huge load of....
Ok, first and foremost, Valentine's Day is huge load of smelly horse shit (metaphorically speaking, of course). Ahem... that wasn't very academic of me, oops.
Allow me to elaborate. As Mel was nice enough to look up the real origins of this now commercialized Hallmark-holiday (since the rest of us are far too apathetic to even care), she brings to our attention a very important point: no matter what the original context was surrounding St Valentine's Day, it has lost all of that original meaning as of present day. Celebrating something without knowing why is just something we humans like to do. Take the ancient Romans for example: they placed an enormous amount of stress on ritualistic sacrifices prior to and following any war campaign (they especially enjoyed sautéing animal intestines... yum). These strange practices were merely the remenants of old traditions of the Atruscan Kings who once ruled over Rome prior to the Republic. For the Atruscans, these rituals were highly religious practices, in honour of the Gods whom they worshipped. But the Romans were just carrying out the motions, not really knowing why. St Valentine's Day is no different--we are merely carrying out the motions because our social norms 'tell us' we should; it is utterly meaningless.
Now of course the commercialization of Valentine's Day has contributed to its wide-spread acceptance among different cultures, as well as serving to strengthen the ritualistic and fetishistic aspect of it. That's the beauty of commercialization--people (on a grand-scale) are easily persuaded into believing that they need certain things, when in fact these are 'false-needs' created by the culture industries with the sole purpose of providing satisfaction of these false-needs. They prey upon people's natural fetishistic tendency--that is, people's tendency to place value upon objects which they believe to be 'special', which they believe will make up for a certain lack which they feel in their lives. St Valentine's Day is no more than an exploitation of this fetishistic tendency by the culture industries. And I think it's pretty clear that they do this with the goal of making money--to gain power (not to make people feel good about themselves).
One could argue that this lack which people tend to feel and desire to make up for is a product of love (ie: they don't feel the love), and thus Valentine's Day is their attempt to attain that feeling of love. However, that still doesn't change the fact that Valentine's Day is an exploitation of people's 'appetites' (as Hobbes calls 'desires' appetites), not a representation of love, as we would like to believe.
Allow me to elaborate. As Mel was nice enough to look up the real origins of this now commercialized Hallmark-holiday (since the rest of us are far too apathetic to even care), she brings to our attention a very important point: no matter what the original context was surrounding St Valentine's Day, it has lost all of that original meaning as of present day. Celebrating something without knowing why is just something we humans like to do. Take the ancient Romans for example: they placed an enormous amount of stress on ritualistic sacrifices prior to and following any war campaign (they especially enjoyed sautéing animal intestines... yum). These strange practices were merely the remenants of old traditions of the Atruscan Kings who once ruled over Rome prior to the Republic. For the Atruscans, these rituals were highly religious practices, in honour of the Gods whom they worshipped. But the Romans were just carrying out the motions, not really knowing why. St Valentine's Day is no different--we are merely carrying out the motions because our social norms 'tell us' we should; it is utterly meaningless.
Now of course the commercialization of Valentine's Day has contributed to its wide-spread acceptance among different cultures, as well as serving to strengthen the ritualistic and fetishistic aspect of it. That's the beauty of commercialization--people (on a grand-scale) are easily persuaded into believing that they need certain things, when in fact these are 'false-needs' created by the culture industries with the sole purpose of providing satisfaction of these false-needs. They prey upon people's natural fetishistic tendency--that is, people's tendency to place value upon objects which they believe to be 'special', which they believe will make up for a certain lack which they feel in their lives. St Valentine's Day is no more than an exploitation of this fetishistic tendency by the culture industries. And I think it's pretty clear that they do this with the goal of making money--to gain power (not to make people feel good about themselves).
One could argue that this lack which people tend to feel and desire to make up for is a product of love (ie: they don't feel the love), and thus Valentine's Day is their attempt to attain that feeling of love. However, that still doesn't change the fact that Valentine's Day is an exploitation of people's 'appetites' (as Hobbes calls 'desires' appetites), not a representation of love, as we would like to believe.
posted by Sean C at 7:59 PM
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