revitalize ourselves, we have so much more to share with those around us.”

Fashioning, then, is about altered states of consciousness. The shop is a device for entrancing the shopper; shopping is not it self fashioning. When the rite of purchase is re-cognized by the acting individual as an act of fashion-ing, then there is a shift in consciousness signified by the felt experience of movement, growth, vitality, and connection to the imagination. To fashion one’s self is to enliven one’s self, to coagulate states of consciousness as to expand one’s awareness, command, and understanding of the possible. Fashioning, like education, involves the conscious participation of an individual, which is altered in an act of participating. The psychic devices known as the persona (mask, costume, mannerism) and the archetypes (role, character) are the substance and the surface of fashion, which are regulated by the consciously fashionable: They begin their day by consciously making-up their face, their body, and their behavior - thereby they go about embodying a role that they have actively participated in making. These devices are used by everyone, but the unfashionable – individuals usurped by Madison Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Wall St. – are servants to their unconscious constitutions. 

“While cosmetics and skin care can enhance a [person’s] outer appearance, real beauty must be solidly based in balance and health. Strong, glossy hair; clear, bright eyes; firm, glowing skin; and strong, pink fingernails – these are the foundations that makeup merely plays up. Nothing can be enhanced that isn’t intrinsically there. This is why the road to beauty… is inextricably linked to optimal health.” This is the distinction between the fashionable and the unfashionable. The former does not think about being fashionable, their actions are saturated with their conscious involvement; their mental activity is not thought per se, but a meditation – a familiarization of self with self. The latter is unconsciously projecting their health unto objects through thought, ascribing quality to experience rather than experiencing quality through involvement. 

Fashion, like anything and anyone, has a creative (yang) and a deconstructive (yin) nature. All has the potential to be and to not be. To quote Kahlil Gibran: “I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.” As above (mind, ideal), So below (body, action). For a person to fashion their own self-image, as Wong and Henrikson propose is the purpose of education, then noticing this duality is paramount, because people tend to focus on one and not the other. To re-cognize how, when, where, why, and with what one is fashioning one’s self is to stand as the apex of real and possible – to be the bridge between imagination and actualization. 

But how does one do this? Schooling and shopping both have had their test runs and have shown to do nothing but clothe the individual insufficiently such that they must return for more equipment. This is because the aesthetic is attributed to the form. They are not the same. Aesthetic is an experience, whereas form is the object of that experience. For instance, clothing is used as an instrument for subjective feeling; you wear pajamas to feel comfortable, a tight shirt or short dress to feel sexy, a business suit or fancy attire to feel in command. The feeling is the aesthetic experience, misattributed to the form of the object that it is associated with. By attributing the experience to the object a person restricts their self-esteem to this outfit and that outlet, their comfort to this blouse and that boutique, their love to this necklace and that new look. People are, in effect, giving themselves up psychologically to nearly anything and everything that provides sensual gratification as deemed acceptable by the culture. Fashion, on the other hand, puts one at the levers of projection and retainment. 

Fashioning in the iconic sense of the word – through clothes and concepts – is merely disembodied aesthetic, chasing one’s own tail. The target is not the object of fashion (concept or clothing) but the experience, the state of consciousness associated with the item. The acquisition, mindful or mindless, of fashion items – be it clothing or concepts – is antithetical to education. There is no item of fashion, no clothing or concept that does not derive from inside the individual. And if fashioning is anything at all, it is regulating and cooperating this internal environment (like with instrumental clothing). Western thought lacks any models (as far as I know) for understanding and effectively fashioning the inner self; furthermore, the concept of an inner self is highly abstracted in this tradition. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to become part of another tradition of perception and expression. 

Qigong is a centuries old method of willfully altering one’s state of consciousness, of fashioning the inner self. What is the inner self? Well, by rhetorical implications, it is the self inside of you. What is inside of you? A heart, a spleen, lungs, kidneys, a liver, small intestines, a stomach and pancreas, a large intestine, a bladder, and a gall bladder. There is also (among others) muscle tissue, bone marrow, blood and plasma, excretory compounds, neurochemicals, and nervous tissue. 

Qigong, which is the root of ancient Chinese medicine, is a meditative practice. Meditation “is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space through the simple discipline of doing nothing… So meditation is a way of churning out the neuroses of mind and using them as part of our practice. Like manure, we do not throw our neurosis away, but we spread them on our garden, they become part of our richness.” Yet, it should be understood that meditation is nothing special or mystical, nothing foreign; nothing exclusive to this region or that religion. Meditation is consciously being human, a cooperation of the “faculties,” as the tradition of Western philosophy likes to call them, of perception and expression. 

The functioning of these “faculties” already occurs subconsciously, as when one becomes hungry at the sight of food or happy at the sound of good music, thoughtful in response to a teacher’s statements or tired following a long day. The “Zen” states of mind are little more than consciously tuning out sensory information as one subconsciously tunes-out background noise while conversing in a loud environment or focusing on something in the visual field at the distortion of surrounding stimuli. The subconscious means of exciting and inhibiting these (re)actions is linked to, or rooted in, the world we perceive to be outside of our selves – objects and events that consistently produce identifiable experiences. In this respect, we establish connections between how we feel, act, and believe relative to the constitution of the space around us – similar to the way a computer keyboard is wired to produce an ‘f’ when one presses the f key. But this relationship has faulty wiring because it lacks proper grounding; hence why the student and the shopper must always return to school and store. 

Meditation is like rewiring an electrical system, which comes together at a central circuit board or manifold – like the circuit breaker of a house. An electrical circuit requires two points of contact to function according to its intended purpose – a source and a return (also known as “Earth ground”). Consider what happens if you turn off the circuit in your house to which your refrigerator is connected – it also turns off because it no longer has a source or a return. Sensation and action work in a similar fashion, where you – the individual – are the manifold that enables the circuitry. Your environment is a seemingly endless supply (source) of information (or energy), which becomes subconsciously connected in the manifold of your psyche to appliances or faculties, if you will, that utilize the information in different ways and either drain the electrical system of energy (like televisions and toasters), cycle the energy (like the circuit breaker or an internet hub), or impart additional energy to the system (like generators or amplifiers for the signal of wireless internet). Environment does not simply refer to the external but to the internal landscape as well – to your thoughts and emotions.

Meditation, based on the formulae, reconstitutes the associations that have been subconsciously established throughout one’s life. Rather than being made sad or happy, one makes one’s self sad or happy – like changing the song on the radio, which acts like an external regulation device for one’s internal state (again, like instrumental clothing). Meditation puts this regulation inside an individual so they are no longer subject to the woes and boons of external conditions. 

In a meditative practice, relative to the tradition, we focus on a concept – say, creativity – and relate it to our bodies and its refined state (the elements). Creativity corresponds to the fire element; fire is constructive, creative, and procreative – fire is used in the forging of metals, in the driving of engine pistons, in the life-cycle as the source of light (the sun is a ball of fire after all) for photosynthesis, and so on. Every element has an active (positive, like an electrical charge) and passive (negative, again like a charge – not in ethical terms) side; the aforementioned is the active side of fire. The passive side of fire is decomposing and destructive, as seen when forests are set ablaze or controlled demolitions are performed. This element is found within your body at your solar plexus, which is involved in the process of digestion and body temperature regulation. So while many people find sources of creativity in the social realm of cities and movie theaters, or the home realm of television and internet cinema, meditation enables one to access a creative space within one’s self, a route to a direct source of creativity. When you’re doing X (e.g. putting on artistic dress) to achieve Y (e.g. start writing or painting) this is essentially the same thing as sitting down and focusing on your solar plexus. The sole difference is that through reaffirmed associations, you have subconsciously designated those spatial configurations to be your place of inspiration and creative ability. The same is true of meditation, but it is the solar plexus which becomes one’s source of creativity by chosen and reinforced associations, not the clothes. 

This organization is in contrast to another elemental organization, where each element is associated with an organ system and cardinal direction (role), a color (costume), a sound (tonal quality), a body posture (gesture, mannerism), an emotion (character), and the time of day and year (condition, setting). By fashioning one’s self with these elements, one’s inner glow radiates outward – as is the idea with material fashion, yet we speak literally here.