⩩ 11
We begin in the middle. When we arrive on the scene, we are fully outfit in habits. We find ourselves already moving, wanting, speaking, acting, — we brush the sleep off, we come to in the midst of a flurry of our own activity. That is, insofar as we are thinkers and judgers, we begin not at the beginning, not naked, as a block of marble, but already someway informed and sculpted and dressed up. Or rather we start in the middle. Already rounded out with habits, we are startled into thinking.
Where do these habits come from? Plainly they come to us from outside, are given to us by others, by our family, by society. Before we are able to think, we take them on ourselves, learning them through instruction and observation and imitation of those around us. We go to school before we know why we are going there, or whether we should. We speak a language before we have questioned its terms and categories, or know it’s possible. We use things, we even dream we own things, before we are able to say what they are good for, or so much as ask the question. We pursue values, before we know the value of those values; or, to speak English, we worship before we know what we are worshipping.
And so thinking is starting, surprise plus distance, detachment, interruption. We see that it is possible to think and act differently, that other people at other times in other places acted and thought differently, act and think differently, that our way is just one way, a custom, a fashion, and that there is possibly a better custom than our present one. We stop, we ask the question because we perceive the possibility of a better way. And yet we do not need to ask questions on all sides, to question everything, because — we can’t. It is sometimes reason enough for maintaining a habit that that’s what everyone does. The question is which is which. Which is it okay to accept just because that’s what we do, and where do we need to look for ourselves and exercise judgment?
I find a need to exercise judgment here: our way of “getting and spending,” how we spend and consume, the relation between wearer and worn in our culture. Our culture represents it as the pinnacle of living to buy. Besides the models and live examples that surround us, it stretches the imagination to consider the variety of ways and number of times since childhood we have seen marketing and commercials that have this as their premise and message. It is scripted for us: our attainment of happiness, our salvation comes in the purchase and possession of an item, the entertainment or convenience of it or the way it signals status and arrival, whether it be a car, a technological gadget or, to take again that first of habits, clothes.
Let us take clothes, not only because they are the visible instance of habit, but also because clothes-shopping and clothes-buying is the popular home of a helpful locution for a fundamental distinction. When you inherit the clothes of a sibling or friend or when you otherwise get them already worn, you get them secondhand; when, to follow the analogy, you buy them yourself unused, unworn, you get them firsthand. Could there be tags more poetic than this? Could there be a label-maker more concise, more memorable, more rooted in experience, more embodied than this? And so our culture tells us to look down on used clothes, to bristle at, to hide and throw away the secondhand, and to aspire to new clothes, to want to shop and buy firsthand.
There is a counterculture that goes back to Henry David Thoreau, a great observer and critic of fashion, that turns all this on its head. Despite the models and advertisements, what we really want, sings Thoreau in this choir, is not an item, a new instrument but to be a new person, to have a new purpose and way of living, and it is dangerous to confuse the two.
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged and dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
Note that the counterculture agrees with their opponents that we want something new, so that the firsthand is worth more than the second, but it takes this at the level of people and not at the level of garments: not a what but a who. And as a matter of fact the idea that you can get anything new by purchasing it begins to look ridiculous, no? Things you buy are precisely not new: they were made and manufactured somewhere else, and are merely handed over to you in the purchase. The truly new cannot be bought, but is of your own making, so that, unless you fashion them yourself, all clothes are gotten secondhand.
That’s why the people of this counterculture see no disgrace in the fraying edges of shirt-sleeves, nor in getting them secondhand, wearing any odd article they stumble across, picked from the lost and found or left over at our place or given us by a friend. In fact, we see a special honor in it. I look with rare warmth on the jacket I have from Joe, a shirt of Avner’s, a hat, pants from I-don’t-know-who, a sweater and backpack from dad and Opa. A symbol of fluidity, of people in me, it is also a reminder of the difference between wearer and worn, the fact that the new and saving comes from within, not from any material. On the other hand, we have an uneasy distrust of new clothes, merely new clothes; stronger, we cultivate a disdain for them and turn away from them as so many temptations and tricks. Like Thoreau, we have resolved to get new suits only when we have a new person to put in them. Until then, the old ones will do.
So we are in this way just the opposite of what our culture selects for and expects. How thrifty, how poor we will be when it comes to clothes! How rich, how extravagant we will be when it comes to ourselves, — to our opinions, our religion, our thoughts! We will spare no expense. We will see it as the pinnacle of living to think them, to unfold our own habits and way of life. We will not take them secondhand while we dress ourselves in fancy robes. And so we turn away from clothes and address ourselves instead to the question: what is a firsthand thought?
Did a part of this essay resonate with you? Make you think of something you have seen, heard or read? Have another angle on the topic? Please leave a comment.
You are reading Footnotes, by Garrett Allen, a series of philosophical-ish short essays. You just read ⩩ 11. Here are some highlights from what came before.
Firsthand
⩩ 10 Habit
⩩ 9 Firsthand
Stagestranger
⩩ 7 Mistake
⩩ 6 Whim
⩩ 3 Speechless
⩩ 1 Headsup
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A shoutout as usual to Danny at breakfastswerved for his ink. See his drawings for the series here.
If you’ve come this far: thank you for reading my work and spending time with me. I would love to hear from you.