Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#301

Post by nec4b » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #222

JanSt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cultural appropriation As a european, I just can't wrap my head around this. How is it racist if I like a food of an other culture so much I cook it? Or I like a hairstyle of different culture so I also want to wear it. Or clothes. Or making music. Or.... I mean, I admire all that stuff so much that I want it to be part of my life. How is this racist?

The term "cultural appropriation" has been widely misused and diluted by people who don't really understand it. If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainme…

Thanks for making HN more entertaining. I do feel sorry for those cultures that didn't come up with computers, they can't read your comments, because that would be cultural appropriation.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#302

Post by 8note » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

JanSt wrote: post #230

danaris wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, no; it's absolutely part of it. Cultural appropriation involves the dominant culture taking practices (including things like clothing, music, dance, etc, especially if it's part of a religious practice) of a colonized or marginalized culture, removing them from their cultural context, and using them for their own purposes. That's absolutely subjugating the identity of the colonized: it takes these parts of their…

As I said, the european/my german perspective does not see this - at least what I have learned. An essential motive of colonialism was the missionization and education of the "primitive, uncivilized race". The Germans saw it as their task to civilize the colonial population by introducing them to German culture and the Christian religion. Other colonial powers, such as Great Britain or France, also followed this ideo…

For the food context, it'd be you opening an African food restaurant, that all the white people go to instead of an African food restaurant run by somebody from Africa. Meanwhile, Africans would be looked down on for making and eating said African food when they're supposed to be "integrating" to the local German food.

You're stripping the value of African food from African people, the same as colonialism stripped their resources from their land.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#303

Post by 8note » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

someuser2345 wrote: post #296

danaris wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon, cultural appropriation is vastly more likely to occur here than nearly anywhere else, both because we live on (recently-)colonized land, with the remnants of the people we stole it from still living among us, and because we are such a cultural melting pot, so people can much more easily come into contact with the cultural practices of marginalized cultures.…

What's so special about food? Why is it cultural appropriation to wear African clothes, but not appropriation to cook African food? Both are important parts of their culture.

You usually eat food at home, away from scrying eyes.

The appropriator needs to get some profit or acclaim for doing the thing, while the people it came from are denigrated for the it.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#304

Post by danaris » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

someuser2345 wrote: post #296

danaris wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon, cultural appropriation is vastly more likely to occur here than nearly anywhere else, both because we live on (recently-)colonized land, with the remnants of the people we stole it from still living among us, and because we are such a cultural melting pot, so people can much more easily come into contact with the cultural practices of marginalized cultures.…

What's so special about food? Why is it cultural appropriation to wear African clothes, but not appropriation to cook African food? Both are important parts of their culture.

Well, for one thing, food is, for the most part, something you're doing purely for yourself, in the privacy of your own home.

Clothing is a much more visible identity marker: if you're dressed in clothing from particular African cultures, that's a strong signal that you belong to that culture—so if you do not, in fact, belong to it, that can cause a number of kinds of problems in the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Furthermore, for many cultures, the clothing that most recognizably signals membership is related to some form of cultural or religious ritual, and wearing it outside of that context can be very disrespectful.

Imagine if, for instance, you were in Nairobi (or Tokyo, or Mumbai) and saw someone wearing the traditional robes and cap of a Catholic cardinal—and you saw them partying, being vulgar, doing drugs, that sort of thing. Obviously, the connotations are not the same, because of the overall dominance of the Catholic Church and Western culture generally, but I hope that it gets across the general idea of why clothing can be more prone to appropriation, and why that's a problem.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#305

Post by danaris » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #300

danaris wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "cultural appropriation" has been widely misused and diluted by people who don't really understand it. If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainme…

> If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. This is insufficient to be cultural appropriation. The context in which you wear the ritual gear and do the dances matter, the same as with the Japanese example.

True. I should have added "without the permission or invitation of the Haudenosaunee."

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#306

Post by mortify » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

surrTurr wrote: post #114

On the point of success and the rich believing it is just luck whilst the working-class beliefs it's hard work: Maybe both is true. Becoming successful in working class jobs often *does* require hard work, whilst becoming successful in upper-class jobs depends more on other factors such as luck. For example, to become a great construction worker, you need physical strength, stamina, and a strong work ethic, as the jo…

The belief that success is mostly luck, while sometimes true, is useless when it comes to making decisions. There is little that I can do to increase my luck, while there is plenty that can be done to work toward a goal. One who has benefited from luck or can afford to buy their own luck, can state this and mean it. Anyone else who holds that position assures their own failure.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#307

Post by mo_42 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

I don't buy it.

Wikipedia lists nine possible explanations for stotting. The author, however, simply picks the one that fits his story.

There are also multiple explanations for sexual evolution.

I can hold the belief "Defund the Police" as a poor or as a rich. So it's easy to fake this signal. Also, I don't see any evidence that this belief is held mainly by rich people.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#308

Post by nec4b » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

neilk wrote: post #106

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive stat…

>> Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status?

I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in, even after 100 millions of people died because of their social experiment in the 20th century.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#309

Post by mortify » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #7

This piece does not really touch on the many confounding variables that are found when examining the correlation between esoteric beliefs and social status. Level of education, for instance, is a biggie, even when accounting for the perceived prestige of where one goes to school. The author dismisses some concepts, like cultural appropriation, by saying that the working-class people he grew up with not only didn't tr…

Did he say that a topic was bunk because it was held by the upper class? I took his point that the prevalence of these luxury beliefs is higher among the upper-class in gross disproportion to the impact those beliefs have on people. E.g. cultural appropriation is sometimes used by people in power to pretend they have a connection to cultures where none really exists. It's a form of manipulation. The impact that has on the average person's life is minuscule. The impact of someone from the middle-class taking cultural clues from other cultures in non-existent, yet it's easy to find discussions about the alleged harm this causes among some social groups.

The luxury is in the time spent on relatively unimportant matters, much like spending millions of dollars on a bejeweled egg. That doesn't mean the egg doesn't exist.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#310

Post by xorcist » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #222

JanSt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cultural appropriation As a european, I just can't wrap my head around this. How is it racist if I like a food of an other culture so much I cook it? Or I like a hairstyle of different culture so I also want to wear it. Or clothes. Or making music. Or.... I mean, I admire all that stuff so much that I want it to be part of my life. How is this racist?

The term "cultural appropriation" has been widely misused and diluted by people who don't really understand it. If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainme…

Maybe a better example would be if you donned that ritual gear and started a tourism company that taught traditional ceremonies to rich tourists. And having no idea what the actual ceremonies are you just copied it off a Hollywood movie.

Yes, I can see how that could be perceived as demeaning.

See also: Häagen-Dazs. Foreign people speak funny and can't write. Very funny.