A recent NYT article intrigued me: Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” … is the most devastating portrait of punctured middle-class dreams in our national literature. … [It] has consolidated its prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions. … Mr. Miller later wrote …. that he had hoped the play would expose “this pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator, waving a paid-up mortgage at the moon, victorious at last.” … Mr. Miller remembered worrying in 1949 that “there was too much identification with Willy, too much weeping, and that the play’s ironies were being dimmed out by all this empathy.” … Miller’s outrage at a capitalist system he wanted to humanize has become our cynical adaptation to a capitalist system we pride ourselves on knowing how to manipulate. (
That ubernerd will marry the supermodel and the model will cheat on the nerd with the "tatooed guy' ;) You must hate it when the "tatooed guy" is educated and yes it happens. Just like the "primate" should go to school you should try doing some pushups. Hating on others for their blessings or shortcomings seems very primal in my opinion.
I remember thinking beauty wasn't a ranking. Then I did eventually realize that I had so built-in a desire not to waste my time on the unattainable that I was completely concentrating my efforts on girls I might conceivably get and almost instinctively leaving the much prettier girls to the higher status boys.
The gene that prompts a lower-middle status male to go after lower status females is a winner in evolution. And NOWHERE in evolution has anyone ever seen an advantage in a gene telling the human why it is driving that human the way that it is driving them.
Right on. It actually seems to me that in modern society, those who most vividly display primate status markers are in a very important part of society, much lower status. The nerd is not a primate winner, but what he can do with his low aggressiveness and noisy neocortex is pretty impressive. It may take evolution 10,000 years to "build in" a sexual preference for nerds, until then the highly tatooed guy with the dopey mullet, the dopey chopper, the leather, the studs, and the wallet on a chain will gain a monkey-respect from all of us, boys and girls alike, even as, for the most part, the ubernerds marry the supermodels.
It seems to me we see over and over the loss of status associated with a luxury good which becomes inexpensive and commonly available. Knock-off luxury items confer decidedly less status than the real things, and a better quality knock-off doesn't fix that bug, it breaks it more. Of course evolution has generated gigantically attractive males and females in overwhelming numbers, and still most people would rather bag the popular guy/girl than the lower status one.
In some sense, spirituality is the realization that it is Evolution that puts us on the rat race, but that we can decide on our own to get off that rat race and enjoy the beauty that is freely available everywhere.
It is one thing to not like this state of life, it is another to refuse to see it when it is pretty obvious.
A belief that capitalism brings much more value to humanity than various competing alternatives IS an ideology. It very much depends on what you have decided is valuable.
A talented character actor could play unsympathetic and good writers could write unsympathetic. Whatever the original intention with All In The Family might have been, it Archie was clearly intended to be likable through the vast bulk of its writing and acting. That's my critique of capitalism: in North Korea Lear would not have pandered to the audience just to make a few extra bucks. Right, he would have done what the dictator told him no matter how stupid it was. MUCH better than capitalism, or maybe not.
"Real" status? Who decides what is real and what isn't? You? Why?
The "real" impact of status seems to be improved access to sex, stuff, political power, and more or less any "thing" in the human sphere any one in the human sphere might want. There are certainly people with superior access to sex, stuff, and power that I don't personally like or respect. I'd have to be pretty unrealistic to claim their apparent "status" was somehow not real for that reason.
I read "Death of a Salesman" my senior year in high school. It was then, and remains today, one of the most unsettling, personally frightening things that I've ever read. The specter of Willy Loman's failure and the meanness and everyday desperation of his life have haunted me ever since.
It’s not obvious to me that beauty is a ranking. Can you provide an argument for that?
Yes, of course, the ranking is only approximate due to differences in tastes. (All things considered, the differences are pretty small.) This is an additional complication.
The problem with sales of many things is that there are externalities that are not included. Sometimes it is because the externalities are unknown, like the failure of the teenagers remaining kidney. Sometimes the externaltieis are known but the cost to mitigate them is not known, for example putting CO2 into the atmosphere.
The usual response is to deny that the externality even exists, as with AGW deniers, health effects of smoking deniers.
If it’s not obvious that beauty is a ranking, then it’s not obvious that wealth and income is a ranking either,
In fact they aren't.
appearance as well. Fitness and clothing (and style and grooming) are “mostly hereditary.” Not just tendency towards a certain body shape (certainly you don’t believe that fitness is as easy for all) but also the habits learned and even one’s temperament– which also applies to income– that appears to be learned early or else genetic.
Differences in genes and habits learned from parents can cetainly affect appearance, but nothing stops you from joining a gym and copying the clothing style of your peers. Becoming much more wealthy than your parents, on the other hand, is very difficult.
Along any individual scale status is zero-sum. That's why the diversity of modern society is important, because it allows people to compete in different status competitions. Of course a side effect of this is that people feel the need to disparage different measures of status (including how playwrights look down upon salesmen), but perhaps that's inevitably a part of sustaining the different types of status.
In a system that empathises cooperation and social harmony, instead of individualism, one would expect a fewer number of different status competitions. (An extreme being Communist countries, where the single status competition of the Party would control everything, instead of people competing in many different ways.)
Even if this somewhat lowered the total amount of status-seeking, decreasing the number of different ways to seek status would worsen the problem IMO.
The US remake of the UK original was then all too accurate, since Johnny Speight was ways frustrated by viewers sympathising with Alf.
That ubernerd will marry the supermodel and the model will cheat on the nerd with the "tatooed guy' ;) You must hate it when the "tatooed guy" is educated and yes it happens. Just like the "primate" should go to school you should try doing some pushups. Hating on others for their blessings or shortcomings seems very primal in my opinion.
I remember thinking beauty wasn't a ranking. Then I did eventually realize that I had so built-in a desire not to waste my time on the unattainable that I was completely concentrating my efforts on girls I might conceivably get and almost instinctively leaving the much prettier girls to the higher status boys.
The gene that prompts a lower-middle status male to go after lower status females is a winner in evolution. And NOWHERE in evolution has anyone ever seen an advantage in a gene telling the human why it is driving that human the way that it is driving them.
Right on. It actually seems to me that in modern society, those who most vividly display primate status markers are in a very important part of society, much lower status. The nerd is not a primate winner, but what he can do with his low aggressiveness and noisy neocortex is pretty impressive. It may take evolution 10,000 years to "build in" a sexual preference for nerds, until then the highly tatooed guy with the dopey mullet, the dopey chopper, the leather, the studs, and the wallet on a chain will gain a monkey-respect from all of us, boys and girls alike, even as, for the most part, the ubernerds marry the supermodels.
It seems to me we see over and over the loss of status associated with a luxury good which becomes inexpensive and commonly available. Knock-off luxury items confer decidedly less status than the real things, and a better quality knock-off doesn't fix that bug, it breaks it more. Of course evolution has generated gigantically attractive males and females in overwhelming numbers, and still most people would rather bag the popular guy/girl than the lower status one.
In some sense, spirituality is the realization that it is Evolution that puts us on the rat race, but that we can decide on our own to get off that rat race and enjoy the beauty that is freely available everywhere.
It is one thing to not like this state of life, it is another to refuse to see it when it is pretty obvious.
A belief that capitalism brings much more value to humanity than various competing alternatives IS an ideology. It very much depends on what you have decided is valuable.
A talented character actor could play unsympathetic and good writers could write unsympathetic. Whatever the original intention with All In The Family might have been, it Archie was clearly intended to be likable through the vast bulk of its writing and acting. That's my critique of capitalism: in North Korea Lear would not have pandered to the audience just to make a few extra bucks. Right, he would have done what the dictator told him no matter how stupid it was. MUCH better than capitalism, or maybe not.
"Real" status? Who decides what is real and what isn't? You? Why?
The "real" impact of status seems to be improved access to sex, stuff, political power, and more or less any "thing" in the human sphere any one in the human sphere might want. There are certainly people with superior access to sex, stuff, and power that I don't personally like or respect. I'd have to be pretty unrealistic to claim their apparent "status" was somehow not real for that reason.
I read "Death of a Salesman" my senior year in high school. It was then, and remains today, one of the most unsettling, personally frightening things that I've ever read. The specter of Willy Loman's failure and the meanness and everyday desperation of his life have haunted me ever since.
I do favor a teen having the right to do so, but I don't understand where the externality comes in.
Even without considering the subjectivity of tastes, beauty doesn't seem to be a ranking.
Rob Reiner is the son of Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke show. It was the sit-com equivalent of picking a Manning in the NFL draft.
It’s not obvious to me that beauty is a ranking. Can you provide an argument for that?
Yes, of course, the ranking is only approximate due to differences in tastes. (All things considered, the differences are pretty small.) This is an additional complication.
So you think that teenagers should be allowed to sell a kidney to get a iPad?
http://www.padgadget.com/20...
The problem with sales of many things is that there are externalities that are not included. Sometimes it is because the externalities are unknown, like the failure of the teenagers remaining kidney. Sometimes the externaltieis are known but the cost to mitigate them is not known, for example putting CO2 into the atmosphere.
The usual response is to deny that the externality even exists, as with AGW deniers, health effects of smoking deniers.
If it’s not obvious that beauty is a ranking, then it’s not obvious that wealth and income is a ranking either,
In fact they aren't.
appearance as well. Fitness and clothing (and style and grooming) are “mostly hereditary.” Not just tendency towards a certain body shape (certainly you don’t believe that fitness is as easy for all) but also the habits learned and even one’s temperament– which also applies to income– that appears to be learned early or else genetic.
Differences in genes and habits learned from parents can cetainly affect appearance, but nothing stops you from joining a gym and copying the clothing style of your peers. Becoming much more wealthy than your parents, on the other hand, is very difficult.
Along any individual scale status is zero-sum. That's why the diversity of modern society is important, because it allows people to compete in different status competitions. Of course a side effect of this is that people feel the need to disparage different measures of status (including how playwrights look down upon salesmen), but perhaps that's inevitably a part of sustaining the different types of status.
In a system that empathises cooperation and social harmony, instead of individualism, one would expect a fewer number of different status competitions. (An extreme being Communist countries, where the single status competition of the Party would control everything, instead of people competing in many different ways.)
Even if this somewhat lowered the total amount of status-seeking, decreasing the number of different ways to seek status would worsen the problem IMO.