There's some romantic thinking in there as well, and I can't quite source why I believe it, but there is a kind of catholic, hellenism to taking the idea of our perception of beauty and symmetry as a form of truth (as distinct from mere power deciding truth by fiat, or of it being ineffable), and then iterating on that idea into a logic around it. I don't imagine reading Simulacra and Simulation again, and I don't know if it would stand the test of time, but that decoupling of symbols from artifacts and the represented from the real is a theme in 20th century critical theory. The other influences might be Aristotle's nichomachean ethics and the Stoics, but I'm having trouble sourcing my own ideas directly from those much better ones other than to say they were influential.įrom a po-mo side, Venturi's "ducks and decorated sheds," essay was influential, as his bit was about buildings that are symbols vs. Only tangentially related by motorcycles is zen and the art., which was also about these kinds of qualities. Craford's "Shopclass as Soulcraft," was the best recent version of these ideas I've read, and it is a much more in-depth treatise than one would typically expect from a popular book. Thank you, while I can't recommend original philosophical sources, I can say I like Matthew B. Consider the tech bro in the $140 hoodie and $120 rock-climbing-oriented "tech pants" and $300 hipster throwback work-boots telling you very seriously that they immediately dismiss anyone who comes to an interview in a suit, as a poseur. It even happens within counter-culture groups or those who claim that fashion doesn't matter, over time-they develop clothing-related signals and in-group markers. Lots of it's about externalizing "identity" to ensure the observer can easily tell "who you are"-lots more is simply about conspicuous consumption, literally showing you have money to burn (except that if you just burned it, that wouldn't leave you anything to show people that you'd burnt it-you have money to burn, but not enough to burn without making sure people know you did so, which is the domain of the actually-rich, for whom having tons of money is assumed such that overt attempts to demonstrate it just look desperate and raise questions)
MAKING SENSE OF MISFITS DISCOGRAPHY MODS
See also: recent-model-year obviously-expensive trucks expensive rims and other mostly-cosmetic car mods "legible" clothing generally. Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit. One of the biggest tells for the Fussell's Middle-who easily come off as the most unfortunate of the bunch, being the most class-anxious but also very bad at signaling-versus the "higher" classes he outlines, whom members of the Middle are often trying to signal as or imitate, are 1) how much of their stuff, including clothing, involves synthetic materials, and 2) how much of their stuff imitates a real thing-fake flowers, fine art prints on the walls, that kind of thing. Much of Fussell's Class ends up being about this, which amounts to how various classes choose to signal, and how good they are at it. Do not underestimate the value of good taste, it's an intuition about power. > That difference between effect and affect is one of the sneakiest bits of the english language and perhaps even the culture's most cunningly set trap. the represented, where typically, something real is powerful independent of who is observing it, and the representation is not. > That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehension of the real vs. That difference between effect and affect is one of the sneakiest bits of the english language and perhaps even the culture's most cunningly set trap. Viewed this way, taste is the expression of what you percieve to be power based on your experience, good taste is the inverse of the distance between them, and poor taste is measured in the gap between what is affected and of-what it is the effect. Taste may be an instinct for honest signals, which would seem like its own sort of intelligence. It's whether something legitimately represents power. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehension of the real vs. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge.
Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life.