Category: Non fiction

  • Status & Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

    W. David Marx

    I love it when a book matches the expectations set by the cover. In this case, a very intriguing “how our desire for social rank creates taste, identity, art, fashion, and constant change”. As GenX , and a marketer, I have often tried to make sense of the changing nature of culture courtesy the effects of the internet. This book is extremely insightful as it navigates what culture is, how it gets fashioned, and then, how it has changed in the last couple of decades.

    The premise is that beyond functionality and pleasures, most things we do is for status-seeking. And this sparks creativity, which in turn, creates culture. David Marx uses a bunch of sciences, including anthropology, neuroscience, economics, philosophy and meshes them with art history, and media studies to answer why things become popular, why that changes over time, and how it shapes our identity and our behaviour.

    The book is divided into four parts, beginning with understanding status, conventions, signalling, and how this relates to taste, authenticity and identity. It then delves into classes and sensibilities, subcultures and countercultures, how status-seeking feeds creativity, and fuels culture, and its changes. Further, it uses fashion cycles as a means to understand how cultural changes happen, and the role of mass media in it. This section also studies the part that history plays in shaping culture, and how frequent blasts of ‘retro’ are inevitable. All of this puts us in a great place to understand what the internet age has done to culture, and some direction on what is ahead.

    I found the book engaging and accessible, and very useful in understanding my own behaviour and ‘tastes’, as well as that of people I know, and society at large. Highly recommended.

    Notes
    1. The Beatles mop top haircut’s origin story is Stu Sutcliffe’s (the original bass guitarist of the Beatles) German girlfriend trying to imitate the French mode, which was becoming popular among the local art boys. After their reluctant conversion, it became their signature, and a global trend!
    2. Status denotes a specific position in the social hierarchy. Every status comes with specific rights and duties, the most desirable benefits coming to those at the top (more attention and rewards, deference, access to scarce resources, dominance – make others do things against their wishes). Status is bestowed by others, it is social. Status is contextual – local, global. And it is zero-sum, when one gains, someone else has to lose.
    3. Achievements get embodied in particular forms of capital – political, educational, economic, social. This capital determines our memberships in different groups.
    4. Different status levels have different conventions. At first conventions of social interactions regulate behaviour at a conscious level, then we internalise them and they become habits. And then they set our perceptual framework for observing the world, and our expectations. Our sense of meaning and order. Lifestyle is thus a requirement of social rank and an expression of it.
    5. Just as we internalise conventions, status value acts on our brains at a subconscious level. Conventions with high status value appear to us as beautiful, and vice versa. But we attribute this liking to other things like practicality, cost, sentimental value or just personal preferences. (vacations)
    6. The moral duty of self actualisation is a status duty – individuals at the top of the hierarchy must pursue unique behaviours and distinctive choices.
    7. Status symbols are a signal that allow a quick reading of and by others. But they offer alibis (quality, aesthetic features etc) so it is not just a symbol.
    8. There are five signalling costs – money, time (PhD), exclusive access, cultural capital (knowledge of conventions by spending time among high status), norm breaking
    9. Taste, as reflected by multiple signals, is how status appraisals happen. To have good taste means making better choices than others.
    10. Lifestyle choices must reveal congruence – an internal consistency with the target sensibility. Deep knowledge opens the door to better taste, and congruence reveals our commitment to high status sensibility. The highest status people make distinctive choices through bounded originality.
    11. In signalling, we build personas – observable packages of signals, taste, sensibility, immutable characters and cues absorbed from our upbringing and background. Others use this persona to determine our identity. And we have a ‘self’, known only to us.
    12. Our ‘cultural DNA’ = hidden elements, immutable characters and cues, conventions for normal status, emulations (of higher status) and individual distinctions
    13. iPod won as a status symbol, though Microsoft Zune had better features
    14. Old Money taste focuses on patina, visual proof of age in their possessions (vintage) They uses this as an advantage over New Money.
    15. The professional class (70s onward) built a balance of economic, social and cultural capital. Impressing old money and embarrassing new money’s ‘loud’ tastes
    16. New Money’s use of economic capital in signalling spurs the creation of expensive luxury goods – sports cars, summer homes, designer clothes etc. Old Money’s countersignalling and focus on patina and cultural capital get companies to make classic, modest goods with functional appeal. The professional class’s signalling through information creates a market for middlebrow/consumer media guides, functional goods, artisanal goods, and copies of Old Money lifestyles. Underprivileged individuals’ desire to be part of culture outdo peers pushes companies to offer kitsch and flashy entry-level consumer goods.
    17. Immanuel Kant a sorted 3 authoritative criteria for artistic genius – the creation of fiercely original works, which over time become imitated as exemplars, and are created through mysterious and seemingly inimitable methods.
    18. Individuals make adoption decisions within the framework of human interaction. They consider how when and from whom they receive information, how they view uncertainty about switching and how they will be judged in the community for making the switch This creates five distinct groups, innovators, early adopters, early majority, let majority and laggards. The diffusion process – high status adoption of new convention for distinction, early adopters’ embrace of that convention as emulation of their status superiors, early majority reinvention and simplification to follow an emerging social norm, late majority imitation to avoid losing normal status , laggards’ passive adoption without intention
    19. Elite flock to three particular categories of items that fulfil their needs. Rarities, novelties and technology innovations.
    20. Four related phenomena, in the internet age – the explosion of content, the clash of maximalist and minimalist sensibilities accompanying the rising global wealth, the rejection of taste as a legitimate means of distinction, the over evaluation of the past in Gen X’s retromania and the abandoning of the past in Gen Z’s Neomania.
    21. “You can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet for anyone to see you. You have to act and the main purpose of this communication is to make yourself look good.” Social media also enables us to quantify our status like never before in like retreats comments and followers.
    22. Before the internet, elites could protect their status symbols behind information barriers and exclusive access to products. The internet broke that.
    23. Another elite group has stepped in to countersignal gauche extravagance, the professional class tech billionaires who are forming their own taste culture. They created wealth without shedding their professional class habitus. Skeptic of glamour and respect for thoughtful thrift, they make their choices based on functional rationales rather than the open pursuit of status symbols.
    24. Omnivorism (consume and like everything) has had major effects on culture over the last few decades. In the past taste worked as a decision classifier by drawing clear lines between social groups. Omnivorism drains this power by declaring nearly everything suitable for consumption.
    25. Collectively reaching the stage of meta knowledge we come to understand the arbitrariness of our own preferences taste and culture. The proclaimed superiority of preferred styles over others is accordingly and arrogant and bigoted act.
    26. Omnivore tastes then can be used to dismantle the status structures that prevent the equitable distribution of respect. In a world of celebrity wealth-gospel, and millennial financial anxiety, young entertainers face little backlash for aggressively courting likes, subscribers and advertisers. Follower counts and gross earning appear to be the only relevant sign of cultural import.
    27. Youth find ‘self expression by enlisting in a global army (e.g. BTS)
    28. Hysteresis – the lingering values of a previous age continuing to guide our judgments

    Status & Culture

  • The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully

    Morrie Schwartz, Rob Schwartz

    Such is the impression left by Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” that more than a decade later, the moment I realised it was the same Morrie, I had to buy The Wisdom of Morrie. Rob Schwartz, son of Morrie Schwartz discovered the manuscript, written during 1988-92, in the early 2000s and with the help of his mother, edited it.

    While the book is full of insights that are useful at any stage of life, by the author’s own admission, it speaks to the sixty five year old and beyond. But I am glad I read it now. One of the things that I have complained about is the way mid life almost blindsided me, with the physical, mental, and emotional changes it brought. This book is a great primer for the next stage, and I will most definitely read it again in another 15-20 years.

    The book is divided into nine chapters, each of which delves into a specific domain. It begins with one’s own awareness of aging and impending death, and the contradictions one faces at later stages in life – some things become easier, and some more difficult, you want some things (solitude) and their opposite (company) – and how one can find an emotional balance.

    It then moves on to how we can expand our awareness, which according to Morrie is the summation of the many tools one requires to age well and become the best version of oneself. He also calls out ageism and agecasting, and notes how one can do it to self as well.

    The next chapter is where the book gets into great detail on the actual issues people face as they age, and how to handle them. This is the longest chapter, and rightfully so. The following chapter continues this theme – how to come to terms with all the baggage we have accumulated thus far. The last two chapters are perspectives on how to age well, and become the best version of oneself.

    Morrie not only uses the knowledge he had amassed from his work as a psychologist and teacher, but effectively channels the empathy and reassurance of someone who is himself living through it, and knows many others who do. This puts him in perfect position to not only understand the challenges, but also provide ways to overcome them. Not in theory, but in actual practice. He delivers this with sensitivity and compassion, using logic as well as anecdotal examples.

    In the Hindu ashrama concept, we have vanaprastha and sanyasa. This is a great resource for anyone in these stages. And for those others who want a sneak preview.

    Insight
    Fear is often the mirror image of need. For example, our need for self-preservation is the other side of our fear of physical injury.

    The Wisdom of Morrie

  • Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

    Bill Perkins

    Remember Aesop’s The Ant & the Grasshopper? The one that is told to teach us the virtues of hard work and the importance of saving for a rainy day. Given the values still hold, most books that have anything to do with money are written for ‘grasshoppers’, but Die with Zero is more for the ants, or in the author’s words, to drag the ant towards the grasshopper.

    The basic premise of the book is that we should make full use of our money when we have the capability to enjoy what it brings us. As we age, that capability diminishes, a function of our desires, as well as deteriorating health. While we could still enjoy many things, the yield or utility per dollar goes down with age.

    A part of the book is devoted to elaborating on this perspective and proving it with data and anecdotes. Data shows that a lot of people end up over-saving and underspending during retirement and die with a large sum of money still left. Hence the need to temper delayed gratification. Concepts like consumption smoothing – one’s spending not mirroring the variations of income, and transferring money from years of abundance to leaner years. In other words, spend more than your income, if required, early in life for experiences that will give you memories to cherish in your old age, because you can repay it as income increases. To be fair, the author obviously discourages reckless spending.

    This also goes for money you wish to give to your near and dear, as well as charity. For instance, better to give the kid money when you’re 65 and he/she is 35, rather than 80 and 50 respectively. The peak utility of money is highest between 35 and 50, when people have the health and the desire. Even within retirement, there are go-go years, slow-go years, and no-go years, and one should bulk up the spending at the top. He also recommends getting a sense of your life expectancy using calculators so you can plan accordingly.

    Another useful concept is that of time buckets. Take a duration, say 10 years, and look at 40-50, 50-60 and so on. Now slot the things you want to do, and when you’re best placed to do it. Usually the control variable is money, here it is health and desire. This will help you figure that some things are better when done at certain ages. It’s a perspective shift. The other related shift is seeing your peak as a date (related to biological age) and not a number.

    The book also addresses the ‘how’ of implementing this, and overcoming the mental barriers that people commonly have towards this approach, including the not-so-common “I love my job”.

    The book does offer a reasonably unique perspective, and at its core, it urges thinking on first principles and making conscious decisions, both of which I support. But I felt that the author underestimates the scarcity mindset, or probably lacks the empathy required for it. The other aspect I didn’t like is the tendency to quantify aspects of life that have multiple dimensions of quality. And finally, the ‘inefficiency’ comment on Sylvia Bloom, who worked as a legal secretary for 67 years, and when she died at 96, bequeathed $8.2m to charity. According to the author, she should have done this earlier while she was alive. Absolute tone-deafness.

  • The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

    Pico Iyer

    I always have a bias for Pico Iyer’s writing, and many a time I end up reading his books at times when I need an alternate perspective. In The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, the search is for what different people define as paradise – a place with no worry or anxiety. Except, for some it is a particular place, for others a moment in time and something that can be accessed if we put our mind to it, and for some others it can only be enjoyed after death.

    From Jerusalem to Benaras, and Japan to Ladakh, Pico explores these concepts and the people who believe in the different definitions. As is usually the case with his writing, it is as much introspection as it is travel, and written in wonderful prose. He blends his personal experiences with philosophical musings seamlessly. Through the people he meets, and his encounters with those from varied backgrounds, he reflects on the nature of life, and its many meanings.

    In solitude and contemplation, he reaches out to thinkers before him- from the Stoics to William James to Henry David Thoreau, in an effort to decipher the complexities of our existence. Each essay is a meditation, and amidst the noise and chaos of this busy world, I’ll probably pick it up again later in life to get a different rendition of the half-known truths that lie deep inside all of us.

    The Half Known Life

  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

    Iain McGilchrist

    As is the case most of the time these days, I discovered The Master and His Emissary thanks to a podcast. Iain McGilchrist’s concepts seemed extremely intriguing, and now I have to admit (as he mentions early in the book) maybe intuitively consistent with my lived experience, and I had to read the book soon. Turns out that it goes directly to my all-time favourites, and was in my Bibliofiles 2023 list.

    As the subtitle suggests, the book is divided into two parts – the divided brain, and the making of the Western World, each with half a dozen chapters. The first part deals with the brain itself – the asymmetry of the right and left hemispheres, their collective and individual roles, how their functioning actually leads to different perspectives, how this affected the evolution of music and then language (which can be seen as a key component in the progression of the species), the primacy of the right hemisphere, and how its emissary – the left hemisphere – has now usurped control.

    The heuristic ways of looking at the hemispheres, e.g. left analytical, right creative etc, is replaced by a nuanced view. The differences between them are less about what they do and more about how they approach something. The left’s utilitarian ability to ‘grasp’ (look at how the metaphor applies to thoughts), its ability to provide simple answers and articulate them well, have all enabled it to grab control at an accelerated pace since the Industrial Revolution, and create a world where it prizes precisely these capabilities in individuals, institutions, and culture at large.

    This is in many ways opposed to the right, which takes more holistic views, understands ideas and metaphors, perceives emotions better, specialises in non-verbal communication, and is humble about what it knows. The right deals with whatever is implicit, the left is tied to more explicit and more conscious processing. The right is present and pays attention to the world outside, the left re-presents. We need both hemispheres, and the right knows it, but the left thinks it knows everything. The left creates a world, and when it stops communications with the right, will not even accept reality if it counters the ‘truth’ of the world it has created. Its role was to provide a map of reality, it now thinks the map is reality, and if not, it will remake reality to fit the map.

    The second part then digs into how this has manifested in the world around. It begins with the concept of mimesis (my favourite part) and how it was the crux of our leap into what we now call culture. The meta-skill that enables all other skills – imitation – possibly explains the rapid expansion of the brain in early hominids. Through the next five chapters, Iain takes us through history – from the early Greeks to the post-modern world, and how, though history has seen a see-saw in terms of the dominance of the hemispheres – Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Industrial Revolution – the impact of the last one was such that we are now in a world where a swing towards the right seems near impossible. Much like an addict, who is not even conscious that his next dose is not just another dose. ‘There is a vicious cycle between feelings of boredom, emptiness and restlessness, on the one hand, and gross stimulation and sensationalism on the other’.

    The research is deep, in both sections, as evidenced by over a hundred pages of notes and bibliography. I especially appreciated the decision of not having same-page notes – it really does help the flow of reading. Iain has painstakingly tried to make a large number of diverse topics as accessible as possible. The first half is based on conclusions from scientific research and experiments across history, and various domains. The second half is itself an accordion of topics across centuries – arts, music, politics, language, and everything we call culture.

    I think my bias for this book and its argument is based on my own experience. As a person and a professional who has to balance both hemispheres, I have been pulled to the left for the longest while. And in many workshops, the recommendation to me has been to let my right side ‘play’. It is only very recently that I have been able to start doing that, and I have to say that I am much happier. The Master and His Emissaryis a book I hugely recommend. It is not the easiest of reads, and I deliberately slowed down my reading speed so as to not gloss over it (though I still did in some of the arts discussions!) but it will open up how you think – the narrative you have made about yourself, and the world around you.

    Quotes and ideas from The Master and His Emissary
    There are four main pathways to truth – science, reason, intuition, and imagination
    “The question is not what you look at, but what you see” ~ Henry Thoreau
    Attention changes what kind of thing comes into being for us : in that way it changes the world. Whether they are humans (say, employer vs friend) or things – a mountain is landmark to a navigator, a source of wealth to the prospector, and a dwelling place of gods for another. There is no ‘real’ mountain which can be distinguished from these, no one way of thinking which reveals the true mountain.
    Manipulospatial abilities may have provided the basis for primitive language. Function gestures become manipulative, syntax developed to form language, expression of our will. (p 111) Even in left handers, grasping actions controlled by left hemisphere, thus right hand.
    Language’s origin in music. Language originates as an embodied expression of emotion, that is communicated by one individual ‘inhabiting’ the emotional world of the other. A process that could have been derived from music. Grooming – music – language, all picked up by imitation. (p 123)
    Adam Zeman’s three principal meanings of consciousness – as a waking state, as experience, as mind (p 187)
    The river is not only passing across the landscape, but entering into it and changing it too, as the landscape has ‘changed’ and yet not changed the water. The landscape cannot make the river. It does not try to put a river together. It does not even say ‘yes’ to the river. It merely says ‘no’ to the water – or does not say ‘no’ to the water, whatever that it is that it does so, it allows the river to come into being. The river does not exist before the encounter. Only water exists before the encounter, and the river actually comes into benign the process of encountering the landscape, with its power to say ‘no’ or not to say ‘no’.
    The idea that the ‘separation’ of the two hemispheres took place in Homeric Greece. (voices of gods) (p260 -275)
    Gnothi seauton – know thyself
    In sooth I know not why I am so sad,
    It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
    But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
    What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
    I am to learn.
    ~ Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
    The difference between reason and rationality. The former depends on seeing in things in context – right hemisphere. Latter is left, context-independent.
    Kant described marriage as an agreement between two people as to the ‘reciprocal use of each others’ sexual organs’
    ‘Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment’ ~ Sam Johnson
    Modern consumers everywhere are in a ‘permanent state of unfulfilled desire’
    Certainty is the greatest of all illusions: whatever kind of a fundamentalism it may underwrite, that of religion or of science, it is what the ancients meant by hubris.

    The Master and His Emissary