Then a multitude of difference followed in the light. Even the absence of light, shadows, presented the world with alterity, difference, strangeness, a sense of unfamiliarity. Yet our modern world continually erases difference, variety, variance, alternatives. Difference itself becomes the other that needs to be negated. Difference itself becomes the devil that needs to be destroyed.
The seemingly endless copies of the same stands row on row on row. The confrontation with the same signifies a seemingly unending amount of nothing but the same. Walking into a shop one finds the same exact copies of the same products; the same vegetables, the same coffee, the same meats, the same, the same, the same.
The lies that bind our society, most people are fine with the lie of sameness. In confronting similarity, most have convinced themselves that there is tremendous variety; cucumber, bell pepper, roma tomatoes, leek, red, yellow, and white onion, scallions, potato… Yet is this all that there is for the future? The same bland repetitive copies, the same repeated codes.
The loss of difference, alterity, variety, the other as other, comes as a shame, but also as a fundamental loss of life. Only in infinite diversity does life manage to overcome death, but death is per definition the loss of diversity, of difference, of existence.
Mono-cultured forest, rows upon rows of pine trees, blue gum, and so on, looks like a flourishing forest, yet when one finds oneself in the middle of these human-made structures, you hear only the wind. There are no birds, no insects, no animals calling each other. One is confronted with only one thing: the absence of existence; the repetition of the same. How is the row on row of mono-culture different from our own existence? Standing in the rows of aisles in the shops, we are confronted with similarity, bio-diversity reduced to baskets of the same red tomato endlessly copied. Similar to the loss of life in nature, our unnatural food chains are devoid of difference, and our bodies are experiencing a slow death of diversity.
What might the solution be? Life thrives in diversity; different colours, tastes, flavours.
Yet we take ourselves out of nature, we reduce our individuality to a copy of all of the other copies. We submit ourselves to the opium similarity and rejoice in our poverty-stricken lives (loss of diversity). And we all accept this fate with glee, misfortune but with a sprinkle of security. Yes, the shops have never been so full, we can feed the world, but at the expense of diversity. Mono-coloured existence.
Alas, this was a bit of a depressing musing. I hope that you find your life filled with diversity, with the face of the other smiling in your mirror.
All of the musings are my own, albeit inspired by the dire situation we find ourselves in. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.