• 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

  • Hokkaido Japanese & Korean Restaurant

    Just as the restaurant itself is hidden in Indiranagar, Korean too is hidden in the menu. Actually, it doesn’t exist. There’s only Japanese. Now that I got that off my chest, we got there on a Sunday afternoon and had the place all to ourselves. It’s functional in terms of seating but made quite lively with the use of lighting and the art.

    Hokkaido, Indiranagar

    D, I have realised will have Miso if there is Miso, so we ended up with a delicious Miso Shiru that set the appetite well for the Stir Fried Beef, which had great texture and just the right amount of spice for us.

    We first met Tamagoyaki at the Tsukiji Outer Market in Tokyo and I have been a fan since. This one didn’t really reach that level, but was definitely not bad.

    Hokkaido, Indiranagar

    We debated mains a lot and finally agreed on Gyu Niku Udon – udon topped with beef (again). On hindsight, we should have chosen something else because it was a bit similar to the soup. But we enjoyed it nevertheless.

    Hokkaido, Indiranagar

    We were a bit disappointed since we wanted Korean, but Japanese is a good second. The service is prompt and very helpful. We were left lighter by about Rs.1800. Overall, not a bad outing if you’re craving Japanese.

    Hokkaido Japanese & Korean Restaurant, 10/1-1, 1st Floor, 7th Main, 1st Cross, Appareddypalya, Indiranagar

  • 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

  • Rootless

    In Lessons in Chemistry, Lewis Pullman’s character is an orphan (in real life, his father is Bill Pullman, who in other lives was a fantastic American President in the mid 90s and in the 2020’s was a tortured, but great detective). But I digress.

    His character is quite an achiever, but I don’t think that’s how the average orphan’s life goes. There are a lot of famous people who were orphaned, but subsequently adopted. I’d think that the number not adopted would be higher though, and in any case, we rarely know about unexceptional lives. Many of us who lose even one parent early in life feel the loss consciously or subconsciously. And I am reasonably sure it shapes our character and worldview. At least I can speak for myself. Even for those whose loss comes later in life – after their own lives are reasonably well established, there is the sudden jolting realisation that an unquestioning, non-judging backup, even if it was never used, is now gone forever.

    And so I wonder, what does it mean to live a life when it starts with rejection? How does it feel when they become conscious of it the first time? Does it happen when one among them get adopted? Is there loneliness, or does their bond with the others help them avoid that? What about a sense of privacy? Do they even get that, do they even think of that when they rarely have space of their own? What about ownership? How does the concept work when everything is practically shared?

    When they grow up, how does all this affect the way they engage with the world? What about expectations – from others, their own of themselves, or fulfilling someone else’s? Do their relationships suffer from the baggage of rejection? Does their behaviour with others get affected because of their (non) notions about privacy and ownership? How complex must it be for them to accept and receive love?

    Sometimes I think being raised by parents or even one parent is one of those privileges – like having a well-functioning body with all appendages intact, all sense organs working fine – that we easily take for granted. After all, we only have to reflect on the routes we want to travel in the journey of life, and that in itself is not easy. Imagine being rootless, unable to resolve where one came from.

  • The Coincidence Plot

    Anil Menon

    Not often in the fiction genre does one find a novel that is challenging and entertaining. The fact that I did not buy this book (D did) is a coincidence that does seem very meta. I absolutely loved The Coincidence Plot – its explorations of philosophy, the layering of its plots and characters, and the fantastic conversations that they have with each other, and sometimes, themselves.

    The book is a wandering of sorts, centred around coincidences and the kind of God that exists in such a world. If that smells like Spinoza, it’s not a coincidence. The plots, subplots, and characters are all built around this theme. Starting with Artur, a mathematician escaping Nazi Germany and working on Spinoza’s thesis after his work on the uncertainty of mathematical proofs remains unfinished, to two characters working on novels to bring to existence this mathematician’s life and thoughts – “ontological proof for the existence of God”. In case I made it out to be a mind-numbing philosophy grind, it isn’t. The characters and interesting, and well-written, and so are their relationships.

    It’s definitely not the standard linear book. Each chapter has two characters from a finite set, but placed across different geographical settings and time periods. As we go along, the parallels are unmistakeable, and that is not a coincidence. Anil Menon seems to know a bunch of things about a bunch of things. It allows him to create layers and depths, and when you combine that with the twin powers of a fantastic sense of humour, and a poignant sensitivity and empathy towards grief and the human condition in general, it creates a marvel. Sometimes preposterous, sometimes profound, this has been one of my favourite fiction reads in a while!

    This is in my Bibliofiles 2023 long list.