From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Aug 01 2004 - 03:01:10 BST
mel:
Precisely correct... as I've thought about it, it seems that none of
us in our real life live in the abstraction of "society-as-a-whole." We
seem rather to have membership in smaller more meaningful and
more functionally appropriate "Communities-of-Interest."
e.g. I am a member of the local swim club where my kids swim.
I am a member of the local phone exchange, fire district, sewer
district, taxing authorities, & schools. My chosen hobby groups,
hiking groups...etc. (Some defined by where I live, others by what
I choose to do. )
Real life messiness makes such generalizations as "SOCIETY"
a bit less useful, which makes our discussion MORE difficult.
dmb says:
We make abstractions and generalizations in any intellectual descriptions,
but I don't think that the larger scale associations are really any less
real or intimate in our individual lives and individual worldviews. Society
is said to be more that biological man, but social level values reside in
individual people or they don't exist at all. Its always some individual who
takes on the role of father, cop, soldier, celebrity or politician. Social
roles and social values are held by people and many of them are quite
passionatley involved and enthusiastic about the values defended in those
roles. Each of us can only know a limited part of the larger society, but in
the final analysis we are society. How could it be any other way?
> Paul:
> I think so, when things get over-valued maybe, like a £20,000 bottle of
> champagne - how good can some fizzy grape juice taste? I think this kind
> of thing often provokes a "something wrong there" reaction with people.
mel:
Could part of our reaction be that we are focusing on the money
and not on the meaning of the event or expenditure to the buyer?
Most of us never have the opportunity to question anyone who would
spend that kind of scratch on grape juice polluted by yeast-piss.
We do however, hold an opinion or a value in our own mind, but how
might that same exchange be viewed by the purchaser, what is the
value to him/her?
dmb:
I think the feeling of wrongness is not very hard to locate. Drinking a
bottle of $20,000 champagne is obscenely self-indulgent. There are parts of
the world where entire families could live well for years with that kind of
money. To piss it away like that is outrageously immoral. And haven't you
ever noticed that people do such things just so they can say they did? This
is exactly what Pirsig was refering in his mention of Veblin's THEORY OF THE
LEISURE CLASS. The book's central premise was that social status was gained,
throughout history but especially by the Victorians that surrounded him, by
having way more than one needed and by putting that surplus on display for
all the world to notice. He called it "conspicuous consumption" and if
drinking champagne that costs as much as a new car is not a case of
conspicuous consumption, then nothing is. Ever light a cuban cigar with a
$100 bill? Same thing? Designer clothing with big labels outside on the
front? Its practially an American uniform. Fame and fortune are intertwined
in a million pathetic little ways, but it all boils down to social status of
various degreees.
Thanks.
dmb
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