As someone who absolutely falls in the "brag about travel" camp, allow me to selfishly defend some behavior here. I think it's the case that information costs are more of a barrier to travel than financial costs for tons of Americans.
I love car camping, so I'm often sleeping next to a 60k RV. The *operating costs* of that RV could finance an annual vacation across the world, assuming you know that A: international flights have huge pricing variability and B: you as an American are rich. But I've met people who don't know either of these things, so I try and pitch them on taking advantage of this fact pattern
Loving the Bordieu deep dives. I moved to North America from a developing country. It made me extremely cognizant of how my "tastes" signaled very different things when I first moved here and how they shifted people's perception of me. I have a much better understanding of the difference now between the American game vs the game in my prior residence, and think the vast majority are playing said games in some (subconscious? as argued here) way. The "rich person not playing the rich person game" pointed out by other comments is either (1) an outlier, (2) is actually setting up the game / playing a meta game, (3) is signalling something invisible to you and I, but visible to the right audience. Gender, race, job etc dramatically shift the game, and I guess so does your location on Bordieu's "capital axes". Relevant: the rise of quiet luxury, there is a great Jordan Theresa video essay on this.
Does there exist a <600 page Bordieu summary/ commentary you'd recommend?
Fantastic (in all senses of the word), fascinating, and enlightening post. Thanks!
(P.S. *thank ruddy goodness* you gave the arguments for and against tilting wine glasses! By that point in the post, after all you'd said around the topic, we were all bloody desperate to know!)
I recently re-read the Bertrand Russell essay "In Praise of Idleness" and I feel like it's pretty relevant here, in being a healthier attitude toward supposedly wasteful ways of spending time.
I do find it unsettling how predictable someone's tastes are if you know a few basic things about them. Seems to lend credence to the idea in your opening anecdote.
At the same time, should it be surprising that preferences correlate? It seems reasonable that preferences are a reflection of values, and so people with similar values would have correlated preferences. This mechanism could operate independent of the unconscious game theory you mention.
I'm not here to argue with the idea that people play taste games or that I play taste games or anything, but I've heard this argument before and something about it always misses me?
Okay, take the baby name example. I've never thought that I like certain names because of how they literally, audibly sound. I've always thought that names have cultural connotations that change over time, and I'm most likely to share the cultural connotations of names with my generation, so names that I like that I feel like have good cultural connotations and would be a good name to have are names that people my own age might also think have good cultural connotations (vibes). I could like names that have traditional but not stuffy vibes like Charlotte and Olivia or names that have very hippy or like, conspicuously non-comformist vibes like Rain or West but at no point would I be confused about why people in the past would have thought about names entirely differently and had a different idea about what makes a good name to navigate the world with. Status is involved in this (would I prefer a high status name like William with all the formality that might come with it, or something that has different cultural connotations of masculinity like Brock?) but at no point am I like, confused by the “authenticity” of my taste.
Or like the picture of Senfeild. He looks fine to me but that’s probably just because I like fashion and I can read over a slightly longer period of time - like his clothing is “legible” to me because I’ve familiarized myself with it just like more contemporary clothing is legible to me. When I read someones outfit I also don’t feel confused about what is a basic, sensory judgement (that texture looks bad to touch) and what’s a judgement with context - this silhouette looks bad because I’m assuming they were actually intended to hit [x] silhouette that’s popular for [y] reasons and they’ve failed to achieve it in a way that’s also revealed they were *trying* to achieve it (and being able to perceive that someone is trying to achieve something while they’re failing at it being a bad thing is of course also cultural…) blah blah blah. I guess what I’m trying to get at is, where is the self deception?
I know sometimes people say something is “objectively” bad or good but I’m assuming when it comes to anything that involves… taste, like any level of taste above sensory feedback, they mean given [y] values and [x] cultural connotations [z] has obviously failed/succeeded. Like the shared values and symbolic/read meaning go unspoken, but of course they aren’t unconscious?
I apologize for not condensing my thoughts but I guess the crux of this is: who thinks that their feelings towards something with symbolic or contextual meaning aren’t influenced by that things symbolic or contextual meaning? How is my or anyone else’s ability to read the world around them and respond to it “not real” somehow?
What does it say about me that I didn't even notice Jerry Seinfeld's clothes in that picture of him, and that even after you pointed them out, I had precisely no opinion as to whether they were stylish, dated, or otherwise?
I also like a variety of highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow beers and dining experiences.
I think I would find being obsessively status conscious exhausting. But is it your and/or Bourdieu’s thesis that people who claim not to be status conscious are nevertheless status conscious in a more obscure or subtle way?
Of course *within* the travel status competition you've got versions of the same levels
- someone who goes to a budget priced all-inclusive resort are "horrible proles, they may as well have stayed home"
- someone who goes to very popular attractions are "basic people who are just going to say they've been, their 'over-tourist'ing' ruins things for people who can actually appreciate things"
- someone who goes to luxury destinations is someone who doesn't know that "money can't buy taste"
- someone who goes on an experiential trip is "insufferably smug/self-righteous and probably can't stop talking about how ayahuasca opened their mind"
But then in my own travels I'm also in a status game. I'm going to a popular tourist attraction because I'm enlightened enough to know that "actually popular things are popular for a reason" but also more enlightened than basic travellers because I know to arrive early/late, buy tickets online in advance, skip lines, don't buy things from the gift shop, etc.
Enlightening! Major oh shit moment at the Travel section, my partner and I have often noticed that travel makes up an absurd share of our conversation with not-yet-close friends.
As with other basic human desires, I think the right approach is the Stoic / Buddhist general philosophy of "accept it without judgement, try to notice when it is changing your decisions, and try to account for it so that you're still optimizing for happiness/altruism and not whatever your biology is optimizing for". So having it laid out for me like this is going to help me notice when it's influencing me in the future!
Great post! We need all the lighthearted deflation of superiority we can get....And as you imply, there is no need to feel bad about seeking prestige and status - I'd say this is almost instinctual.
That being said I maintain a shred of hope that displaying my oh-so-so-fascinating library. has at least a little to do with my inherent like and interest in its books...
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that there is another social , but not prestige-seeking motivation to play Glass Beads, namely, finding others who share interests. Well... yes, that may still be based on finding others to associate with the in-crowd you are craving,,,, but still, it's nice to talk about interesting things with interesting people, no?? Thanks!
Bourdieu explains a lot but a purely cultural theory doesn’t tell you /why/ taste took the path it did. It implies a random set of starting beliefs, with everything evolving in response to that. But clearly some tastes are motivated by other things. Is there anything you’re genuinely embarrassed to like? That implies both that a) you are generally aware of the social implications of your tastes, in support of the theory, but also b) that other factors also matter (otherwise, being embarrassed by a taste would be sufficient to stop having it). We also have tastes that seem much too aligned with non-cultural priorities for that to be largely coincidental. While music varies widely in different societies and regions, all major cultures seem to have converged on consistent rhythms, *some* sort of scale, and volumes that don’t cause immediate pain to most listeners. That’s obvious though, so how do we synthesize these observations into something more interesting?
My theory:
1) Shifts in cultural taste are driven in part by the object-level tastes of those with high status. (When I’m in good enough shape I love wearing looks I think are “objectively” less fashionable, like something D&D-inspired, and that becomes its own status play. But I don’t pick those looks at random!)
2) These shifts are subject to guardrails in the forms of the object-level tastes of everyone else. (I still can’t pull off a literal clown suit, unless I make some heavy alterations to make it “fashion clown”)
3) This is made even more fluid by the fact that a significant driver of status is the ability to identify and play to the tastes of those around you, in addition to selling your own.
He argued that until the 1960's there really were very few significant differences between what was available (and therefore what was consumed) by different classes in America.
I am not really in the social group that I would prefer I was in. Through my particular skills, I've gotten in with the geek crowd, who like anime, fantasy metal, and funny t-shirts. I hate it all. It's become a joke among us that I won't like what everyone else is gassed about.
So reading this article, I was continuously testing my own preferences to see if they give me status in my social circle. Nope, no, none of them.
But had I been in my preferred social circle, they would have given me plenty status. I like philosophy and critically acclaimed movies and dressing smart -- preferences that would fit in well in the ivory tower.
So may the causality be the reverse of what you describe here? Maybe we seek out the social circles that give status for our real preferences? E.g. I really like wine, so I seek out the group that will hail a wine-lover. That's why we always find our preferences aligning with our group.
I disagree with your point about both economic and cultural signalling being wasteful. While that's true to some extent, with cultural signalling where you spend a lot of time studying, even if it is a waste it's only wasting your own time, which puts an upper limit on how much you can be wasting. I haven't actually calculated anything but I'm pretty sure the amount of wasted effort (and negative externalities) put in by all the gold miners and so on to supply a rich golden stuff enjoyer is far more than the amount of wasted effort put in by an intellectual or pseudointellectual. Even if I try to imagine a Glass Beads player who focuses on topics I have little to no respect for, is doing it wrong anyway, and isn't even enjoying it because they're just trying to one-up the other players rather than intrinsically interested, that still seems way less wasteful than a lot of conspicuous consumption does.
As someone who absolutely falls in the "brag about travel" camp, allow me to selfishly defend some behavior here. I think it's the case that information costs are more of a barrier to travel than financial costs for tons of Americans.
I love car camping, so I'm often sleeping next to a 60k RV. The *operating costs* of that RV could finance an annual vacation across the world, assuming you know that A: international flights have huge pricing variability and B: you as an American are rich. But I've met people who don't know either of these things, so I try and pitch them on taking advantage of this fact pattern
Sounds about right. But there are many, many cases of rich people not playing the rich person game and vice versa.
Loving the Bordieu deep dives. I moved to North America from a developing country. It made me extremely cognizant of how my "tastes" signaled very different things when I first moved here and how they shifted people's perception of me. I have a much better understanding of the difference now between the American game vs the game in my prior residence, and think the vast majority are playing said games in some (subconscious? as argued here) way. The "rich person not playing the rich person game" pointed out by other comments is either (1) an outlier, (2) is actually setting up the game / playing a meta game, (3) is signalling something invisible to you and I, but visible to the right audience. Gender, race, job etc dramatically shift the game, and I guess so does your location on Bordieu's "capital axes". Relevant: the rise of quiet luxury, there is a great Jordan Theresa video essay on this.
Does there exist a <600 page Bordieu summary/ commentary you'd recommend?
Fantastic (in all senses of the word), fascinating, and enlightening post. Thanks!
(P.S. *thank ruddy goodness* you gave the arguments for and against tilting wine glasses! By that point in the post, after all you'd said around the topic, we were all bloody desperate to know!)
I recently re-read the Bertrand Russell essay "In Praise of Idleness" and I feel like it's pretty relevant here, in being a healthier attitude toward supposedly wasteful ways of spending time.
I do find it unsettling how predictable someone's tastes are if you know a few basic things about them. Seems to lend credence to the idea in your opening anecdote.
At the same time, should it be surprising that preferences correlate? It seems reasonable that preferences are a reflection of values, and so people with similar values would have correlated preferences. This mechanism could operate independent of the unconscious game theory you mention.
I'm not here to argue with the idea that people play taste games or that I play taste games or anything, but I've heard this argument before and something about it always misses me?
Okay, take the baby name example. I've never thought that I like certain names because of how they literally, audibly sound. I've always thought that names have cultural connotations that change over time, and I'm most likely to share the cultural connotations of names with my generation, so names that I like that I feel like have good cultural connotations and would be a good name to have are names that people my own age might also think have good cultural connotations (vibes). I could like names that have traditional but not stuffy vibes like Charlotte and Olivia or names that have very hippy or like, conspicuously non-comformist vibes like Rain or West but at no point would I be confused about why people in the past would have thought about names entirely differently and had a different idea about what makes a good name to navigate the world with. Status is involved in this (would I prefer a high status name like William with all the formality that might come with it, or something that has different cultural connotations of masculinity like Brock?) but at no point am I like, confused by the “authenticity” of my taste.
Or like the picture of Senfeild. He looks fine to me but that’s probably just because I like fashion and I can read over a slightly longer period of time - like his clothing is “legible” to me because I’ve familiarized myself with it just like more contemporary clothing is legible to me. When I read someones outfit I also don’t feel confused about what is a basic, sensory judgement (that texture looks bad to touch) and what’s a judgement with context - this silhouette looks bad because I’m assuming they were actually intended to hit [x] silhouette that’s popular for [y] reasons and they’ve failed to achieve it in a way that’s also revealed they were *trying* to achieve it (and being able to perceive that someone is trying to achieve something while they’re failing at it being a bad thing is of course also cultural…) blah blah blah. I guess what I’m trying to get at is, where is the self deception?
I know sometimes people say something is “objectively” bad or good but I’m assuming when it comes to anything that involves… taste, like any level of taste above sensory feedback, they mean given [y] values and [x] cultural connotations [z] has obviously failed/succeeded. Like the shared values and symbolic/read meaning go unspoken, but of course they aren’t unconscious?
I apologize for not condensing my thoughts but I guess the crux of this is: who thinks that their feelings towards something with symbolic or contextual meaning aren’t influenced by that things symbolic or contextual meaning? How is my or anyone else’s ability to read the world around them and respond to it “not real” somehow?
What does it say about me that I didn't even notice Jerry Seinfeld's clothes in that picture of him, and that even after you pointed them out, I had precisely no opinion as to whether they were stylish, dated, or otherwise?
I also like a variety of highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow beers and dining experiences.
I think I would find being obsessively status conscious exhausting. But is it your and/or Bourdieu’s thesis that people who claim not to be status conscious are nevertheless status conscious in a more obscure or subtle way?
Of course *within* the travel status competition you've got versions of the same levels
- someone who goes to a budget priced all-inclusive resort are "horrible proles, they may as well have stayed home"
- someone who goes to very popular attractions are "basic people who are just going to say they've been, their 'over-tourist'ing' ruins things for people who can actually appreciate things"
- someone who goes to luxury destinations is someone who doesn't know that "money can't buy taste"
- someone who goes on an experiential trip is "insufferably smug/self-righteous and probably can't stop talking about how ayahuasca opened their mind"
But then in my own travels I'm also in a status game. I'm going to a popular tourist attraction because I'm enlightened enough to know that "actually popular things are popular for a reason" but also more enlightened than basic travellers because I know to arrive early/late, buy tickets online in advance, skip lines, don't buy things from the gift shop, etc.
Enlightening! Major oh shit moment at the Travel section, my partner and I have often noticed that travel makes up an absurd share of our conversation with not-yet-close friends.
As with other basic human desires, I think the right approach is the Stoic / Buddhist general philosophy of "accept it without judgement, try to notice when it is changing your decisions, and try to account for it so that you're still optimizing for happiness/altruism and not whatever your biology is optimizing for". So having it laid out for me like this is going to help me notice when it's influencing me in the future!
Great post! We need all the lighthearted deflation of superiority we can get....And as you imply, there is no need to feel bad about seeking prestige and status - I'd say this is almost instinctual.
That being said I maintain a shred of hope that displaying my oh-so-so-fascinating library. has at least a little to do with my inherent like and interest in its books...
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that there is another social , but not prestige-seeking motivation to play Glass Beads, namely, finding others who share interests. Well... yes, that may still be based on finding others to associate with the in-crowd you are craving,,,, but still, it's nice to talk about interesting things with interesting people, no?? Thanks!
Bourdieu explains a lot but a purely cultural theory doesn’t tell you /why/ taste took the path it did. It implies a random set of starting beliefs, with everything evolving in response to that. But clearly some tastes are motivated by other things. Is there anything you’re genuinely embarrassed to like? That implies both that a) you are generally aware of the social implications of your tastes, in support of the theory, but also b) that other factors also matter (otherwise, being embarrassed by a taste would be sufficient to stop having it). We also have tastes that seem much too aligned with non-cultural priorities for that to be largely coincidental. While music varies widely in different societies and regions, all major cultures seem to have converged on consistent rhythms, *some* sort of scale, and volumes that don’t cause immediate pain to most listeners. That’s obvious though, so how do we synthesize these observations into something more interesting?
My theory:
1) Shifts in cultural taste are driven in part by the object-level tastes of those with high status. (When I’m in good enough shape I love wearing looks I think are “objectively” less fashionable, like something D&D-inspired, and that becomes its own status play. But I don’t pick those looks at random!)
2) These shifts are subject to guardrails in the forms of the object-level tastes of everyone else. (I still can’t pull off a literal clown suit, unless I make some heavy alterations to make it “fashion clown”)
3) This is made even more fluid by the fact that a significant driver of status is the ability to identify and play to the tastes of those around you, in addition to selling your own.
Have you read Charles Murray's*Coming Apart*.
He argued that until the 1960's there really were very few significant differences between what was available (and therefore what was consumed) by different classes in America.
That made me smile and gave me a slight headache. Thank you.
There's another explanation.
I am not really in the social group that I would prefer I was in. Through my particular skills, I've gotten in with the geek crowd, who like anime, fantasy metal, and funny t-shirts. I hate it all. It's become a joke among us that I won't like what everyone else is gassed about.
So reading this article, I was continuously testing my own preferences to see if they give me status in my social circle. Nope, no, none of them.
But had I been in my preferred social circle, they would have given me plenty status. I like philosophy and critically acclaimed movies and dressing smart -- preferences that would fit in well in the ivory tower.
So may the causality be the reverse of what you describe here? Maybe we seek out the social circles that give status for our real preferences? E.g. I really like wine, so I seek out the group that will hail a wine-lover. That's why we always find our preferences aligning with our group.
I disagree with your point about both economic and cultural signalling being wasteful. While that's true to some extent, with cultural signalling where you spend a lot of time studying, even if it is a waste it's only wasting your own time, which puts an upper limit on how much you can be wasting. I haven't actually calculated anything but I'm pretty sure the amount of wasted effort (and negative externalities) put in by all the gold miners and so on to supply a rich golden stuff enjoyer is far more than the amount of wasted effort put in by an intellectual or pseudointellectual. Even if I try to imagine a Glass Beads player who focuses on topics I have little to no respect for, is doing it wrong anyway, and isn't even enjoying it because they're just trying to one-up the other players rather than intrinsically interested, that still seems way less wasteful than a lot of conspicuous consumption does.