Introductie
Nu iets meer dan een jaar geleden (18 maart 2025) besloot ik een blog te beginnen. Dit deed ik in de eerste plaats omdat ik een manier wou hebben “[…] to chronicle what I’ve already written, but furthermore to expand upon it!”, aldus schreef ik meer dan een jaar geleden. Dit plan was te groot opgezet en vastgelopen, maar nu heb ik een beetje de smaak te pakken. Vorige keer plaatste ik (een deel) van één van mijn literaire werken, nu wil ik om de blog van een jaar geleden af te ronden het filosofische essay The Greyscale Crisis graag plaatsen. Dit essay gebruikt verouderde terminologie en de concepten die erin voorkomen heb ik doorontwikkeld, om niet te spreken over dat ik het beeld wat erin wordt geschetst bij nader inzien iets te ongenuanceerd en te simplistisch is te noemen. Toch wil ik het graag plaatsen in een zo origineel mogelijke vorm. Het essay is namelijk het cumulatiepunt van het verleden en het ontwikkelingspunt van de toekomst van mij filosofie gebleken.
The Greyscale Crisis (2025) by Arthur Hovenkamp
Almost all consumer products these days, from clothing to household items to cars, are on the greyscale of colours: black, white and grey. This was different if you go back in time, when only a small portion of these consumer products were on the greyscale. If we take a common greyscale consumer product, let’s call them popular products, from one hundred years ago, a common black overcoat, and ask people why it would be this colour the answer would be clear: to emit a sense of neutrality. This “neutrality” is today’s problem, for popular products these days strife for a “neutral”, “clean”, “sophisticated” and “sterile” aesthetic. However, by doing this they leave the meaning of things in the grey. Or rather, these popular products lack soul. I don’t mean the religious notion of soul, but something which bears a meaning that transcends the sensible perception and is therefore in need of an irrational/emotional explanation (we will get to my view on rationality at some point). The things that are lacking a rational explanation and are on their way to become emotionally explained are in a process of becoming begeesterd: inserted with geest, ghost, or rather spirit, soul.
These souls are what popular products tend to lack, an issue which is deeply capitalist. Which could be considered a controversial statement, but I consider capitalism as a system based on supply and demand: the demands are constantly being supplied, and the supplies are constantly being demanded, following each other again and again in a cycle. Thanks to the lack of begeestering of popular products they are more easily consumed, discarded and replaced, supporting the ouroboric cycle of capitalism by supplying more demand. Homogenization is also an issue, for greyscale popular products are greatly modular: they fit together in colour and shape and can therefore be easily and aesthetically pleasingly replaced. Even when colours are popular due to fashion trends this modularity is an issue: colourful popular products can easily be combined with greyscale popular products and when they are no longer fashionable they are no longer consumed but discarded and replaced, demanding more supplies. In short, the greyscale isn’t the issue, capitalism is, by supply and demand, supplying more demand and demanding more supplies. But moreover, I would like to add, capitalism is a system of divide and conquer: creating divided markets and conquering the margin and the niche.
Another way to look at this is through Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) cumulative terminologies of the vita activa: labour, work and action. Popular products are produced through labour, consuming them, discarding them and replacing them is also labour while work is needed for action to be done, action being the only source of political change and humanity being a political species. The absence of change means more ontgeestering, more soul being removed, making it harder for change to happen, allowing more ontgeestering to happen and for our humanity to be ignored. This causes more and more alienation, commodification, mass-consumerism and anti-intellectualism, all being deeply rooted contemporary issues.
Popular products are part of popular culture, which is obvious. But even those who are said to belong to a more niche, non-popular culture are subjected to the greyscale crisis, may it be simply by walking through a street and seeing people wear their black, white and grey clothing driving their black, white and grey cars to their homes with a black, white and grey interior. This is an issue of the psyche, to see a world ontgeesterd, derived of meaning. I don’t want to return to a religious society, where meaning was decreed from Above. I don’t think secularity needs to be meaningless, alienated, commodified, mass-consumeristic, anti-intellectual and ontgeesterd. Colours are literally and figuratively still all around us. We respond to them, we require them. Our evolutionary processes are programmed to search for food and danger, colour being able to imply both. This is being disrupted, the positive and negative source of our connection to the world, maybe also because the most colourful things within the modern landscape have become advertisements or other processes meant to grasp our attention and capitalize upon.
The real greyscale crisis isn’t about colour, but about our relationship with the world we are part of and how this world has become neutral, grey and soulless: ontgeesterd. Something can only be grey between black and white, or rather: something can only be neutral between good and evil. The grey status quo of the world, our society, is taken simply for granted. Capitalism is the status quo, while “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” feeling like “There is no alternative.” being at “The End of History”. Capitalism propagates itself as being the Ouroboros, with life as supply and death as demand, which is quite ambiguous: as an endless cycle of death and rebirth, or a self-destructive symbol of decay and postponed death? To choose our Ouroboros, or none at all, is up to us, for we give shape, colour and soul to our world!