Coke is It!

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.



To shed a bit more light on the system of consumerism and the psychological consequences, we have been looking at a few thoughts from Slovaj Zizek’s The Fragile Absolute. Zizek is some combination of philosopher, psychoanalyst, and cultural critic.

“It is no surprise that Coke was first introduced as a medicine—its strange taste does not seem to provide any particular satisfaction; it is not directly pleasing and endearing; however, it is precisely as such, as transcending any immediate use-value (unlike water, beer or wine, which definitely do quench our thirst or produce the desired effect of satisfied calm), that Coke functions as the direct embodiment of ‘it’: of the pure surplus of enjoyment over standard satisfactions, of the mysterious and elusive X we are all after in our compulsive consumption of merchandise.” (p. 22)

In the prior post, we discussed Zizek's objet petit a: “The nearer you get to it, the more it eludes your grasp (or the more you possess it, the greater the lack).” (24)

In this post, we will look at Coke, as an example of objet petit a and explore Zizek’s psychology: what is the psychology behind possessing more but simultaneously experiencing greater lack. This is a psychological paradox, but one which helps us explore the spirituality of the system of consumerism in our disposable society.

Coke is “the mysterious and elusive X we are all after in our compulsive consumption of merchandise.” (22)

And yet Coke has nothing in itself that makes it desirable. The desire for Coke comes from something else. Zizek suggests that it is (in part at least) Coke’s inherent undesirability that makes it desirable.

“It is this very superfluous character that makes our thirst for Coke all the more insatiable: as Jacques-Alain Miller put it so succinctly, Coke has the paradoxical property that the more you drink the thirstier you get, the greater your need to drink more—with that strange, bitter-sweet taste, our thirst is never effectively quenched.” (22)

So, although being thirsty leads us to drink Coke, the physiological reality is that Coke does not quench our thirst, ironically, it makes us even more thirsty.

What this seems to illustrate is that what we are after when we drink Coke is something more than a drink. There is something deeper. We think to ourselves consciously that we reach for Coke to quench our thirst. But biologically, Coke has the opposite effect. So, what is that we desire when we desire Coke?



Coke, of course, claims that it is precisely because of the product that we want more. I recently watched a documentary on the Coke company, and the executives and marketing strategists showed how the unique mixture of Coca-cola itself is what people desire. And, of course, they all believe it. We all believe it. We all believe it is the product itself. Coke is the stuff of legends, of American legends. As such, there is no conspiracy to sell us something that we don’t want. It’s just that most of us do not understand what it is that is motivating our desire to drink Coke. The motivation isn't the product itself.

There is nothing in the drink itself. The drink itself gives us nothing that a drink should give us.

Where does the desire come from?

Zizek’s point is that what we desire from Coke is precisely its ability not to quench our thirst. In a consumeristic society, what we desire from Coke is “the ineffable spiritual surplus.” (22) We actually desire to desire more. We desire desire itself, and all the while we consciously operate as though we are satisfying real needs and actual “legitimate” desires. But in a hyper-consumeristic culture, it is consuming itself that becomes the prime motivating factor.

“The ineffable spiritual surplus.”

Zizek summarizes: “So, when some years ago, the advertising slogan for Coke was ‘Coke is it!’, we should note its thorough ambituity: ‘that’s it’ precisely in so far as that’s never actually it, precisely in so far as every satisfaction opens up a gap of ‘I want more!’.” (22)

But there is more.

It gets better.

There isn’t just “Coke,” there is caffeine-free diet Coke.

With caffeine-free diet Coke, “all that remains is a pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized.” (23)

There isn’t even any caffeine left, for god’s sake!

Zizek sees in this Nietzsche’s classic opposition between “wanting nothing” and the nihilistic stance of actively wanting Nothingness itself. For example, Zizek notes Lacan’s idea that the anorexic does not desire to eat nothing, rather, the desire is for Nothingness itself, the Void. “Along the same lines, in the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, we drink the Nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property that is in effect merely an envelope of a void.” (23)

So, the move from Coke to caffeine-free diet Coke is a move from endless consumption and eternal dissatisfaction (wanting to drink something that will not quench your thirst and keep you wanting more—“the ineffable spiritual surplus”) to desiring the Nothingness and Void.

Zizek further explores this in terms of Freud’s super ego paradox: “the more Coke you drink, the thirstier you are; the more profit you make, the more you want; the more you obey the superego command, the guiltier you are….or the more you have what you long for, the more you lack, the greater your craving; or—the consumerist version—‘the more you buy, the more you have to spend….that is to say, of the paradox which is the very opposite of the paradox of love where, as Juliet put it in her immortal words to Romeo, ‘the more I give, the more I have.’”

This paradox is difficult to define. Easier to illustrate, more difficult to define.

What seems to be in play is that the fulfillment of desire somehow opens up the space for more desire. Or, perhaps it is that chasing desire itself is an eternal quest. The more we pursue desire, the more that desire grows. Desire breeds desire.

“The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

Desire exists for desire’s own sake, as in the illustration of Coke. Or, in the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, desire opens up the desire for the Nothingness, the Void.

For Zizek, the key is the object petit a, “which exists (or, rather, persists) in a kind of curved space—the nearer you get to it, the more it eludes your grasp (or the more you possess it, the greater the lack.” (24)

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.



This is the psychological and spiritual element of the consumeristic desire for desire itself.

The result of this hyper-consumerism within which we move and breath and have our being is that we live in a disposable society. Our legacy becomes waste.

Trash.

Waste.

“So, on the one hand, instead of stable products destined to last for generations, capitalism introduces a breathtaking dynamics of obsolescence: we are bombarded by new and newer products which are sometimes obsolete even before they come fully into use—PCs have to be replaced every year if one is to keep up with the Joneses; long-playing records were followed by CDs, and now by DVDs. The aftermath of this constant innovation is, of course, the permanent production of piles of discarded waste.” (40)

Zizek then cites Jacques-Alain Miller: The main production of the modern and postmodern capitalist industry is precisely waste. We are post modern beings because we realize that all our aesthetically appealing consumption artifacts will eventually end as leftover, to the point that it will transform the earth into a vast waste land. You lose the sense of tragedy, you perceive progress as derisive. (40-41)

Interesting to think of the postmodern legacy being one of waste.

“The obverse of the incessant capitalist drive to produce new and newer objects is therefore the growing pile of useless waste, mountains of used cars, computers, and so on.” (41)

The waste that hyper-consumerism produces is the visible testimony to a deeper psychological and spiritual phenomenon, an invisible force that keeps us locked into the endless pursuit of goods and services. The desire opens up the spiritual spaces within us for more desire to grow. The joy we find in the newest and latest purchase becomes the springboard for more pursuits. We work harder and longer for more.

This is the intersection of economics and psychology, the crossroads of spiritual longing and the American capitalist system that has transformed itself into desire for the sake of desire, or in its more extreme form, the desire for the Nothingness, the Void.