Logos and Labels - Liberation from Extroversion and the Tyranny of the External World
When I was younger, I really hated logos and labels and avoided wearing clothes with a Nike swoosh or any sort of brand name on it. Why? Perhaps it was something of a young rebel in me, an aspiring non-conformist. I hated everyone who wore logos. It was as if earing brand names and logos instantly made them part of some cool fashion club, the in crowd. To me, needing some material thing, some logo and the right clothes, showed a weakness in character, a lack of courage and originality to do something different. Wearing logos and popular fashion labels was a symbol of conformity and lack of imagination.
So I didn't wear them. Instead, I looked for basic clothes without the logos: white t-shirt, black t-shirt, jeans, thrift store clothing, trench coats, odd clothing that didn't symbolize some corporation or club. When I started cycling, I refused to wear the multi-logo bicycle jersey that every yuppie geek and his brother wore. I was a man without symbols, and I felt proud, smug, unique. What I didn't realize then that my lack of symbols and logos was only a different form of signification, a kind of anti symbol form of symbol mongering. To be anti-logo was a stance in itself. To wear thrift store fashions was a fashion, too.
On a deeper level I was suffering (as I usually do) from acute extroversion. Typically, people think of an "extrovert" as simply someone outgoing, but there's more to it than that. The extroverted person, lacking a stable psychological center by which he can define himself and feel comfortable in his identify, is, in extreme cases, oppressed by the external world around him. Because there is no center to hold onto, he is influenced by the delusion that all things around him - the environment, the people, the situations, the communications and interactions - all define and determine who he is. Thus, an extrovert may spend much of his energy on seeking attention, in an attempt to control and influence his environment, which is an extension of himself. Extroverts are often people you have no trouble noticing in a crowd: the laugh of the party, loudest talker, biggest partier, the joker. Some extroverts may not be loud and gregarious, but simply meld chameleon-like into any situation by taking on the characteristics of all around them, the speech, mannerisms, clothing, etc.
For me, all the logos and labels and mindless conformity tyrannized me in that I felt if I wore the trendy clothes with the right label then I would be defined by those symbols and become one of the conformists. Yet, what I didn't realize until later was that by resisting those labels and logos, I was still being defined by those logos, because I was acting in defiance or opposition to them. I believed they had the power to define people. I defined myself as an anti-logoist. I naively sought to escape the realm of symbols, the realm where all humans reside.
I think this dynamic also exists in a relationship where a person feels oppressed and threatened by some external authoritarian power. In my case, I existed and operated under the assumption that external objects defined my inner realty and personality, my core being. I allowed myself to be controlled and defined by the delusion that who I was somehow was determined by things, by external influences, by how I was received and regarded by those around me. It was like an actor in a play who gets so involded and absorbed into character he forgets who he was before getting into character. He starts to believe he IS the character. The audience loves him, and he gets good reviews, and so the character takes over and who he was before the play and he becomes lost in this static, limited self definition.
Only later did I liberate myself from this self-imposed oppression by understanding the elastic, plastic nature of the Self. When I learned to move beyond my earlier, limited self definition of a person determined by external influences, I began to wear logos and label. This period of my life I call the Age of Logos and Labels, which I believe I am at the tail end of right now. I consciously seek logos and fancy labels and wear them without suffering from them. It's quite liberating to wear these things and not feel defined by them, not feel that I'm a mindless conformist, though probably someone out there who sees me might think that. Wearing them gives me practice overcoming my delusions of extroversion.
Similarly, in writing I have reached the same level, whereas I used to believe that everything I wrote, especially in a journal or memoir, was who I was, the only Me who I was capable of being. In fact, when I write I channel a multitude of selves, some me, some not me, all deriving from my brain and hand as I write, but non of which fully define the man we know as Pat.
