OCTOBER 24 — "We were not somewhere between success and failure—we were elsewhere.”—John Berger

What’s the difference between sexual desire and porn? The first has context, beauty and longing; the second is a neurotic repetition of specific acts. The first involves personal depth; the second is mere titillation.

It’s the difference between a sumptuous plate of mee goreng mamak and eating three packets of Maggi Mee at one go. The former is lunch, the latter is insanity.

Success porn and the modern self

Below I wish to list out 10 "laws” which I suspect are irresistible to lovers of what I term success porn. You know how the movie 300 (of "This is Sparta!” fame) was labelled action porn? It’s a similar thing here. 

Success porn is the constant mind-numbing bombardment of messages, quotes and stories with only one core theme i.e. You Can Achieve Whatever Greatness You Aspire Towards. 

Day in day out people are subtly pressured to "succeed”, to "reach for their dreams”, to keep "working at it”, to never quit, etc. 

This is porn because one never gets a break from what initially seems like an attractive spectacle. 

Institutions and authority figures never tell you to stop being successful (whatever the heck that even means); the corporate/cultural air around us detests lacunas of uncertainty and non-decision, and there is no space which affords us a break from the capitalist drive of You Can You Must You Better.

Point is, success porn is handcuffed to a profiteering narrative which has already carved out what a "good” person should be like.

Our society determines how people should behave, what they should pay attention to, who they should detest, what’s worth "fighting for” and so on. 

In philosophy speak, it’s called subject constitution i.e. every man, woman and child is being "created” in the image/s that free market liberal democracy permits.

After creating us in its image, the market then passes laws whose objective is to keep us in check. In fact, today’s modern "commandments” are more powerful than the Biblical 10 Commandments brought down the mountain by Moses. 

Today’s success-oriented laws, because they are NOT inscribed on official documents (let alone stone tablets), render them even more severe, obligatory, pressurising and subject-forming. 

This is to say that at least people can (and do) self-consciously react to religious laws, but what about consciousness-forming "laws” which come at us through culture, media and so on?

People barely know they’re even subject to these laws, many of which have been artificially "naturalised.” Worst of all, these commandments reproduce in people the Borg-like desire to seek out ─ by whatever means possible ─ the pleasures of the non-stop circuitry of today’s version of "greatness” i.e. success porn.

So, behold! The new 10 commandments as below:

1.Thou shalt always keep up with mobile technology; and thou better spend more than four fifths of your waking life scrolling through media-s***e you really don’t need to read; in other words, your attention span shall be cut to about three micro-seconds and your only source of learning will be click-bait links

2.Thou shalt make crap-loads of money and show it off or, better yet, act like you don’t need it; in other words, you shall be a slave to the financial system such that even if you win, you lose. 

3.Thou shalt look like Asia’s Next Top Model, at pain of social rejection; i.e. thou shalt possess high sex-appeal even if it kills you and "inner beauty” is something only a mum can identify or a concept you tweet about just before paying a few hundred dollars for more Shiseido face paint

4.Thou shalt signal your impeccable political virtues by taking a swipe at the "obvious” bad guys like Trump or Israel every chance you get (and especially if folks around you are doing it); in other words, you shall have no unique political view of your own and "politics” is something for ugly people on the front cover of newspapers; thou will be Politically Correct even if it means intellectual castration

5.Thou shalt publicly show you care for the environment, even if that means spending a ridiculous amount on gourmet coffee; how else do we "feel good” drinking something which is 90 per cent milk and 10 per cent coffee? 

6.Thou shalt be "cultured” and "a success”, whatever these entail or consist of; it really doesn’t matter if you have no idea what your purpose in life is AS LONG AS other people go Ooh and Aah over your Facebook posts and business card. And John Berger’s quote above will make absolutely no sense whatsoever

7.Thou shalt spend your entire waking life face-hugged by a smartphone; i.e. you will be happily oblivious to the real world happening around you because you’re hooked to photographing and video-shooting everything which even looks marginally "cool”; put simply, you will never truly see a beautiful thing with your own eyes

8.Thou shalt subscribe to a brand of philosophy loosely described as "New Age”; in other words, the only god thou can (politically correctly) say exists is the nameless, non-characteristic, non-emotive, pseudo-generic one living inside "all of us” (whether we like it or not); in other words, the idea that a personal God exists who loves you and cares for you will always be heresy

9.Thou shalt refuse any serious alternatives to a world-system other than capitalism; basically, thou shalt respect all cultures and worldviews, including those which seek to destroy other cultures. Tesco and Starbucks will always be the good guys and "communism” always a dirty word no matter how much we don’t know about it

Finally…

10.Thou shalt curse articles like these which are neither life-hacks nor memes nor a cat video nor a "how to” guide nor celebrity gossip nor breaking news nor anything which conforms to any pre-existing online category thereby rendering it nonsense… after which you return to your moment-by-moment habit of plotting to make millions while spending 26 hours a day being a smart-zombie on WhatsApp.

* This is the personal opinion of  the columnist.