There are some days when I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess I’m having a bad reading day (I think it’s the mind equivalent of a bad hair day!). It started with a review by Benjamin Schwartz of a book about the ‘aspirational class’[i]. The monograph was written by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, who is a professor of urban planning at the University of Southern California, and comprises a clever summary of various research studies[ii]. She looked at data from several major US cities (including New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles), where she is able to use a “geographical lens through which we can observe the consumption habits of the new elites”.[iii]
I don’t know if she meant to skewer the affluent educated elite, but she does so with a vengeance. It’s enough to make me feel very uncomfortable. Her underlying thesis is quite simple. The material things that distinguished the elite from the rest in the past (such as silver cutlery or an expensive car) are no longer reliable markers, goods readily accessible to so many people today. Now the things that matter are about how we look after ourselves and what we eat, about cultural capital rather than income or physical goods.
The important thing to do is to keep up. Did you read the latest piece by David Sedaris in The New Yorker? Heard Paul Krugman today on NPR? Smiled at Andy Borowitz’s comments on Trump’s IQ competitiveness? Watch out: kale is definitely yesterday, and it seems seaweed is slipping; perhaps chard this week? Missed Maureen Dowd this week, what she said? Just heard yoga, water workouts and virtual boxing as so yesterday, but am I right to be going for mindbody? Mindfulness? Arctic nutrition? What’s really important is that you knew about Paul Krugman’s piece, as you don’t actually have to read it. David Sedaris is getting serious, so might have to skip that, too. Maureen and Andy make it bite sized, so there’s just enough time to glance through what they have to say before you’re off to discuss mindfulness exercises with the personal trainer. Then you’ll have time to get some lucuma powder; everyone’s talking about it.
Inconspicuous consumption, known only to those who know. Last year it was all about slow food. Heirloom tomatoes. Heritage apples. Organic cotton clothing. Free range chickens. Funny word that, ‘inconspicuous’: it’s not invisible. Your friends will know if you are eating the right things, looking after yourself as you should. You have to keep up with the latest trends and discoveries, and it takes work. Do you know whose opinion counts, and who should you follow?
All that might just be funny: we’re still “keeping up with the Joneses”, and that phrase has been around for more than 100 years.[iv] The fads and foibles of the rich, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop store (“cutting-edge wellness advice from doctors, vetted travel recommendations, and a curated shop of clean beauty, fashion, and home”) could be regarded as simply silly. Who cares?
We should care. If Portlandia encouraged us to laugh at the earnest couple in the restaurant, who were about to eat chicken, but needed to know the chicken’s name, if it had been free range, and if they could interview the farmer … if that story encourages us to laugh, in doing so it quietly slips a curtain over what is actually happening. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett digs deeper, and makes it clear how that same aspirational class grows wealth, and maintain an ever-growing divide between themselves and the rest of society. She “argues that the consumer preferences of today’s elite—be it the approved podcast, TED Talk, or magazine; goat tacos from the farmers market, a five-dollar cup of Intelligentsia Coffee, ceviche at the Oaxacan restaurant in the approved urban enclave, or tuition for the anointed school—are now the primary means by which members of the educated elite establish, reinforce, and signify their identities.”[v]
Currid-Halkett has written extensively on a number of issues that are part of what she calls ‘cognitive cultural capitalism’: her work includes a study of the ways in which glamour and celebrity are sustained in a few cities, but especially in London, Los Angeles and New York, creating a self-reinforcing virtuous circle of media, money and the market[vi]; the star market hubs in these same cities[vii]; the challenges of building arts and cultural centres and clusters[viii]; and the associated issues in developing sustainable innovation clusters more generally.[ix] As in the ‘Sum of Small Things’ all this work documents the ever growing gap between the haves and the have nots, and the apparent impossibility of changing the way things are.
If that wasn’t bad enough, then I read Daniel Drezner on ‘The Ideas Industry’[x]. With a principal interest in international affairs, he explores the decline of intellectuals, and the rise of opinion leaders, from thinkers to one-idea megaphones. Concerned about the space given to opinion leaders makes me think of TED talks, a world of inspirational gloop, (and I’m sure there’s a TED talk on Goop!). In fact, here’s Goop on Ted: “For better or for worse, the best TED talks aren’t just about the best ideas, they’re about the best stories, the best performances—the best theater.” Just so. As the most watched TED talks advise us (those with over 12m views), they are ‘inspirational”, and most are also “courageous and/or persuasive”. Nice digestible presentations to make us feel good, feel informed, and want to buy even more from the presenter!
TED talks are marketing, selling ideas about how to present yourself better, speak better, convince others, and even have better orgasms! They represent the epitome of the opinion leaders phenomenon, a marketplace for views that you will find encouraging, and confirming what you knew (or thought you knew) already. The best ideas? Well, selling an idea doesn’t mean it is a good idea. Indeed, selling an idea saves you from the burden of having to carefully collect the data, analyse, consider alternatives, (the things you find good authors doing in books).
For example, several TED talks are about unleashing creativity and innovation. Sadly, there’s nothing new: uniformly, as one commentator has noted, they repeat the same tired old stories we have heard over the years, 3M and the post-it note, Procter and Gamble and the ‘Swiffer’.[xi]
Others sell a package, as with one talk, enthusiastically received in 2013 by foodies, which explained why environmentalists were wrong, and we could greatly increase the number of cattle out in pasture. Sounds good? The trouble is, it was simply wrong. While it might work at the micro-level, ‘holistic management of grazing’ simply doesn’t scale: like organic produce, free range chickens, and all the other desired ‘natural’ approaches, it is a strategy that works for the few, the affluent, but would be a disaster adopted more globally. The advice would increase environmental degradation, all for the sake of ‘free range cattle’, ignoring the fact that herbivores continue to be one of the most wasteful categories of food we know.[xii] Food for the elite? Yes, maybe. Food for the world: it’s back to aquaculture, farmed protein and GMO.
There are some days when I don’t know whether to laugh or cry? I don’t do either. I will smile at the clever way in which an Andy Borowitz or a Maureen Dowd exposes behaviour and points up the insincerity of our leaders. But some of the time I feel unhappy with myself. I look around me at the people I know: what are they doing? They are working with addicts to help them recover; they are marching in the streets to fight for the issues that matter; they are going to developing countries to help build community and educational services; they are trying to encourage people to eat fresh vegetables and good food. What am I doing? In my seventies, I’m writing unpublishable second-rate detective novels and over the top blogs. It’s not enough.
Do you remember Ross Perot, back in 1992? At the time, he was explaining his fears about manufacturing, and jobs, leaving the USA and going to Mexico. Describing future job losses, he coined the phrase “a giant sucking sound”. Today I think we could hear a giant sucking sound as a decent way of life is disappearing into the maw of consumerism, self-satisfaction, and the repudiation of others. Give the masses bread and circuses. To be more precise, give them television series and video games for entertainment, reinforcing violence, especially violence against women: you can do what you like with a big gun and a big penis? #MeToo has exposed male violence against women, and given many the opportunity to feel they are not alone, to make it clear change is needed (there will be a TED talk on this soon). However, while talking is a start, it’s not enough. We need change, a fundamental change to our culture, but I fear it may be too late: I heard the possibility of real change starting to disappear in the aftermath to Sandy Hook, when the faint chance of changing another bit of today’s culture never made it. Too late for me to do something more than talk and write?
Come on Sheldrake, up from your desk, go outside and do something. Ah, yes; now, where did I read you could get lucuma powder in Winston Salem? Better get some before it’s all gone.
[i] The New Elite’s Silly Virtue-Signaling Consumption, by Benjamin Schwartz, The American Conservative, 14 September 2017
[ii] Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, The Sum of Small Things, Princeton UP, 2017
[iii] I haven’t read the whole book yet! It’s out on loan at Wake Forest University’s library until the middle of next year!! What follows relies on reviews, and articles she has written. But it was available at UNCG …
[iv] The term comes from the comic strip Keeping up with the Joneses, created by Arthur R. “Pop” Monand in 1913, and syndicated in US newspapers for some 25 years. So there!!
[v] Benjamin Schwartz, op cit
[vi] The geography of celebrity and glamour: Reflections on economy, culture, and desire in the city, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and Allen Scott, City Culture and Society, vol. 4, 2013
[vii] ‘Stars’ and the connectivity of cultural industry world cities: an empirical social network analysis of human capital mobility and its implications for economic development, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and Gilad Ravid, Environment and Planning, vol. 44, 2012
[viii] The location patterns of artistic clusters, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett et al, Urban Studies, vol 51, no 13, 2013
[ix] The Great Divide: economic development theory versus practice – a survey of the current landscape, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, and Kevin Stolarik, Economic Development Quarterly, Vol 25, no 2, 2011.
[x] Daniel Drezner, The Ideas Industry, OUP, 2017
[xi] Thomas Frank did a great analysis of this area in Salon in October 2013: ‘TED talks are lying to you’
[xii] See James McWilliams, All Sizzle no Steak, in Slate, April 2013.
