4 ms·

When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class

by api 3mo ago

When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class and nostalgia for the stories classic aristocracy told about itself. I’m American and grew up inundated with cultural disdain for the suburbs, tract housing, malls, all those things, and at some point I asked, well, what then? What’s better? Sauce made slowly by hand is better. Carefully curated culture is better. Hand made, artisan, intentional. Rare. Special. And if it’s rare and special few can have it, making it also expensive and aristocratic. As soon as you try to give everyone that experience, you get chain stories. You get tract homes. You get mass culture. Because it’s a mass. It’s million, billions of people, and we are not as unique as we think we are. None of us are. I’m not saying the whole critique is this. There’s another side to it that’s about exploitation and addiction and that one rings true to me. But I find that it’s hard to peel the two things apart. It’s not exploitation to raise the standard of living of masses of people, and if you think it’s inherently tacky maybe you’re a neo-feudalist reactionary and don’t know it yet. There’s a reason that stuff took hold so easily among certain kinds of hipsters. I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned.

plastic-enjoyer 3mo ago
I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product. But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstracts anything else away. Take, for example, meat or vegetable stock, which is now a staple in every kitchen in the form of powder or stock cubes. If you take a look at the ingredients and nutritional values, they’re rather disappointing. The masses may get access to the taste, but not to the nutrients.
- api 3mo ago
  I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas. The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version? In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more. The artificial mass market imitation is cheaper because it is thermodynamically cheaper. It takes far less labor (the most costly input to almost all processes) and it substitutes things that can be bulk produced at a lower unit cost. Being less nutritious probably directly correlates since nutrition is chemical complexity is lower entropy, higher energy, harder to scale. There’s a lot of rare “authentic” experiences that cannot be scaled. That means most people can’t have them, ever. You can’t have both rarity / exclusivity and democratization / equality. One side has to give.
  - pluralmonad 3mo ago
    This is exactly what the article touches on, the race to the bottom. It drags everyone's experience down. This appeal to scalability is part of the problem, IMO. Not every experience is or should be scalable. Some kids find blackberry bushes at grandma's instead of strawberries. Little is gained by strip mining human experience so the thinnest veneer can be "scaled".
    - api 3mo ago
      That means most people can never have it, which is why romanticism ends up pining for aristocracy.
      - eszed 3mo ago
        I take your point, but the other argument against scaling in this way doesn't rely on sentiment: it's unsustainable. I actually hate that word, but the point is that current production methods create (unpriced) environmental externalities. We're draining aquifers, exhausting topsoil, pouring fertilizer into rivers, using too much petroleum - and then throwing a massive portion of what we produce away. (And that's just for food; similar arguments exist for fashion, and sometimes for buildings and infrastructure.) That argument gets effectively zero traction - despite, I think, being the better one - so some people who care more about that argue from sentiment instead, which (for the reasons you explain, and rightly object to) has better legs with the general public.
wolvesechoes 3mo ago
> I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned. It shouldn't be surprising - people conflated leftism with liberal progressivism, but they are not synonymous.

by api 3mo ago

plastic-enjoyer 3mo ago

I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product. But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstracts anything else away. Take, for example, meat or vegetable stock, which is now a staple in every kitchen in the form of powder or stock cubes. If you take a look at the ingredients and nutritional values, they’re rather disappointing. The masses may get access to the taste, but not to the nutrients.

api 3mo ago
I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas. The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version? In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more. The artificial mass market imitation is cheaper because it is thermodynamically cheaper. It takes far less labor (the most costly input to almost all processes) and it substitutes things that can be bulk produced at a lower unit cost. Being less nutritious probably directly correlates since nutrition is chemical complexity is lower entropy, higher energy, harder to scale. There’s a lot of rare “authentic” experiences that cannot be scaled. That means most people can’t have them, ever. You can’t have both rarity / exclusivity and democratization / equality. One side has to give.
- pluralmonad 3mo ago
  This is exactly what the article touches on, the race to the bottom. It drags everyone's experience down. This appeal to scalability is part of the problem, IMO. Not every experience is or should be scalable. Some kids find blackberry bushes at grandma's instead of strawberries. Little is gained by strip mining human experience so the thinnest veneer can be "scaled".
  - api 3mo ago
    That means most people can never have it, which is why romanticism ends up pining for aristocracy.
    - eszed 3mo ago
      I take your point, but the other argument against scaling in this way doesn't rely on sentiment: it's unsustainable. I actually hate that word, but the point is that current production methods create (unpriced) environmental externalities. We're draining aquifers, exhausting topsoil, pouring fertilizer into rivers, using too much petroleum - and then throwing a massive portion of what we produce away. (And that's just for food; similar arguments exist for fashion, and sometimes for buildings and infrastructure.) That argument gets effectively zero traction - despite, I think, being the better one - so some people who care more about that argue from sentiment instead, which (for the reasons you explain, and rightly object to) has better legs with the general public.

wolvesechoes 3mo ago

> I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned. It shouldn't be surprising - people conflated leftism with liberal progressivism, but they are not synonymous.