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Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

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Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#31

Post by crucialfelix »

eightysixfour wrote: post #3

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis. I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite…

As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them".

Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#32

Post by eightysixfour »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #29
eightysixfour wrote: post #3

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis. I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite…

> I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point I don't think the error is in defining ourselves by what sets us apart--it's fine and good to acknowledge our differences. I think the bad thing is leaning into those differences due to an aversion to the outgroup, which is the very essence of tribalism (or nearly so).

Apologies, I was too soft at that point when I wrote it. He does not suggest we merely acknowledge our differences, he suggests we literally define ourselves as opposites of others.

He also does not assign a property of good or bad to this observation, just that we do it.

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#33

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

anm89 wrote: post #26
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?

The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employe…

> Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee.

This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both.

Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit.

There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#34

Post by eightysixfour »

crucialfelix wrote: post #31
eightysixfour wrote: post #3

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis. I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite…

As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them". Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.

I won't suggest that you did not FEEL that way when you were doing it, but what you just wrote sounds exactly what I said in socially-coded language.

> I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit

Here you state that the mainstream elite was "lifeless bullshit."

> we wanted to express something new

And you wanted to express NOT lifeless bullshit.

> that only we could sense. We were being us

This is what the mainstream elite couldn't see or make. It was NOT mainstream elite thought.

> it's what the mainstream now sounds like

The mainstream adopted it, and now there's a new generation of people who think that sound is mainstream lifeless bullshit and will create something that is NOT mainstream lifeless bullshit. This is not part of the Graeber thesis, but aligns well with the original post.

I also want to be clear that I don't think this is supposed to be a conscious process - there are times when people are intentionally contrarian but there are also people and groups who are unconsciously contrarian simply by saying "I don't like this thing."

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#35

Post by [deleted] »

martythemaniak wrote: post #19
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?

I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it. There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In…

[deleted]

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#37

Post by eightysixfour »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #15
belugacat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, super fascinating reference, thank you for posting it! I’ll have to check it out, I’ve been prototyping game concepts with many thousands of agents who all do interesting things for the player to investigate (the key here is that they don’t have to be particularly complex or meaningful, they just have to overlap in enough thought provoking ways to keep the player engaged), and I’ve had a similar insight (“mak…

I feel excitement over reading this. Would you be open to trying out some ideas to experiment with? I've been wondering if a framework for amplifying/accelerating evolution in bacterial cultures that's based in graph theory holds for culture in general. Also, trying to identify a sustainable model for a gift economy that can outperform debt economies.

If you're looking for a playground for this kind of thing (and can code), check out https://hash.ai/

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#38

Post by canadaduane »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #14

This tracks with how I'm changing the art I embody/make. A driving intention I carry is to bring about a future where all people have the 0-payment option of living in a community where everyone's committed to meeting all needs while denying none, practicing a culture that's learned from and let go of cultural components of debt, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, preferentialism (a culture of catering to preferen…

There is a bumper sticker that spells out "Coexist" with symbols from each of the major religions [1] and I liked it at first, because I identified strongly with the idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are people who see that symbol, and they don't see themselves in it--they don't see the Cross for example, and think, "Oh, a Christian like me!". Rather they see "Hippie-everything-and-nothing-ism," and other it immediately. I think there is a deep resistance to "foreign inclusion" in our human psyche. Trust goes slow.

[1] https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-hate-coexist-bumper-sti...

Re: Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

#39

Post by yodelshady »

anm89 wrote: post #26
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?

The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employe…

I'm a little surprised at that reading, but fair enough.

I admit I only skimmed it, but I thought the point was "the employer" is not a homogeneous entity. "The employer" therefore doesn't make the wage decision. Managers with some extreme perverse incentives do.

What's bullshit is the idea that as soon as an enterprise does something inefficient, boom, they'll be outcompeted. They might, eventually, if no market failures or regulatory capture exists. So in reality, large and even small/medium organization with a successful pattern can tolerate a lot of bullshit.

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