Judge it by its Cover

"Loosen a rivet from the lapsed mind
and out pours the obvious like thick rain."—Noah Eli Gordon, Novel Pictorial Noise

The cover of Ob(li)fious, like the cover of my personal journal, is a collage of everyday symbols, words, clichés. I am a cliché. “I” “am” “a cliché,” where “a cliché” is a cliché itself. A phrase seems to begin to approach cliché when it is recognized by the collective consciousness as representing something which seems true. This collective consciousness, perhaps, perceives itself vaguely as an abyss, rather than as heaven; if this were true, it would seem to follow that a cliché, just like a belief, sinks into this abyss (what Jung calls the "unconscious"), and informs the popular collective worldview. This collective consciousness may be either supraconscious or subconsious, heaven or hell, depending on what position one chooses as one's perspective. Like Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil, "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Although it's considered cliche to quote Nietzsche these days, as his name is hugely iconic and misrepresented, his ideas are nonetheless relevant. As I hope will become apparent, this example of a cliche, however irritated one is by it, illustrates an argument I touch on here but would like to argue further at a later time; that is, that cliches should not be avoided just because of the cultural taboo surrounding the use of the cliche. When something is labeled culturally as cliche or archaic, there is an implication along with this categorization that the "old" ideas and images are to be strictly avoided. This seems, however, to be a modern concept, and I would like to question its viability as we move toward a less, in my opinion, short-sighted temporal awareness that values the archaic, not just what is viewed as "new" (although, perhaps, as these modern values themselves, too, become archaic, they can be reasonably justified).

Logically, some clichés are based on assumptions which are just beliefs, some of which may be true. For example, Kai Chang states in his essay “The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of ‘Political Correctness,” “What's striking about the repetitive droning complaints about "PC" (from both conservatives and liberals) is that the expression itself — not to mention the concept it invokes — is as sloppily unexamined as it is pedestrian.”1 However, there is such a thing as “anti-cliché,” which is a device commonly used by writers to free the cliché from the absurd back into the realm of viable ideas. A cliché seems to work as a symbol. As one becomes aware of the prevalence of basic shapes and images detached from contexts, where one adjusts one's assumption from believing these images to be exclusively Capitalist symbols (when in the market), or exclusively natural symbols (when found in nature), these symbols begin to situate themselves for the observer within a macrocosmic context which keeps everything alive with meaning, rather than cliche. For an instance of this, there's evidence to suggest that the extinct Mayan civilization based their economy on a currency of cacao beans, demonstrating direct connection to their ecosystem, their source of food and well-being, promoting a sustainable lifestyle and a subject-subject consciousness paradigm.

It seems that one possibility, if reduced, for the vestige of empirical civilization we're experiencing now is that when a people--tribe, community, civilization--begins resisting its cosmic-global worldview, it starts limiting itself by defocusing from life as a cosmic phenomenon. In place of an image located within a cosmos, people born into this new culture may start viewing an image or concept as something which exists as if in a vacuum, having no value or meaning apart from a limited historical perspective (that history which the culture has written for itself as a way to insulate the people--who see themselves for the most part as inseparable from the proscribed culture itself--from any history before or after it). Instead of things having living value, therefore, being integrally embedded in all time and space and therefore informing a paradigm for a people who believes itself likewise to be situated within an infinite cosmos of free and creative possibilities, symbols in such a disconnected culture would be dead metaphors (by definition, isolated from their origins). Symbols, therefore, might take on the shape only of the meaning applied to them within a limited historical perspective.

Words may form just as beliefs do, from concepts assumed to be absolute, unquestionable truth. If a language, then, inherently within its very structure, carries limited beliefs, which, through the language, are repeated or maintained by everyone within a certain nation, this language is impelling every individual who hears and speaks it into accepting an entire system of assumptions. This idea is further realized when the technology becomes available to broadcast such repeated messages into every home, to every car, to every person's ipod, to every movie theater, etc. Society is an artifice. It is possible, then, for the people of an entire nation to believe their choices to be their own, without realizing that even they are part of the artifice.

There seems to be a necessity, therefore, to question the fundamental truths. It seems there has been a mass erasure, inherent in the artifice of Western society, of origins. There also appears to be a great dismissal of the necessity to analyze simple concepts. An analysis of origin, though, tends to inform the thing itself, reclaiming its meaning and taking it out of the realm of cliché. There, in its proper environment, an idea that has been expressed as a dead phrase is in a better position for one to decide if the idea is something one wishes to adopt, abolish, or reinvent in(to) or from one's own life.

This independent magazine seeks this, and related challenges as its mission. It is a project intended to increase awareness by being a medium through which anyone can critically discuss and challenge ideas. While deconstruction of existing beliefs is at the forefront of this publication's goals, the magazine's contributors will also seek constructive alternatives. All who are interested in participating in this challenge are welcome.



1 Chang, Kai. “The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of ‘Political Correctness.'” Zuky: Open Mind and Open Hand Strike. 2006. Kai Chang. .