The Cult Of Arrogance

   We live in a world where arrogance, the ability to promote oneself over anyone else regardless of actual talent or knowledge is king.  How is this affecting us?  What does it mean for you and me as individuals?  How does it manifest in our daily life, the choices we make; and in the context of Attire, how does it affect what we choose to wear?  It affects our ability to see ourselves truly. It affects our self knowledge. And it affects, ultimately, our ability to transmit that self knowledge and understanding to others.

     What we end up with is disinformation, confusion, and a flat out refusal to engage with reality.
     When we are clearly living at a time when we must and should cleave to each other in order to make it to the next stage our society is heading towards, whatever that may be, making sure our communications verbal and non-verbal are precise becomes essential.
    What do I mean by this?  We have built this massive machine that does nothing but produce, produce, produce, even though so many of us have far more, realistically, than we could ever need to comfortably survive.
    It has become a cancer upon our backs.  That is a potential doom.  That is not an overstatement of the truth.  I understand that untelllable millions of people depend on the apparel industry to live, and yet this is also true. We have made of this thing a monster that is utterly out of control.  We starve ourselves, spend endless hours at the gym. spend immense amounts of money to have ourselves sculpted into a simulacrum of perfection.  For what?  For whom?  These questions are especially pointed considering that approval from others is withdrawn even more quickly than it is given, as we see constantly in the media realm.

     The person who is truly lovely, truly hot, truly capable, is the person who does not require the approval of others for their self worth.  We have been carefully schooled that it is the reverse. Decades of fashion imagery, commentary, Project Runway, and endless blogs have told us what we should do to be acceptable.  Truth is, we're just fine.  We don't need anyone's help to be ourselves.  I'm me. You're you. And we should own that fully.  It's not that you can be you only if you look a certain way.  Your own self, your essential you is amazing! Use it. Make it manifest. Take this astonishingly vast language of Attire and make your own story a reality for all to see.

    What is the Cult of Arrogance, then?  It is this media and consumption culture that we have allowed to snow us into believing that one kind of beauty is wonderful, one kind of hot is cool, and that anything else is Also Rans, of no real account. So we, most of us, feel left out. Because we haven't the money, the fortitude, or the genetics to become this thing, whatever it is at the time.  Sure, it's important to have goals to strive towards, and that is the thing that they tell us they are giving us, a goal to achieve.  But the goal is not one that most of us have the body, or the mind to get to.  And for the huge majority of us, who only sort of fit into ready to wear clothes, the results of all our shopping are less than satisfying.  So why should we, at the end of things, aspire to their desires at all?
    Truth is, they do supply what we want, otherwise it would sit on markdown racks across the world, un-looked at.  But the problem we face is, that what they supply is tainted by a vision of us we may not be willing to achieve, yet we still feel forced to try for.  So what do we do? We buy. We buy, and we buy again, which is, naturally exactly what they want. But do we get to what we really want for ourselves?  Only partly. 
    I called it the Cult of Arrogance, and it is.  And we have allowed it to grow.  We permit others to tell us what we want, and how we should be.  The thing is, the technology now exists that could make that a thing of the past. With the rise of robotic production, it will become possible for a whole new manner of dressing ourselves to emerge: one based our own ideas of self, and less on what others think.  Sure, there will always be those who follow others lead, but we just might find a way out of the cult.