10 November 2009: "Carles Completes the New York City Marathon."

This post is about the consolation of philosophy. Is philosophy inspiring? Carles's own work at times exemplifies philosophy's reputation of pursing a negative dialectic and mounting an assault on the received traditional wisdom and the metaphysical spiritual edifice. While not a "dismal science" like economics, philosophy is frequently cold comfort for souls in bondage. Hence in this post wonders if philosophy can supply the uplift of commercial messaging -- if it can become a form of feel-good marketing.

I am Carles.
I am a Brand.
I am Hope.
This Brand Wants You to Be Happy.
This Brand Will Enable You to Accomplish Your Dreams.

This is Carles's effort to return philosophy to its Platonic/Aristotalian mission of teaching humans about the "good life", only filtered through the contemporary consumerist ideology of equating fulfillment with self-branding. "I truly believe that a brand can inspire a human to do something that they never thought they could accomplish," he writes drily. Hope is a matter of being able to conceive of a brand that could mark one as at once unique and preapproved. The brand is both ubiquitous and singular -- everyone is marked by brands, but the metaphorical flesh-scoring is felt by each as a wholly personal growing pain.

The good life for contemporary purposes, as Carles points out, is a matter of making an achievement of acquiring a personal brand. In an exquisite example of form and content harmonizing, Carles himself feigns an exuberance over his own brand's salience in this post. But as the post implies, the journey of self-branding is a marathon: "Life is sorta like a marathon. There’s a lot of other people competing against u, but u sorta just need 2 run ur own race, and u can sorta convince yourself that you some how ‘won.’" This addresses the underlying contradictions involved in making identity life's purpose. It is at once both competitive and transcendental, positional and ineffable. We need to win by convincing ourselves we are not in a competition.