In the Penal Colony

Today at the Dollar Tree (where everything, yes EVERYTHING, is just $1!), I saw some books titled HOLY BIBLE, sticking out like bucked teeth from a cardboard box labeled INSPIRATIONAL.

(*Warning: Everything written after this first line may be perceived as "boring", but I wanted to push myself further and explore my resigned indignation at seeing a Holy Text shoved into an "inspirational" cardboard box for $1. Then when I sat down to write I found my notes taken from some post-war Jewish philosophers...Read ahead with caution)

This was a Holy text, but it would take a lot of convincing for me to have felt from those particular Bibles any AURA.

AURA is human spirit infused. Aura is what your mother’s cookies have, as compared to cookies bought at the store in a package. Aura is an actor on stage: you can see his sweat, you feel the air move as he strides across the scene, as compared to the appearance of an actor on TV, who in reality was filmed months ago and is now just a series of flickering lights.

Walter Benjamin was a philosopher in the early 1900’s who was concerned with the AURA and wrote about it. One famous essay of his is “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In it, he discusses how the AURA of something is created by the fact that something is accessible to only a few people, and that special knowledge is required to interact with the object (Like a painting). I like to push this further and say AURA is created by the human effort put into it, and the spirit with which it is carried out.

With the advent of mechanical reproduction, the AURA vanished from things like paintings, once they were accessible to all. The actual content of the painting became more important than the fact that it WAS a painting, the interaction with that painting, the setting, etc. On the one hand this was helpful for freeing art from the clutches of the bourgeoisie, as something that could only be seen by the rich. Art could now be accessible for viewing to all. The Bible was freed from the clutches of the clergy by the printing press *(see below), which could now be accessed by the masses. On the other hand, with the loss of aura comes a loss of the sacred. With the accessibility of mechanical reproduction, we replace the search for aura with a search for “efficiency” and “survival”. And with everything now accessible and consumable without human labour, so our lives, emotions, thoughts, and bodies become accessible and consumable. We become more focused on the accessibility of something, than whether or not it feeds our souls.

Living in an age of mechanical reproduction, we come to see our own beings and our own bodies as machines, and believe that material fulfillment (food, water, $, home, etc) will be sufficient for our existence. If everyone could have food and shelter, we would all be fulfilled human beings! But it is not sufficient. The movie actor (who has performed for a camera, a machine, instead of for an immediate audience) attempts to make up for the impersonality of the cinema and absence of AURA by way of an intimately filmed sex scene. This is also not sufficient.

Humans have an innate need for AURA. The innate human desire for communion with AURA is most apparent in the ceaseless human search for closeness to other people --> nature --> and ultimately, God. Poetry, music, visual art, dance, song, communal song, storytelling, knitting, weaving, cooking- when these means are employed to bring oneself closer to others, to nature, or to God, AURA is engendered. When they aren’t, when they become mechanical means to an end, we end up with mantras that downpress our souls, Pop Top 20, tasteless food, meaningless sex, obesity, Fashion Fads, depression…

The AURA transmitted in our actions and infused into the objects of our everyday life, depend upon the spirit with which they are carried out. AURA must be cultivated and cared for, it will not generate itself.

In “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin wrote:

“The sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.”

It could be said that immediate reality is inescapable.

It could be said that we are always ourselves.

It could be said that we will always contain the human spirit, because we are human.

but,

How are we living in irreality?

How are we not ourselves?

How come that HOLY BIBLE was no orchid?

*The Gutenberg press was first assembled in Germany in 1439 (by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith). Until then, the Chinese had already developed woodblock printing with moveable type. Although woodblock printing had come to Europe from China along with paper, it was not as suited to the Latin Alphabet. (Each Chinese character represents a word or idea, so alignment was not as important. Although choosing from 5,000 characters was probably a tedious task). Anyways, the Gutenberg press was developed out of these prior inventions and at a time when there was a rising demand in Europe for cheaper books, rather than expensive parchment paper books.

The Gutenberg Bibles were printed in the early 1450’s. It took Johannes a whole year to print 180 copies, each with 1282 pages, and each illuminated with illustrations by hand.

In 1987 a Japanese buyer purchased the Old Testament of the Gutenberg Bible for $5.4 million through Christies auction house.