Authenticity

Much of what has been lost in recent decades has been achieved by maintaining form and sacrificing substance for price.

Take eggs for instance. There is no question that what you buy in a supermarket qualify as eggs. They were laid by chickens, after all. But it does not follow that all eggs are equivalent. I used a few of these droopy, pale-yellow puddles in a brownie recipe last night and I was almost embarrassed. To hold them next to pastured eggs is a joke, unless you haven't seen pastured eggs.

Furniture is another example. What you may buy at Ikea certainly qualifies as a desk; it has a flat surface and you can put things on it. But no one would call this thing equivalent to a desk which is skillfully made with quality materials. Such things are so rare now that I can hardly conjure a picture of one in my mind.

Sound. My laptop has speakers which can play any song. But play something on speakers owned and modified by my housemate Matthew and you will discover that you hardly knew the music beforehand.

Friendship. Though you can socialize with someone on facebook, it does not compare to the face-to-face.

I do not claim that there is no good reason why in virtually every sphere of life our society has shifted toward hollowed-out shells of its former constituents. The trade-off is between substance and price. My pastured eggs cost ten times more than the cheapest eggs you can buy. The same can be said for furniture, sound equipment, or quality time with friends. This sort of mechanism is responsible for the extension of a high standard of living to much of our society, so that many more can have "eggs" and "desks" and "music" and hundreds of "friends." It is an egalitarianizing process and therefore I understand how it is American.

But this process once unleashed continued unabated, past the point of strict economic utility until we no longer remembered what we had lost and did not wish to get it back even when we could afford it.

We are not a materially poor society. We are destitute not of money but of the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is only logical that we exchange the resource we have in abundance for the resource we lack.

Instead we spare no expense on our isolation and on our glowing screens.

Agency and Autonomy

Straining against the limits of reality.

I am reading Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. You should too. The thoughts here were stimulated by chapter 3 of that book.

Crawford's book is basically about the value of manual work. It often finds itself set against the forces of consumerism. In this chapter Crawford brings up a distinction, originally conceived by Albert Borgmann, between "commanding reality," corresponding to "things," and "disposable reality," corresponding to "devices."

Proper use of a "thing" (I might have said "tool") requires obedience to certain absolute principles. An example is a violin, which only becomes the extension of a man's will once he has completely subjected himself to laws of music and physics. A "device," on the other hand, is much more accommodating. Devices are designed to free men from precisely the constraints which things would place upon them. An example is a stereo, which produces any kind of music on command and without restriction.

Things foster what Crawford calls agency, while devices foster autonomy. Things teach men that they are not the arbiters of what is real, and make them submit to the real in order to make use of them. Devices, on the other hand, bring men the reality which they desire.

Crawford does not categorically say that agency is better than autonomy. He concedes that he drives a motorcycle which has an electric start and automatic oil pump, among other features, which free him from the demands which such tasks would place on him, and therefore that greater autonomy is often preferable to the opportunity for greater agency. The point he is making is more one of an imbalance between the two in our society, that the culture of consumerism is inextricably bound up with offering men autonomy, and that the value of agency has been reduced to be more like nostalgia.

To me, whether or not you prefer autonomy or agency is bound up in your view of humanity. If you are a secular humanist, you believe that men can and ought to build the reality which best suits them. Devices which free them from limitations previously imposed upon them are part of progress toward the reality which we as a race are constructing for ourselves. In this view, a man ought to be completely free from anything to which he does not wish to be subject.

If, on the other hand, you are a Christian humanist, you see that things perform the useful service to men of teaching them that they are not the center of the universe. They put man in his place, not as the author of creation, but as he to whom it has been commanded to have dominion over creation. In so doing, they give him the opportunity to become more human as he bends the things to his will precisely by bending himself to the external reality they announce.

People are inspired by the exercise of agency in the creation of commanding reality. For example, the comedy of Conan O'brien and the cooking of Mario Batali inspire me in this way. By contrast, people are sated by the exercise of autonomy in the indulgence of disposable reality. For example, Netflix streaming over my Wii brings me untold hours of entertainment without leaving my room.

Truly exercising agency is hard. My bread turns out inconsistently, though with work it is usually still tasty. But our society offers ever more autonomy through ever more products. I'm looking at you, Apple.

I would like to opt for more agency. Bring on the things.

Advent Conspiracy

I don't have the words to express how beautiful this video and its vision are to me:



Yes, please.

Thanks to jaeyde for showing this to me.

Environmentalism and Consumerism

So far, it's been a happy marriage:

Consumers, Producers, and Capitalists

Consumerism is an oft-criticized force in these blogging circles. There can also be a backlash from those who feel such critiques are implicitly critiques of capitalism itself. I'm thinking of this guy.

At any rate, I recently came across an elegant statement of why consumerism is bad. In the short book "Handoff," Jeff Myers says that today's youth have been "raised to consume rather than produce" (92).

In this way of looking at it, consumerism is not a choice made in a vacuum. It is the flip side of production. It is taking rather than giving.

As for the assertion that today's youth are more consumeristic than previous generations, that at least seems a reasonable hypothesis. In my picture of the past (by definition idealized and incomplete), it seems like Americans found their identity more in their occupation or their trade. Just look at all of the surnames that are trades - Mason, Baker, Smith, and so on.

In college I noticed people still defined themselves by their (future) occupation, but I think more indirectly. People want to be investment bankers not for the sake of the work that investment bankers do, but for the lifestyle that they lead. In other words, not for what they produce, but for what they consume.

Now, I don't think it's right to find identity in an occupation. The Christian finds his identity rooted in Christ, and what the Gospel says he is - a saved sinner, a child of God. There is no need, nor any real possibility, of adding to this with our own works.

But there is real value in being creative (in the most Genesis 1 sense of the word), in doing good works for the Lord. In fact, these are to adorn our lives as sweet offerings to God, and we look forward to a reward for faithful stewardship.

Consumption in itself isn't bad - for, as Jesus says, the laborer is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7). But as a mode for finding our identity, it is quite dangerous.

In sum, consumerism is empty because it finds identity in taking. "Producerism" is still off the mark, but perhaps less so.

And this need not be a critique of capitalism, which is based on the premise that we all benefit from exchange - in other words, from simultaneous giving and taking.

Image is in the details.

The logo is a siren. Mistake?

Not being a coffee drinker, I was confused by the sizes at a Starbucks recently. Fortunately, they provide handy examples up front, from which I deduced the following translations:

Tall normally means something is bigger than its peers, but in this case tall means small. Customers ordering a tall are freed from feeling like they are depriving themselves.

Grande means large. Instead of feeling guilty about indulging, customers can take a caffeinated vacation south of the border. Arriba!

Venti means Supersize. We have learned though from our forebears in the 1990's that Supersize will kill you. So Starbucks had to rename it. Venti is Italian for 20, as in the number of ounces in the drink, or the square root of the caffeine dose.

It's great ideas like these that helped Starbucks open a new location every workday in the 1990's.

My Name is Nicholas

Rock stars: is there anything they can't do?
Image grabbed from weezer.com.

New Weezer album! Yeah!

Weezer is the most popular group I think I've ever liked. Virtually all of my favorite music was written by dead men, whether Ludwig van Beethoven or Jerry Garcia. But few high school memories are fonder than Blue Album sing-a-longs.

I gave the new album a listen-through and I like it. Wikipedia cites frontman Rivers Cuomo in saying the album includes, "longer songs, non-traditional song forms, different people writing and singing, instrument switching, TR-808s, synths, Southern rap, and baroque counterpoint." You can hear all of that.

The fascinating part of Weezer to me is their blending of the artful and the popular. After the success of their debut album, they released Pinkerton, which was a concept album of a Puccini opera. It wasn't successful, and in backlash they released The Green Album, which is rather empty and unadventurous and was thus very successful.

Another example - according to Wikipedia,

The second single off Make Believe was "We Are All on Drugs"...MTV refused to play the song, so Weezer re-recorded the lyrics by replacing "on drugs" with "in love" and renaming the song "We Are All in Love".

Finally, they had to add songs to the most recent album because it didn't have enough "marketable" material. So they just made some. The album's first single, "Pork and Beans," was written for that reason, and it's been their most successful single ever.

In other words, it seems like the band sticks mostly to what they like to do, effortlessly supplementing with "sellout" material to further their aims. I think it's hilarious and admirable.

Finally, check out the music video for "Pork and Beans" below. It features many of the most popular YouTube stars. While in general I hate music videos, I think this one is a valuable cultural artifact:

"Pork and Beans"

Thanks for all you've shown us.

Response: Ms. Ninette Murk, Designers Against AIDS

[Note: This is a response to comments Ms. Murk left on my February 13 post, "Shopping has never been more important."]

Ms. Murk,

Thank you for your response to my post. It's good to know that you're listening. I'm sorry my reply is somewhat tardy.

First, a clarification. I indicated in my writing that the campaign's decision to focus exclusively on prevention betrayed "some hypocrisy that I can't put my finger on." Here I misspoke. To fault anyone for fighting only one facet of a multifaceted disease would be to place a ridiculous demand on any attempt to do good, and unfair.

My assertion was meant to express my confusion at the ambiguously stated goals of the campaign. I assumed that something as broadly titled as "Fashion Against AIDS" would address similarly broad aspects of the disease. I was frustrated, first at the difficulty I had in digging up its goals, and second that the campaign only seemed to be feeding itself.

I do find it dishonest that the campaign masquerades as the means to the end of fighting AIDS, when the campaign itself is a primary end. I'm also very skeptical of the reasoning which equates buying a t-shirt as doing good, since the purchase purportedly (1) spreads awareness and (2) helps sell more awareness-spreading t-shirts. This logic extols self-indulgence as a moral act, and that is misleading and dangerous.

I reiterate: with efforts like these, everyone involved, from the designers to the consumers, gets a pat on the back,* while no one with the disease gets anything. If this is justified by saying the consumers are being educated, then it should at least be made clear that's all that's going on.

I'm also concerned by your statement that prevention is overlooked in the West, "Possibly because there are antiretroviral medicines now, so even if you do get infected, you can live to be a hundred years old (give or take a side effect or two)." The belief that a morning cocktail solves all of the problems of AIDS is just not true, and it's a dangerous myth for anyone to believe, let alone someone in your position.

Antiretroviral medications do exist, but for them to be effective, patients must be one hundred percent compliant to what can be rigorous and complicated regimens. These regimens must be frequently adjusted as the disease adapts, and side effects are not negligible. And this dance cannot continue indefinitely, as the disease and the medications war simultaneously against the body and something must give.**

Misconceptions about the gravity of contracting HIV encourage carelessness with prevention, and thus cost lives.

It is true that young Westerners don't know what they should about AIDS, especially with regard to the impact right at home and their own risk. Thank you for working against this problem, and for your response which has spurred me to become better informed myself. I encourage you to be diligent in finding the best way to do pursue your goals, to be transparent in your intentions, and to accept the enhanced scrutiny that falls on those who reap the benefits of being known for doing good.

My best wishes in your endeavors.

*And what a pat, in some cases! Check out the glamorous lifestyle of Kate Roberts, founder of (Fashion Against AIDS-beneficiary) YouthAIDS, as romanticized by the Washington Post. The perks of sainthood are considerable.
**At least, that's what I remember learning from Jim Biddle, who has HIV and should know.

"Shopping has never been more important."

This quote from Swedish clothing company H&M, the same people who bring us this lovely advertisement on the bus stop outside DRL:

We "believe" that you're all morons.

You may have heard about AIDS. You may have wished you could do something about it. Well, great news - you can go on doing what you've always been doing and wonderful companies like H&M will save the world for you. All you have to do is buy their quality products. "Designers Against AIDS" joins initiatives like the RED campaign (critiqued here by my lovely friend leighcia) which bundle virtue with their products to superficially fight the world's great ills.

Everybody wins. The designers get their names advertised and associated with a "good cause." H&M gets the revenue spike associated with a successful campaign. You get to feel great about yourself for your altruism.

And those suffering from AIDS? They don't actually get anything. It took some digging on the web site, but I eventually found something which told me goals more concrete than "fighting AIDS," though not much more concrete. A whopping 25% of these proceeds go to "raise awareness and prevent the spread of AIDS worldwide."

I wouldn't be surprised at all if advertising for this campaign qualifies as "raising awareness."

Their other efforts appear to be centered on getting people to use condoms, which puzzles me. Do they not consider research for a cure a worthwhile investment? Do they think that since those who have already contracted HIV are going to die anyway, it's not worth caring for them? Both of these areas seem at least as important to me as preventing the spread of the disease (and I imagine that it's controversial how much good condom campaigns actually do). Their exclusion seems to betray some hypocrisy that I can't put my finger on.

So, for all of its noise, the campaign actually does very little more than repeat a message harped on since middle school to wealthy young Westerners.

Meaningless as the stated goals of these campaigns may be, I would go as far as to say their unstated goals are actually sinister. They seek to establish corporations as the agents for moral action in our society, rather than encouraging people to actually care about the problems and actually do something with their lives to solve them. They are a sedative, deepening complicity in an existence centered around consumption and self-gratification. They are poison.

Ezekiel speaks well of such false prophets (and false profits?):

Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, 'Peace!' when there is no peace--and one builds a wall, and they plaster it with untempered mortar*--

say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down.

Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, 'Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?' "

Therefore thus says the Lord God: "I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it.

So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 13:10-14

*Other translations render "untempered mortar" as "whitewash."

P.S. H&M is also behind a gigantic photo of a reclining and nearly nude woman above the Philly Car Share pod at 21st and Chestnut - nothing like filling a public space with an image damaging to men and women alike. They also appear to have a penchant for giant murals (like this giant Madonna in New York) which are actually ads - nothing like mixing advertising with art. I hate this company.

Response: Corporate Cosmopolitans and the End of Place

Matthew has a well-developed sense of place.

My good friend Matthew recently wrote an excellent essay in response to Manuel Castells's "The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows," which I have not read.

A major point that Matthew highlighted was the creation by elite corporate society of a globally homogenous living space. Meaning, people with elite (consulting, managerial, etc.) jobs which jet them across the country and the world can find the same living arrangements and lifestyle wherever they go: the same diet, the same hotel furnishings, and the same separation from any locals who aren't serving them.

In this way, these people are freed from the demands that crossing between places of different cultures and histories would place on them, since everywhere that they go is part of what Matthew calls "one global, virtual city of the elite, with outposts all over the physical world" and what Castells calls the "space of flows."

This transcendence of culture and place is precisely what makes such people elite. Instead of traveling to different "places," each with its own unique nature, corporate elites merely inhabit extensions of the same "space." In this view, the value of different locations rests only in the sum of their consumable attributes; New York and Los Angeles become the only cities of worth in the United States. "Whatever they got here they got there, right?" Matthew says of anywhere else.

I notice such an outlook as a student here at Penn.

I was annoyed last semester when the Undergraduate Assembly announced that they would be bringing The New York Times to campus for free this semester. Why not The Philadelphia Inquirer? I realize the Times is larger and regarded as the nation's paper of record, but inescapable is a sense of widespread indifference about the city we live in.

It makes sense in light of the space of flows. Students at the visible top of the ladder at Penn are corporate elites in training, and New York is the nearest gateway into the space of flows. Penn's location in Philadelphia is irrelevant, since the University is just a clearinghouse for the big firms. So students spend four years without leaving the campus and don't look back after graduation.

Penn gives plenty of lip service to being part of the surrounding West Philadelphia community, but its claims are ridiculous in light of the indifference its primary constituency holds toward its surroundings. The University is in the business of attracting the most gifted graduate and undergraduate students, and it doesn't do that by caring about West Philly. The students that come are in turn just passing through, on their way to jobs that also couldn't care less about the city. So they don't care either.

It bothers me for several reasons. For one, as a native to the Philadelphia area, I know that there is a ton that people are missing by ignoring it. There's much of value to learn and experience here, and to see students close their eyes to it is frustrating.

For two, whether or not individual students and the University at large put anything into the city, they are certainly reaping its benefits. Instead of being part of the community, they are - you guessed it, Jon - merely consumers.

This outlook is reinforced by the same philosophy governing the space of flows: West Philly is the space that students inhabit during their time here, not a place. Its own narrative is something separate, parallel to their own lives, not something of which to collaborate in writing the newest chapters.

And the upshot is not that the West Philly community loses and the University community wins; rather, everyone loses, for to be divorced from place is a great cost to the student. Likewise, were the student body to view itself truly as a part whose welfare is bound to its whole, even if temporarily, everyone would benefit.

Penn's community indifference is a popular topic to complain about, but I thought interpreting it in the framework presented by Castells was insightful in understanding it and in linking it to the greater values that drive people through Penn.

Understanding is well and good, but what can be done about the problem aside from complaining? Well, let's think about it.

Personal Media Player Purchase - Brand Analysis

My market analysis ignores the factor that brand has on the decision, which is actually quite significant. Given Apple’s domination of the market and the iPod’s status as a major cultural icon of this decade, the choice to buy an iPod or another brand makes a statement about who you are.

When I’m not compromising my principles, I strongly resist joining the crowd. Exceptions to this rule have not fared well for me, as the parachute pants I purchased in 9th grade powerfully attest. Something about the iPod’s universal popularity and sleekness and pervasiveness has always made me a little uncomfortable, which is why I came into this investigation predisposed against the iPod.

That said, it is hard to deny the allure of the mainstream. There’s something about choosing things like the iPod or the New York Yankees or Satan that is very reassuring. It’s declaring citizenship with the majority. You’re given a bond with everyone who has made the same choice, which is at least a plurality, even if the bond is a bit superficial. Throwing your lot with the majority means the voices of those who approve of you are bound to be more numerous than the voices of those who disapprove.

And those dancing silhouette rock stars with the white earbuds look really cool in the commercials.

That allure tempted me early in my search to spring for the $250 shiny 80 GB iPod or Zune. It was more than I wanted to spend and probably more than I needed, but that was kind of the point. This once I could comfortably give into my materialistic, image-centered instincts and indulge.

There’s part of me that cares about what others think of me much more than it ought to, and there’s another part of me that looks at the act of considering a price tag as low and a slight against who I am.

You can see the small can of worms that the simple process of shopping for a small electronic gadget opened up for me. In general I think I do better staying out of these things...

By the way, I didn’t (quite) intend to equate buying an iPod with following Satan. I’m sure many make the decision to purchase one without the debate that I went through, and as I mentioned in one class of products the iPod may actually be objectively the best choice. The juxtaposition was (mostly) made in jest.

Personal Media Player Purchase - Market Analysis

I got my new personal media player today – the 8 GB Sansa View.

This was the result of much deliberation and consternation. I spent many hours shopping online, comparing different mp3 players.

I began with the assumption that there were cheaper and better players than the iPod readily available. It turned out the story was not quite that simple. If you’re looking for a player with a hard drive with capacity on the order of 30 or 80 GB, options are somewhat limited. Aside from the iPod and the Zune (Microsoft’s version), there aren’t a whole lot of players out there. The alternatives that do exist cost about the same.

With flash memory-based players, with hard drives on the order of 4 or 8 GB, options are a little wider. Making a splash is the SanDisk Sansa brand. These are pretty straightforward players that boast a few extra features over the iPod, like FM radio and the ability to record.

The second biggest advantage the player I bought is that it operates on an open system. That means that the manufacturer doesn’t attempt to shackle you to its own media player and music store, like Apple and Microsoft do. You’re free to dump whatever music you want onto the player, provided it doesn’t have digital rights management. You don’t have to use iTunes (side rant: the Apple iEverything product names strike me as pretentious and annoying, if highly successful) or Windows Media Player or anything else.

The biggest advantage to the View I bought is its price. The MSRP for this player is a good $50 less than the equivalent iPod nano, and its features are equivalent or better in nearly every category.

So in the realm of flash players, there are undoubtedly cheaper and better alternatives to the iPod.

However, as I mentioned that is not necessarily the case when it comes to hard drive players. The iPod may very well be the best choice in this arena, and if it’s not the Zune probably is. If you’re okay with the closed system these giants provide, here mainstream looks to be the way to go.