Karol Olivero
Professor Chocos
English 102
11-02-2013
Loosing our Individuality
“I do not refer only to the special relation of layman to theorist. I refer to the general situation in which sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers, whether these be theorists or artists. A reader may surrender sovereignty over that which has been written about, just as a consumer may surrender sovereignty over a thing, which has been theorized about. The consumer is content to receive an experience just as it has been presented to him by theorists and planners. The reader may also be content to judge life by whether it has or has not been formulated by those who know and write about life.”
Walker Percy introduces his own view of society by gathering all of his ideas and writing them into what he called “The Message In The Bottle” which contains a group of written articles. One of the articles is “The Loss of the Creature”. In here he touches many points about the way humans live. Though his points of view are hard to understand, once they are analyzed, anyone could be able to realize that he is absolutely right. The ideas being stated in Percy’s article criticize the fact that we as human beings have lost our individuality without even realizing. We stop living our own experiences and start living someone else’s experiences.
Percy talks a lot about “surrendering” which in this case means that we give away our confidence to those who have already experience something. “I refer to the general situation in which sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers” even those who have power can still be affected by their lack of confidence when it comes to experiencing a new field. Even though those who are the “sovereignty” have enough power to go out and create their own experiences they relay on those who have already discovered and lived them.
When I think about this in my own life I realize that I actually do it very often. Nowadays we relay on any technological device, book, magazine, or any other to define our memories. Whenever we hear a new word such as the “Grand Canyon” we instantly decide to “Google it” instead of just waiting for the right time to go there and see it with our own eyes. The chances that we as the population if this new society have to notice something that has already being discovered are very low because we will always relay on someone else’s story.
Percy makes comparisons between a reader and a consumer. The reader has two personalities one in which he is “common” and other in which he is “complex”. To prove this he uses the Grand Canyon as an example. A common reader will look at the Grand Canyon as something beautiful just because it has a certain value already all over the world. On the other hand, the complex reader will look at the Grand Canyon as Garcia Lopez did for the first time. “The reader may also be content to judge life by whether it has or has not been formulated by those who know and write about life.” the complex reader does not surrender because he does not relay on what people think or say, while the common reader does surrender, “A reader may surrender sovereignty over that which has been written about” this reader looses his confidence as soon as he listens to the value people give to something as the Grand Canyon.
The consumer is different because he has chosen to surrender. “The consumer is content to receive an experience just as it has been presented to him by theorists and planners.” the consumer in this case depends on anything. He has become a planner and he now depends on stuff such as technology, magazines, newspapers, and anything else that carries around a solution to each of his questions. He becomes a follower and he stops living for himself because he surrenders to everything that revolves around him. The consumer looses completely his individuality.
No matter how we are classified, whether we become a common reader or a complex reader, or if we remain as a consumer, we need to work on our self-confidence and build it back up so that we get to live the experiences that we as a human deserve. Percy was trying to make everyone aware of what was happening, and he was still alive to see what this society has become he may would have written and even deeper book about his thoughts. We need to avoid feeling inferior and to avoid surrendering in order to take control of our lives.