getting and spending

Once You’ve Made That Money, It Costs More Now. It Might Cost a Lot More Than You Think

By in books, foolosophy, getting and spending No Comments

Ben Sixsmith:

I use celebrities only as an example of a depressing fact about human beings. We refer to “f*ck you money” as being that mystical point at which one is rich enough to achieve blissful independence from the presumptuous demands of bosses, clients or critics. But almost no one achieves it. People with tens of millions of pounds in the bank want to get tens of millions more. People at the top of their professions have no wish to lose their exalted spots. There is no point at which desire lets conscience reign supreme.

Our library reopened to the public for the first time in a year. (Speaking of which, the hospital is the only place that still requires masks; everything else is getting back to normal — even in Charlottesville, a city so progressive it elects mayors like this, freedom is ringing.) I went in and looked over the new nonfiction releases, where I saw Confess, the autobiography of Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. I’m always up for reading a yarn about the glory days of classic Brih’ish ‘eavy meh’ul, so I checked it out.

Halford was one of the first metal icons to come out of the closet, in 1998, when it took some actual courage as a public figure to do so, unlike today, when publicly identifying as someone in need of attention is just something you do concurrently with the announcement of your new book/podcast/TV show/clothing line. It’s poignant to be reminded how even a rich celebrity could live in fear and frustration, terrified of being exposed, even before the all-seeing Eye of the Internet. The more money they made, the more records they sold, the more arenas they packed, the more Halford feared what the exposure of his homosexuality would do, not only to him, but to his bandmates. It wouldn’t be fair to them, he thought, to jeopardize their hard-earned careers, just so that he could fully express himself. And so he stayed in the closet out of loyalty to others.

If money were all people cared about, then it would be much easier to have a “fuck-you” amount of it. Ironically, that point will never be reached because even rich celebrities care about some things — status, love, and other soft vulnerabilities — more than riches.

Action Seems to Call You But You’re Feeling Quite the Slave

By in foolosophy, fresh hell, getting and spending No Comments

Frank Trentmann:

But mainly Hood appeals to individuals to reflect on their choices. ‘If you are unhappy,’ he concludes, ‘then it is your fault and you need to do something about it.’ Fair enough, but how? Individuals, he writes, should ‘exorcise’ their acquisitive ownership and, instead, spend more time with each other. I am all for that, but, sadly, the experiments by slow-living followers and other minimalists and down-shifters show that good intentions on their own are not enough. Change is possible, but we need the help of states, cities and companies which have shaped the intense consumer environment we live in.

When the intellectual topsoil is this thin, it makes sense that there would be this much manure spread around on top. There’s probably no point in digging too deeply into it, but I’m still struck by the sheer amount of question-begging here. Why would you even ask for a one-size-fits-all answer to the perennial problem of human unhappiness? Who decides the difference between an optimal amount of possessions and too many? Which well-intended experiments have failed? What were they supposed to accomplish? What sort of change is supposedly possible with the help of governments and corporations, and why should we believe they won’t simply make things worse? How much net unhappiness in the world is caused by meddlesome busybodies who use their crusading as an excuse to avoid the introspection which might reveal what tedious, unpleasant people they are? (Okay, I smuggled that last one in there.)

Ah, but people are unhappy despite their affluence. Possessions don’t bring lasting contentment. (And hints of imminent environmental doom rumble menacingly in the background like timpani.) Well, isn’t dissatisfaction the norm rather than the rule? Haven’t we always been alchemical geniuses at turning contentment into boredom into mischief into despair? Didn’t we formerly call this the human condition? Perhaps once, when we let gentlemen philosophers do our thinking for us, but we have fMRI scans and Voxplainers in our social-scientific modern age. The problem now, you see, is that our consumer choices aren’t really freely chosen — they’re the product of “social conventions and infrastructures” (and our dopamine squirts), and as we’ve all heard ad nauseum, social constructions can (and should) be deconstructed. And once again, we’re back to that nagging question: who are the people with the objective view from nowhere who will create our new and improved reality for us? And what kind of social or neurochemical engineering would it take to get them to leave the rest of us alone?

I’m So Old…

By in getting and spending, ohferfucksake, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

Casey Chalk:

This era of woke capitalist tyranny demands a response. Conservatives need to be more circumspect about where they dine, because our eating habits, like many of our other spending habits, have a broad impact on the fate of conservatism in our country. The more we support restaurant chains like Chick-fil-A and Mission BBQ, the more we will buoy broader causes that protect our freedom to live, think, and worship as we please. So raise a cup of sweet tea to the success of Chick-fil-A.

I’m so old, I remember when being pandered to by corporate marketing was considered insulting to one’s dignity. In fact, I’m so old that I remember when volunteering to serve as a corporate mascot would have been considered beneath contempt. Most of all, I’m so old that I remember when the invasion of every inconsequential nook and cranny of private life by political calculations was considered a pretty good definition of totalitarianism.

Brash Nexus

By in getting and spending, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Claire Berlinski:

Arun and Esin finally got through the lines and to the Agora of Humanity, where we agreed to meet if we were separated. Next to the Agora stood a massive Che Rebel Spirit energy drink stand. I was thirsty. “Consumed iced, or mixed in revolutionary cocktails, Che Rebel Spirit perfectly combines that ‘Rebel’ feeling with a unique and ‘Delicious’ taste,” said the brochure. “Be the first to discover a new REBELICIOUS energy drink!”

Despite my best efforts, some of the earlier comments from my old home on Blogspot didn’t complete the migration here. However, I was able to go spelunking through the archives in order to reproduce this amusing exchange I had with a reader nearly nine years ago:

Noel: But grandiloquence in one’s nuncupation can make one appear supercilious, n’est pas?
Damian: Ah, but the true sesquipedalian spirit must not allow its inherent delectation in the myriad forms of badinage to be limned by the pedestrian fears and insecurities of the audience; must hold no truck with those philistines who insist on reducing it to mere fanfaronade.
Noel: I agree, I think. Is fanfaronade a drink?
Damian: No, you’re thinking of FrantzFanonade, the “revolutionary” sports drink designed to quench the most “wretched” thirst on earth.

As you can see, I was ahead of my time. But if any of my wealthy readers would like to provide a little seed capital, it appears there actually is a market for Communist-themed beverages. Even if we don’t get filthy rich, the ironic enjoyment alone would make it worthwhile!

Obiter Scripta, no. 33

By in getting and spending, obiter scripta No Comments

Theodore Dalrymple:

One of the underlying problems, argues Professor O’Gorman, is in consumer society brought about by globalised capitalism. Our economy is such that it depends utterly on creating new desires among consumers, whether or not the satisfaction of those desires leads to happiness or anything worthwhile sub specie aeternitatis. Without a constant desire for something new, for something supposedly better, our economy would deflate like a balloon emptied of gas. If a large proportion of the population were to decide that it already had enough to meet its needs, and that it would be no happier if it possessed anything else, economic activity would stagnate at best. It is therefore necessary that there should be a population that is never materially satisfied, that supposes that the next purchase will bring it fulfillment: which, of course, it never does, which explains why so many people go out shopping when they actually need for nothing.

I know these claims well, having made them often enough when I was young and stupid(er). Still, despite my intimate familiarity with the mindset, I find it almost incomprehensible now. Like all religious visions of paradise, it defines itself against the hated fact of ceaseless, omnipresent change which defines our very existence; it imagines a scratch to end all itches forever, a final resolution of all recurring chores. In paradise, our satisfactions will be spiritual and self-contained, impervious to decay. In reality, our acceptance of the need to work in order to consume in order to work is simply an acknowledgement that the least-worst option is often the only realistic one. Smug adolescents of all ages always act like they’re the first to discover that material possessions don’t bring permanent fulfillment. For the rest of us, the transient pleasures of purchases and novelty are valuable insofar as they make one day, one place or one shared experience just a bit brighter.

My Greed Is a Flame

By in getting and spending, so many books, so little time No Comments

John Lukacs:

Books will always exist.  Jefferson’s category of the educated minority, on whose existence the prospects of civilized mankind depend, is no longer enough.  To educated we need to add interested.  The very impulse of human attention depends on human interest, a quality often involved with humility, with our capacity of seeing beyond ourselves.  This awareness sometimes issues from reading.

Interest may just as well be involved with greed, as Nietzsche noted:

“Oh, my greed! There is no selflessness in my soul but only an all-coveting self that would like to appropriate many individuals as so many additional pairs and eyes and hands – a self that would like to bring back the whole past, too, and that will not lose anything that it could possibly possess. Oh, my greed is a flame! Oh, that I might be reborn in a hundred beings!” – Whoever does not know this sigh from firsthand experience does not know the passion of the search for knowledge.

The Lady of the House and I were traveling on business over the weekend, and during some free time in between engagements, we went foraging for victuals and found ourselves strolling through a gigantic mall which contained a two-story Barnes & Noble. I was doing fine until I got to the philosophy section, where I found a few books which have been on my Amazon wish list for a while, plus a few previously-unknown others which caught my interest.

Nothing else has this kind of pull over me. I know full well that I can have all these books for half the price if I just wait and buy wisely online, and I know equally well that I already have, uh — ::checks Goodreads, blushes, clears throat:: — 38 books waiting to be read, but lord-o-lord, it was a mighty struggle against the temptation to damn frugality and steam full speed ahead to the register with probably $200 worth of titles under my arm, just for the thrill of having them all right there in a bag. It honestly caused me psychic pain to have to walk away empty-handed. This is the only setting in which I have to beware the onset of temporary consumer madness like that. Plug my ears or tie me to the mast, Lady, the sirens are singing to me again!

Unhappy Ever After In the Marketplace

By in extraordinary popular delusions, getting and spending, the statusphere No Comments

Charlotte Lieberman:

The quest for authenticity is ostensibly born out of a desire to resist mass-produced capitalism, yet the pervasiveness of this desire means countercultural trends are rapidly appropriated by the mainstream. In The Authenticity Hoax, Potter concludes that we need to “come to terms with modernity” by recognizing liberal democracy and the market economy as givens, but I’m not so sure.

If we choose to see only the aesthetic virtue of nostalgia, ignoring its ideological dimensions, we participate in an inhospitable value system that excludes, well, most people. When we buy into a trend like eco-tourism, for example, we’re not just glorifying living without electricity and with daily meditation, we’re consuming an ideological system. As Slavoj Žižek argues: “When we buy a cappuccino from Starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology… ‘Yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others,’ but then comes the story. ‘We give 1% of all our income to Guatemalan children to keep them healthy… [or] some Saharan farmers, or to save the forest, to enable organic growing for coffee, or whatever or whatever…. Starbucks enables you to be consumerist without any bad conscience because the price for the countermeasure of fighting consumerism is already included into the price of a commodity.” This absolves us of guilt but ensures that consumerism continues.

Žižek refers to this model as “the ultimate form of consumerism”—selling redemption as part of the price of consumption, both literally and figuratively. But if we make peace with liberal democracy, the market economy, and blindly embrace Starbucks’ clever business model as a convenient way to find meaning outside the consumerist machine, we threaten the rigor with which we might define social progress. If we regard “authentic” consumer choices as an outlet for self-expression reflecting a commitment to personal beliefs, we displace useful energy from serious issues to the personal performance of “politics.” And with politics in scare quotes, the threat to progress becomes a real—dare I say authentic—object of fear.

In Kristian Niemietz’s Biercean-style definition, “consumerism” is the stuff that other people buy. In addition to being witty, this also accurately identifies the status competition that is the mechanism at work in these dime-a-dozen Marxish critiques. Lieberman, you see, is here to tell you that your Tiny Houses and farm-to-table-restaurants aren’t truly threatening to the capitalist status quo — apparently, any innovation which isn’t instantly and equally available to all without exception only perpetuates privilege and inequality, and clearly, any progressive improvements which leave the fundamentals of a market economy intact are fraudulent. Or, to go ahead and put too fine a point on it, she’s doing a rarefied version of what she’s complaining about — competing against rivals to sell a positional good. She’s an apex predator in the circle of performative consumer life.

It might surprise her to find that Spiked magazine, which represents a British libertarian/classical liberal perspective, is also enamored of this line of criticism — see here for a typical example which I happen to remember off the top of my head. This bipartisan consensus ought to alert us to the common denominator of human nature at work here, namely, the desire to position myself as cooler, more fashionable, more in-the-know than you, however irrelevant that may be in the world of functioning, practical adults. But I suppose when you’ve spent grad school studying turgid windbags like Adorno, Horkheimer and Zizek, only to end up paying the bills by writing for such radical journals as Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, and Marie Claire, you’ll seize any chance you can to feel superior to others.

I especially love that line, “the rigor with which we might define social progress.” Oh, might we? Well, I, for one, would love to see what sort of rigorous vision she has. Cynical me, I suspect it’s nothing more than vague gesturing in the general direction of some Rousseauvian fantasy in which the compromises and tradeoffs of sociopolitical life are finally transcended. The point is always to complain that other people aren’t doing enough to transform the world, not to provide a positive example of your own, which, again, these kinds of reheated left-wing leftovers are incapable of doing anyway. True, increased consumer choice and purchasing power won’t make people much more content. But that’s because human beings are inherently restless, easily bored, and prone to all sorts of logical and psychological flaws which constantly undermine our own happiness, which itself is an amorphous, moving target. Like any other product, left-wing critique promises more than it could ever deliver, but as long as people get excited by the commercials, they’ll keep chasing the illusion. At least it gives people like her a job.

There Was No War But the Culture War, I Was Ready to Set the World on Fire

By in conspicuous crusading, getting and spending, moralizing, ohferfucksake, silent moving pictures, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Seth Matlins:

What’s clear is that the people buying from you and working for you want to know if you’re on their side. Or not. They want to know if you’re doing something to make the world better. Or not. And they will reward — or ignore or perhaps even boycott — you accordingly.

 

 

This is our new marketing reality, and cultural values are marketing’s new table stakes. Few are the brands who court controversy as a matter of strategy. But in today’s landscape, avoiding taking sides and bringing your cultural values to life to avoid controversy is a fast track to irrelevance.

 

Yes, “doing well by doing good” is a decades-old truism. But showing the world what you stand for (and occasionally against) is now as important, efficient and effective an eyeball-grabbing platform as exists. To win today’s battles for attention — as in, relevance, engagement, resource allocation and return — you’d better let people know whose side you’re on.

 

 

Today, brands can be neither quiet, defensive nor isolated. They have to be proactive, and they have to stand for something — for both the world’s and their own good.

 

Fists, Fools, and Dollars

By in conspicuous crusading, getting and spending, moralizing, revillaging, the madness of crowds No Comments


BuzzFeed decides to publish a casual smear of some celebrity couple, no doubt in hopes of costing them their TV show, or perhaps simply because it was more entertaining than churning out yet another listicle. Not to be outdone in the stupidity competition, Breitbart demands a boycott of Kellogg’s in response to the politically-motivated withdrawal of advertising. I have been hoping for years to see these culture-war border skirmishes and vindictive economic embargoes explode into all-out Götterdämmerung. I’m fairly sure it meets the standard of “just war” when both sides richly deserve as much suffering and destruction as they can possibly inflict on each other. By all means, keep up the relentless politicization of absolutely everything. Keep trying to create economic circles of moral purity, micro forms of crony capitalism, in which your money never passes into the hands of anyone who hasn’t passed a stringent ideological background check. When you’ve finally taken your petty point-scoring and scalp-taking to its logical conclusion, and you realize that you don’t like the sort of society you’ve created, perhaps then you might finally think about growing up.

I Had the Style, I Had the Ambition

By in extraordinary popular delusions, gender, getting and spending, identity, the statusphere No Comments

Patrick West:

The language of gender politics openly employs that of consumer ‘choice’. In a nod to Heinz, Facebook now has 56 different varieties of gender category to choose from. Yet declaring oneself to be ‘genderfluid’, ‘androsexual’, ‘demisexual’, ‘third gender’ and so on is about as rebellious and countercultural as getting a tattoo; it is a substitute for genuine thinking and merely an ephemeral form of boasting one’s uniqueness. Assigning oneself a personalised gender has become as meaningful as deciding between café noisette and mocha breve.

This is true as far as it goes, which isn’t very, by which I mean, of all the criticisms one could make of gendertrendiness, the fact that it’s not “really” going to overthrow the system is hardly a flaw. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter wrote an excellent book based on the idea that people like West, by mocking others’ radicalism for not being authentic or threatening enough, are merely perpetuating the sort of status competition that markets are perfectly designed to serve. (A brief-yet-profound summary of their argument can be read here.) There is no “system” that will be brought down through genuine acts of radical nonconformity. Any such attempts will inevitably devolve into fashion. Instead of responding to these failures by redoubling your efforts to find a mythical, pure radicalism that will prove impervious to co-optation, perhaps you could simply grow up.

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