Guy Debord - Being into Having

from: The Society of the Spectacle



“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence ... truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in pro-portion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

-Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity




17



The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having— human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing— all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.