It’s often that one hears from the hylics, a call to expand the bank of potential experiences to draw from in some effort to be open-minded. The pressure is on to have “authentic” travel epiphanies or try new foods, and submerse oneself in a foreign-yet-familiar environment. How can it be the case that while the world (particularly the Western developed industrial centers) urges everyone to experience more, we are left feeling emptier and performative in our lives? This failing is certainly not for lack of experiences, or having too few experiences. It results from a confusion of two different kinds of interfacing. Our social machinery is designed to sell us a superficial experience while depriving us of direct engagement, only leaving an implicit access point for genuine connection for those who have been enlightened due to a disciplined study, or enlightenment on the topic by way of desperation; a necessity in the face of the superficiality of #mindfulness retreats. For the hylics who claim that this or that experience is a must, for the social media posting of travel around the world to custom tailored tourist destinations, and to the ones thinking them have escaped this superficiality only to unrealize that the superficiality is something intrinsic and not to be found in the object of experience, Seneca the Younger’s observation that ‘we are as much afraid in the light as children in the dark’ serves as reminder to the fact of paralysis. Such a paralysis indicates a new kind of fear to be found in the fear of meaninglessness hidden beneath the gallery of endless consumable experiences.

Such a confusion, in addition to in part being a personal failing due to lack of reflection or engagement, is conditioned by a system which is conducive to vapid testimony. This system has been previously diagnosed by thinkers like Walter Benjamin in his text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin observed that mechanical reproduction, which can be defined here as the ability to mass produce perfect copies of a work of art, strips art of its “aura”. An artworks’ aura is its unique presence spatiotemporally, it’s particular novelty in the world. This loss parallels the replacement of a true experience - something that is contextual and in some cases challenging - with a superficial, reproducible engagement. Take, for example, the Mona Lisa. The “true” experience might involve understanding its Renaissance context and subsequently having a personal, contemplative moment before it. The modern, commodified engagement is often a struggle through a crowd to snap a picture of a surprisingly small painting, a photo which is identical to millions of others, reducing the encounter to a reproducible visual token. Not too unlike the trend of abstraction in various aspects of modern engagement with the world. Here, there is a direct loss of “aura” in favor of a consumable, shareable moment. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer coined the term “culture industry” to describe how capitalism transforms art and ideas into standardized, predictable commodities designed for passive consumption, not active thought or genuine emotion. Today, this analysis finds its ultimate expression in the “Experience Economy”. The culture industry no longer sells us films or music as it did in the past. Instead, it sells us pre-packaged transformations and unreal enlightenment, which may take the form of films and music, but certainly belittle the very medium of their conveyance.

The curated mindfulness retreat, trips to Bali or the slave state of Dubai, the “must-do” travel itinerary around the world (which is usually just Europe, America, and Japan, with exceptions made for those in the orbit of Western polarity), even the formulaic self-help bestseller are all products of this extended culture industry, and what I term “experience fetishism”. They take the deeply personal human desires of growth and connection and repackage it in standardized, sterilized, purchasable products, in effect, making this superficiality the default mode of engagement. People start to crave this superficiality in an effort to feed the gnawing void left by the very introduction of this superficiality. This system does more than sell us things, it sells us pre-fabricated versions of our own inner lives, pacifying our longing for depth by offering a convincing (to the hylic) simulation of it. That fear which Seneca spoke of stems from the consumption of these simulations, while our innate need goes unmet. What is described here is a system of displacement. We begin to confuse the marketed simulation of depth for depth itself. Intellectualism transforms into the accumulated experiential objects which mind turns over from one, to the next, indifferently. The defenders of the West on Twitter (which often times are not from the West) have committed the very shameful act of turning their very own history into an amusement park of modern signifiers and ideas about the past. In turn, the defense of such a project is as immaterial as defending one’s own physical body while being immersed in open waters. If not by the forces of nature and metabolism inevitably wearing this defense down, any natural contingency such as a shark or school of venomous jellyfish may decide to initiate its doom, whichever way the wind blows.

We collect signifiers of a meaningful life, whether it is photos or branded merchandise of various “journeys”, all while finding the substance elusive. We become, as Benjamin might have feared, collectors of copies in a world that has made the original encounter seem either inefficient or intimidating. It is not only the “Funko Pop” or “Labubu” collectors that are worthy of derision. Experience fetishism is thus the compulsive pursuit of curated, consumable sensations as a substitute for (and often an obstacle to) meaningful and transformative engagement with the world. It is the reduction of the world to a gallery of commodifiable moments and objects, where the primary value of an activity is its ability to be captured and catalogued as a personal asset, often times to auction in a system and society of spectacle, rather than its capacity to fundamentally alter one’s understanding or character. It transforms the human pursuits of travel, leaning, spirituality, and relationships, pale imitations of what they are, and alienates the objects of experience themselves from their own inner processes and concept. There is a valuing of the immediate thrill and peripheral novelty over the gratifying work of reflection and integration into wisdom. This worth is judged by its social currency, the power to generate envy or admiration, and, in most cases, validation from an external audience. This generates a checklist mentality towards life where one must see this, visit that, or try this, driven by social pressure and FOMO instead of curiosity or personal calling. Experience fetish creates a “cult of the must”.

The fetish is enchanting precisely because it supposedly offers a beatific simplification. It promises the delicacies of life while bypassing the vulnerability, work, and discipline required for these things. Where it casts a spell where the signifier shines so brightly that it obscures the active erasure of the signified, the dispelling is found in the inversion of the result. One must begin with dismantling the enchanted object and embracing the disenchanting work of genuine engagement. Once this is done, a realization occurs where the enchanted object is blindingly apparent that it has been enchanted by Mammon, and this disenchanting effort of inversion unveils itself to be the necessary step in true comprehension and experience. By taking this act, one goes from having an experience, to allowing an experience to have you, and being permanently marked by it.