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I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end u

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis. I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite stance of that reference point. I think this model fits in with that pretty well - there are groups who want to be "not-the-elite" which, if successful, the elite adopt. Classic "hipsterism." It also fits in with a lot of local, national, and global politics, market differentiation, etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anm89 5y ago
very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff. I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.
- BoysenberryPi 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?
  - martythemaniak 5y ago
    I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it. There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In fact, if people focused on the value their so-called "bullshit" jobs provide other people, rather than on their own assessment of how meaningful their job is, they would likely end up much happier. It's an incredibly condescending and self-centered way to look at the world.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - t-3 5y ago
      If the "bullshit" jobs were valuable to anyone, they wouldn't be bullshit, they would be highly coveted and celebrated positions.
  - anm89 5y ago
    The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employee's perspective is one where the wage isn't worth it for the bullshit they have to put up with. In that case they should find a new one. If they can't, than putting up with that specific bullshit is still their best choice. If they keep showing up to work and taking that trade, apparently they don't think it's bullshit. And if the employer keeps thinking that the money is a good trade for their time, they apparently also don't think it's bullshit, otherwise they'd fire them. So if two people freely engage in the same trade of time for money everyday for years on end, then simply calling it bullshit isn't that profound. It starts to sound a lot like some way to intellectualize whining about not liking your job. So yeah, no amount of writing is going to save a totally broken premise.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both. Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit. There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.
  - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
    What are some of these political changes?
    - eightysixfour 5y ago
      Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy. That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far: * I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage. * There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined. * There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair. * This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.
belugacat 5y ago
Oh wow, super fascinating reference, thank you for posting it! I’ll have to check it out, I’ve been prototyping game concepts with many thousands of agents who all do interesting things for the player to investigate (the key here is that they don’t have to be particularly complex or meaningful, they just have to overlap in enough thought provoking ways to keep the player engaged), and I’ve had a similar insight (“make agents identify a position and adopt the opposite stance”) that seems to yield interesting early results. (sorry, nothing concrete to share and likely won’t for a long time)
- crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
  I feel excitement over reading this. Would you be open to trying out some ideas to experiment with? I've been wondering if a framework for amplifying/accelerating evolution in bacterial cultures that's based in graph theory holds for culture in general. Also, trying to identify a sustainable model for a gift economy that can outperform debt economies.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    If you're looking for a playground for this kind of thing (and can code), check out https://hash.ai/ https://hash.ai/
    - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
      Thanks! How's what you're doing different?
      - eightysixfour 5y ago
        I'm not the gamedev above, just thought you may be interested.
- sdwr 5y ago
  Sounds interesting! I see games in a similar way, as collections of simple mechanics that overlap/intersect/stack. I think one of the keys to a complementary bundle of mechanics is that they're distinct. Acting on different time scales, different reward structures that tug the brain around, creating choices that feel meaningful and don't ever repeat exactly.
turdnagel 5y ago
See also Dr. Seuss' seminal "The Sneetches".
throwaway894345 5y ago
> I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point I don't think the error is in defining ourselves by what sets us apart--it's fine and good to acknowledge our differences. I think the bad thing is leaning into those differences due to an aversion to the outgroup, which is the very essence of tribalism (or nearly so).
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Apologies, I was too soft at that point when I wrote it. He does not suggest we merely acknowledge our differences, he suggests we literally define ourselves as opposites of others. He also does not assign a property of good or bad to this observation, just that we do it.
crucialfelix 5y ago
As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them". Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  I won't suggest that you did not FEEL that way when you were doing it, but what you just wrote sounds exactly what I said in socially-coded language. > I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit Here you state that the mainstream elite was "lifeless bullshit." > we wanted to express something new And you wanted to express NOT lifeless bullshit. > that only we could sense. We were being us This is what the mainstream elite couldn't see or make. It was NOT mainstream elite thought. > it's what the mainstream now sounds like The mainstream adopted it, and now there's a new generation of people who think that sound is mainstream lifeless bullshit and will create something that is NOT mainstream lifeless bullshit. This is not part of the Graeber thesis, but aligns well with the original post. I also want to be clear that I don't think this is supposed to be a conscious process - there are times when people are intentionally contrarian but there are also people and groups who are unconsciously contrarian simply by saying "I don't like this thing."
  - crucialfelix 5y ago
    I agree, its a different framing of the same process. On further reflection there was a lot of deliberate removal of pop or mainstream rave signals. We were excluding their signals to create our own space. Minimal Techno is pretty much defined by it's rules of what isn't allowed. So that's conscious differentiation.
  - oblak 5y ago
    Exactly. OP is the poster child for lack of self awareness
  - 5y ago
kelseyfrog 5y ago
Is that simply one aspect of cultural dialectics[1] or am I missing something? 1. https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercultural-communication/ https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercul...
March_f6 5y ago
Mimetic theory, while not entirely complete, seems to cover the common impulse behind dominating trends. Whether it accounts for the initial spark of “anti” I guess is another question.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anm89 5y ago

very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff. I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.

BoysenberryPi 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?
- martythemaniak 5y ago
  I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it. There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In fact, if people focused on the value their so-called "bullshit" jobs provide other people, rather than on their own assessment of how meaningful their job is, they would likely end up much happier. It's an incredibly condescending and self-centered way to look at the world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - t-3 5y ago
    If the "bullshit" jobs were valuable to anyone, they wouldn't be bullshit, they would be highly coveted and celebrated positions.
- anm89 5y ago
  The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employee's perspective is one where the wage isn't worth it for the bullshit they have to put up with. In that case they should find a new one. If they can't, than putting up with that specific bullshit is still their best choice. If they keep showing up to work and taking that trade, apparently they don't think it's bullshit. And if the employer keeps thinking that the money is a good trade for their time, they apparently also don't think it's bullshit, otherwise they'd fire them. So if two people freely engage in the same trade of time for money everyday for years on end, then simply calling it bullshit isn't that profound. It starts to sound a lot like some way to intellectualize whining about not liking your job. So yeah, no amount of writing is going to save a totally broken premise.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both. Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit. There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.
eightysixfour 5y ago
Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.
- crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
  What are some of these political changes?
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy. That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far: * I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage. * There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined. * There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair. * This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.

belugacat 5y ago

Oh wow, super fascinating reference, thank you for posting it! I’ll have to check it out, I’ve been prototyping game concepts with many thousands of agents who all do interesting things for the player to investigate (the key here is that they don’t have to be particularly complex or meaningful, they just have to overlap in enough thought provoking ways to keep the player engaged), and I’ve had a similar insight (“make agents identify a position and adopt the opposite stance”) that seems to yield interesting early results. (sorry, nothing concrete to share and likely won’t for a long time)

crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
I feel excitement over reading this. Would you be open to trying out some ideas to experiment with? I've been wondering if a framework for amplifying/accelerating evolution in bacterial cultures that's based in graph theory holds for culture in general. Also, trying to identify a sustainable model for a gift economy that can outperform debt economies.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  If you're looking for a playground for this kind of thing (and can code), check out https://hash.ai/ https://hash.ai/
  - crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
    Thanks! How's what you're doing different?
    - eightysixfour 5y ago
      I'm not the gamedev above, just thought you may be interested.
sdwr 5y ago
Sounds interesting! I see games in a similar way, as collections of simple mechanics that overlap/intersect/stack. I think one of the keys to a complementary bundle of mechanics is that they're distinct. Acting on different time scales, different reward structures that tug the brain around, creating choices that feel meaningful and don't ever repeat exactly.

turdnagel 5y ago

See also Dr. Seuss' seminal "The Sneetches".

throwaway894345 5y ago

> I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point I don't think the error is in defining ourselves by what sets us apart--it's fine and good to acknowledge our differences. I think the bad thing is leaning into those differences due to an aversion to the outgroup, which is the very essence of tribalism (or nearly so).

eightysixfour 5y ago
Apologies, I was too soft at that point when I wrote it. He does not suggest we merely acknowledge our differences, he suggests we literally define ourselves as opposites of others. He also does not assign a property of good or bad to this observation, just that we do it.

crucialfelix 5y ago

As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them". Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.

eightysixfour 5y ago
I won't suggest that you did not FEEL that way when you were doing it, but what you just wrote sounds exactly what I said in socially-coded language. > I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit Here you state that the mainstream elite was "lifeless bullshit." > we wanted to express something new And you wanted to express NOT lifeless bullshit. > that only we could sense. We were being us This is what the mainstream elite couldn't see or make. It was NOT mainstream elite thought. > it's what the mainstream now sounds like The mainstream adopted it, and now there's a new generation of people who think that sound is mainstream lifeless bullshit and will create something that is NOT mainstream lifeless bullshit. This is not part of the Graeber thesis, but aligns well with the original post. I also want to be clear that I don't think this is supposed to be a conscious process - there are times when people are intentionally contrarian but there are also people and groups who are unconsciously contrarian simply by saying "I don't like this thing."
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  I agree, its a different framing of the same process. On further reflection there was a lot of deliberate removal of pop or mainstream rave signals. We were excluding their signals to create our own space. Minimal Techno is pretty much defined by it's rules of what isn't allowed. So that's conscious differentiation.
- oblak 5y ago
  Exactly. OP is the poster child for lack of self awareness
- 5y ago

kelseyfrog 5y ago

Is that simply one aspect of cultural dialectics[1] or am I missing something? 1. https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercultural-communication/ https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercul...

March_f6 5y ago

Mimetic theory, while not entirely complete, seems to cover the common impulse behind dominating trends. Whether it accounts for the initial spark of “anti” I guess is another question.