11 ms·

The "authenticity hoax" is an intersting one, but the analysis is particularly shallow and consensual. Basically he points out that the quest for "authenticity

by plesn 16y ago

The "authenticity hoax" is an intersting one, but the analysis is particularly shallow and consensual. Basically he points out that the quest for "authenticity" is both opposed to progress ("consumer culture"...) and rather a quest of social markers. But he jumps to the conclusion that we should consequently "accept [modernity's] trade-offs". It seems like a typical example of paralogism: either your for us (our current implementation of progress, the powers in place) or you're against us. There's even a Godwin point as he gently critiques people who "see a market economy and consumer culture as sterile and false (...) and who defend the world's most repressive cultures". What??? If we're against consumerism we're for Stalin? Nevertheless, what he points about "authenticity" is important as people who reject consumerism tend to throw the baby out with bath water and seek a return to an idealized past. The problem here is the lack of visible alternatives to our regimes (so, in some sense, the powerfull media and propanda industry). However it is important to note that our overall interlinked and financiarized economy needs a lot more progress to transform itself into a more decentralized and resilient system: that's where local culture, organic food, mixed cultures, and others enter into the picture!

pw0ncakes 16y ago
However it is important to note that our overall interlinked and financiarized economy needs a lot more progress to transform itself into a more decentralized and resilient system: that's where local culture, organic food, mixed cultures, and others enter into the picture! Yes. I agree. Moving away from old mistakes (e.g. suburbia and car culture) is not a departure from modernity. No one is going to ban cars, but it turns out that spending 80 minutes per day in one really sucks, and if we can build a society where people live closer together and can ride a train to work, that's progress. In any case, the old regime is going to die. It's unsustainable, and it's already showing its cracks. This is why I don't invest in the stock market. It was a great idea between 1930 and 2000, as American corporations managed to become increasingly dominant in modern life, but as that trend reverses, I expect the share of our economy held by the top 500 corporations (that's essentially what the S&P is) to contract.
- plesn 16y ago
  My bet is we are transitioning from a society of cheep energy to a society of cheap information: we'll be consuming less and interacting more. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily imply less powerful corporations: they're already fighting for the control of what we are allowed to create, how we can interact (privacy), what we can do with our stuff, which crops we will eat, etc. I'm an optimist though: I hope they won't eventually succeed.
- anamax 16y ago
  Summary: there is no "one size fits all". > No one is going to ban cars, but it turns out that spending 80 minutes per day in one really sucks, You're assuming that everyone in suburbia spends 80 minutes commuting. Some do, some don't. You're also assuming that commute times are uniform and that minimizing them is the only goal. In my household, commute time is 10 minutes by one person and 60 by the other. Moving closer to the 60 would move us farther from other things that are important to us. > and if we can build a society where people live closer together and can ride a train to work, that's progress. You're assuming that people value living closer together. Some don't. They'll gladly pay extra commute time to avoid it. I write "extra" because that time on the train/bus is also commute time, and it isn't necessarily better time than car time. Yes, some people do prefer train time to driving, but not everyone thinks that 30 minutes on a train (or bus) is better than 80 minutes in a car. (If you need to run errands or do something, the car wins.) And even fewer like the train/bus if it's the same or more time. I think that people who don't like suburbia's tradeoffs shouldn't live there. The same is true of cities.... Not everyone is a DINK couple. Some people even drive because that makes it possible for them to quickly get to their kids in an emergency. (Parents value such things.)
  - pw0ncakes 16y ago
    I don't have a problem with driving. I like driving, but I wouldn't enjoy having to do it for an hour every day. It's car dependence that sucks about suburbia. When everyone drives because everyone has to do so, you get a mess: traffic, sprawl, loss of community, ugly places not worth caring about.
anamax 16y ago
> There's even a Godwin point as he gently critiques people who "see a market economy and consumer culture as sterile and false (...) and who defend the world's most repressive cultures". What??? If we're against consumerism we're for Stalin? There does seem to be correlation. Whether it's coincidence or causation (in either direction) is unclear. Why should we ignore this? FWIW, "marxist analysis" does produce a lot of railing against consumer culture which is apparently derived from their first principles. If you want to argue against market economy and consumer culture without invoking marxist principles, have at it. > However it is important to note that our overall interlinked and financiarized economy needs a lot more progress to transform itself into a more decentralized and resilient system: that's where local culture, organic food, mixed cultures, and others enter into the picture! This "resilent" claim is interesting. The dependent systems haven't had the mass famines that are a staple of the decentralized ones. Yes, I agree that there are lots of potential failure points in centralized agriculture. However, experience matters too. Note that there actually isn't "a" centralized agriculture system, there are many, one or more for each common foodstuff. For example, Kansas grows lots of wheat, but so does Canada, so crop failures in Kansas don't have a huge effect in California, even though CA doesn't grow much wheat. (I'm guessing that CA doesn't produce much wheat, so substitute a state that doesn't produce wheat if CA does.) There is one counter-example - "gas from corn" in the US had a horrible effect on food prices in Mexico. (We'd be better off importing methanol from Brazil.)
- plesn 16y ago
  First point ("consumerism vs. repressive cultures"): reread my post, don't do amalgams. I fail to see the correlation between proponents of "authenticity" and dictator regimes. First, in the article authenticity proponents are pictured as "anti-globalization" activists: I rarely see vegetarians as mostly concerned by marxism. Moreover it is questionnable to correlate dictator regimes with Marxism: many south-amercian or african regimes are/were backed by the US/France/etc... Finally, Marxism was mostly productivist (except Lafargue), non-decentralised (you don't have to go to Lenin and Trotsky taking over the Soviets, you already see it in the argument between Marx and Bakounin), and moreover its analysis did not insist on differentiating financial and industrial capital, which is important to understand the current crisis. All in all, as I was saying, the media industry frames all opposition as "repressive" and "brutal" and makes it diffult to find alternatives: hopefully people everywhere are creative in actions and thoughts. Second point: I was not formulating a binary centralized vs decentralized debate where transporting food is not allowed or we go back to the Middle-Age; I'm just saying that there is a need for more autonomy in the system to prevent crises like recent ones (e.g. the rice crisis in 2008). It's just common sense to say that third world countries with more food-producing agriculture (instead of say, cotton) are less fragile to speculation on food which can lead to disasters especially in bad years, or that controlling their crops vs using GMO's makes them less economically dependent on big corporations.
hugh3 16y ago
There was a really good article linked here a few days ago called "Create More, Consume Less". (Unfortunately since the article was on the bog Art of Manliness the discussion centered more around sexism than anything else.) Anyway, it talked about consumerism as being all about defining yourself by what you consume, and how this makes you a dull person who never does anything worthwhile or interesting. By this definition the obsessive "organic" or "local food" types are just as boringly consumerist as any Manolo-obsessed bar skank or the douchebag driving the BMW he can't really afford. Anti-consumerism is a form of consumerism just as mind-dulling as consumerism itself. I am forced by geography to shop at a rather hippieish supermarket in Berkeley (the Berkeley Bowl) where I always pity those fellow shoppers who have nothing more interesting to think about than how to optimise the organicness of their purchases in order to increase their own self-image. Personally I try not to buy anything labelled "organic" and to always choose plastic over paper, just to cancel some of them out.

by plesn 16y ago

pw0ncakes 16y ago

However it is important to note that our overall interlinked and financiarized economy needs a lot more progress to transform itself into a more decentralized and resilient system: that's where local culture, organic food, mixed cultures, and others enter into the picture! Yes. I agree. Moving away from old mistakes (e.g. suburbia and car culture) is not a departure from modernity. No one is going to ban cars, but it turns out that spending 80 minutes per day in one really sucks, and if we can build a society where people live closer together and can ride a train to work, that's progress. In any case, the old regime is going to die. It's unsustainable, and it's already showing its cracks. This is why I don't invest in the stock market. It was a great idea between 1930 and 2000, as American corporations managed to become increasingly dominant in modern life, but as that trend reverses, I expect the share of our economy held by the top 500 corporations (that's essentially what the S&P is) to contract.

plesn 16y ago
My bet is we are transitioning from a society of cheep energy to a society of cheap information: we'll be consuming less and interacting more. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily imply less powerful corporations: they're already fighting for the control of what we are allowed to create, how we can interact (privacy), what we can do with our stuff, which crops we will eat, etc. I'm an optimist though: I hope they won't eventually succeed.
anamax 16y ago
Summary: there is no "one size fits all". > No one is going to ban cars, but it turns out that spending 80 minutes per day in one really sucks, You're assuming that everyone in suburbia spends 80 minutes commuting. Some do, some don't. You're also assuming that commute times are uniform and that minimizing them is the only goal. In my household, commute time is 10 minutes by one person and 60 by the other. Moving closer to the 60 would move us farther from other things that are important to us. > and if we can build a society where people live closer together and can ride a train to work, that's progress. You're assuming that people value living closer together. Some don't. They'll gladly pay extra commute time to avoid it. I write "extra" because that time on the train/bus is also commute time, and it isn't necessarily better time than car time. Yes, some people do prefer train time to driving, but not everyone thinks that 30 minutes on a train (or bus) is better than 80 minutes in a car. (If you need to run errands or do something, the car wins.) And even fewer like the train/bus if it's the same or more time. I think that people who don't like suburbia's tradeoffs shouldn't live there. The same is true of cities.... Not everyone is a DINK couple. Some people even drive because that makes it possible for them to quickly get to their kids in an emergency. (Parents value such things.)
- pw0ncakes 16y ago
  I don't have a problem with driving. I like driving, but I wouldn't enjoy having to do it for an hour every day. It's car dependence that sucks about suburbia. When everyone drives because everyone has to do so, you get a mess: traffic, sprawl, loss of community, ugly places not worth caring about.

anamax 16y ago

> There's even a Godwin point as he gently critiques people who "see a market economy and consumer culture as sterile and false (...) and who defend the world's most repressive cultures". What??? If we're against consumerism we're for Stalin? There does seem to be correlation. Whether it's coincidence or causation (in either direction) is unclear. Why should we ignore this? FWIW, "marxist analysis" does produce a lot of railing against consumer culture which is apparently derived from their first principles. If you want to argue against market economy and consumer culture without invoking marxist principles, have at it. > However it is important to note that our overall interlinked and financiarized economy needs a lot more progress to transform itself into a more decentralized and resilient system: that's where local culture, organic food, mixed cultures, and others enter into the picture! This "resilent" claim is interesting. The dependent systems haven't had the mass famines that are a staple of the decentralized ones. Yes, I agree that there are lots of potential failure points in centralized agriculture. However, experience matters too. Note that there actually isn't "a" centralized agriculture system, there are many, one or more for each common foodstuff. For example, Kansas grows lots of wheat, but so does Canada, so crop failures in Kansas don't have a huge effect in California, even though CA doesn't grow much wheat. (I'm guessing that CA doesn't produce much wheat, so substitute a state that doesn't produce wheat if CA does.) There is one counter-example - "gas from corn" in the US had a horrible effect on food prices in Mexico. (We'd be better off importing methanol from Brazil.)

plesn 16y ago
First point ("consumerism vs. repressive cultures"): reread my post, don't do amalgams. I fail to see the correlation between proponents of "authenticity" and dictator regimes. First, in the article authenticity proponents are pictured as "anti-globalization" activists: I rarely see vegetarians as mostly concerned by marxism. Moreover it is questionnable to correlate dictator regimes with Marxism: many south-amercian or african regimes are/were backed by the US/France/etc... Finally, Marxism was mostly productivist (except Lafargue), non-decentralised (you don't have to go to Lenin and Trotsky taking over the Soviets, you already see it in the argument between Marx and Bakounin), and moreover its analysis did not insist on differentiating financial and industrial capital, which is important to understand the current crisis. All in all, as I was saying, the media industry frames all opposition as "repressive" and "brutal" and makes it diffult to find alternatives: hopefully people everywhere are creative in actions and thoughts. Second point: I was not formulating a binary centralized vs decentralized debate where transporting food is not allowed or we go back to the Middle-Age; I'm just saying that there is a need for more autonomy in the system to prevent crises like recent ones (e.g. the rice crisis in 2008). It's just common sense to say that third world countries with more food-producing agriculture (instead of say, cotton) are less fragile to speculation on food which can lead to disasters especially in bad years, or that controlling their crops vs using GMO's makes them less economically dependent on big corporations.

hugh3 16y ago

There was a really good article linked here a few days ago called "Create More, Consume Less". (Unfortunately since the article was on the bog Art of Manliness the discussion centered more around sexism than anything else.) Anyway, it talked about consumerism as being all about defining yourself by what you consume, and how this makes you a dull person who never does anything worthwhile or interesting. By this definition the obsessive "organic" or "local food" types are just as boringly consumerist as any Manolo-obsessed bar skank or the douchebag driving the BMW he can't really afford. Anti-consumerism is a form of consumerism just as mind-dulling as consumerism itself. I am forced by geography to shop at a rather hippieish supermarket in Berkeley (the Berkeley Bowl) where I always pity those fellow shoppers who have nothing more interesting to think about than how to optimise the organicness of their purchases in order to increase their own self-image. Personally I try not to buy anything labelled "organic" and to always choose plastic over paper, just to cancel some of them out.