The Power of Luxury
Curative Exploration \\ June 2024
Greetings, Urthlings.
Apropos of nothing… I find the resurgence of UAPs into mainstream conversation these days interesting and slightly baffling.
If there were extraterrestrial beings doing reconnaissance, and if those beings were capable of such technological advances as FTL flight, which implies an intelligence and a culture that far outstrip our own… Why would they need fifty-some years to gather data and make a decision about definitively revealing themselves? Suspish.1
All righty then.
Buckle up, buttercups. This issue goes all in on luxury…not goods, but beliefs, and how we signal our socioeconomic status in a world of excess and access.
We’ve got a lot to go over here. Stick around, mmkay?
But first, did you know…?
It takes something like seven times of seeing an ad before it registers and you decide to take action. Have we gotten to seven yet?
Making Tough Choices & Practicing Commitment Care for Self-Compassion
Commitment Care, rather than project or time management, emphasizes a holistic understanding of our responsibilities, interests, and activities. Commitment Care cultivates discernment (what we say yes to) and discretion (what we say no to), so that we can maintain (or renew) personal integrity in our relationships with the divine, with ourselves, and with others.
In this workshop, participants will clarify their commitment areas, and map their existing commitments. They’ll also categorize their commitments by priority, which enables them to make decisions “ahead of time,” so that they can appropriately respond to new opportunities.
🗓️ Saturday, July 13
⏰ 3:00-4:30p EST
🖥️ Online via Zoom
🎁 Free!
Would love to see you there!
Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols, Rob Henderson
Rob Henderson explores the phrase “luxury beliefs,” those “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” Henderson contends that luxury beliefs have replaced luxury goods, such things as branded bags and leisure activities.
Drawing from nineteenth-century sociologist Thorstein Veblen, Henderson observes that symbols of luxury (and who can, or who does, access or possess them) enable us to determine each other’s financial and social status. We rank and order each other based on the symbols we display, the socially-ascribed value of those symbols, and the perceived difficulty and costs of acquiring them.
Twentieth-century sociologist Pierre Bourdieu echoes these ideas, emphasizing how “distance from necessity” defines the affluent class: the more rare and expensive a symbol is, and the less vital it is for daily survival, the more likely it is to be adopted as a luxury good. Bourdieu coined the term “cultural capital” to describe these “intricate and expensive tastes and habits that the upper classes use to obtain distinction.”
Distinction is the key here.
The affluent deliberately set themselves apart from the masses, through the conversion of economic capital into cultural capital. These symbols become signals of power: purchasing, political, intellectual, and social. But once a symbol becomes more widely available, such as Gucci purses or Chanel perfume, it’s no longer the thing that sets the affluent apart from the bourgeoisie, the elite from hoi polloi. The affluent move on to the next exclusive, hard-to-find symbol.
Henderson proposes that material goods no longer serve this signaling function (the market is now saturated with ever-more attainable luxury goods). Instead, the affluent class, the elites, have now attached cultural capital and social status to beliefs.
Such beliefs are often at odds with conventional opinion, like defunding the police, deploying peculiar vocabulary, or downplaying hard work (in favor of luck), and signal the holder’s education, and the time and ability to acquire them at all.
So, luxury beliefs are the new status symbols: our new indicators of social position, level of wealth, education, and leisure time.
Meet the Symbolic Capitalists, Musa Al-Gharbi
Here, Al-Gharbi shares a brief historical summary of how “knowledge economy professionals” acquire and maintain their socioeconomic position and how that affects their political, moral, and cultural positioning.
Uh…lemm’esplain.
In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx began his critique of capitalism, proposing that this economic system would “break down almost all social and cultural divisions,” subsuming everything that makes us human into “the market.” Since all human ingenuity and effort would be required to fuel and maintain that market, workers would eventually cease to care about staying or being human, because it’d “be a luxury” we simply couldn’t afford.2
More specifically, Marx parsed out a new “middle class” of workers, examinations of which continued throughout the world wars and into the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1970s, Barbara and John Ehenreich coined the term “The Professional-Managerial Class” (PMC) to refer to those whose roles in society are to:
“keep the capitalist machine running (in the present and in perpetuity);
maximize its efficiency and productivity; and
justify any inequalities or impositions that are required in order to achieve these ends.”3
Al-Gharbi continues to trace the evolution of this concept throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sharing his own permutation of it with the phrase “symbolic capitalists.” Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, a symbolic capitalist is “someone who possesses a high level of symbolic capital, and exerts control over, and extracts profits from, the means of symbolic (re)production. They are elites whose social position is tied to the production, distribution and transformation of symbolic capital,” such as advertising, entertainment, education, activism, politics, etc.
Al-Gharbi’s specific focus is on how subtle this form of capitalism is, and how both those who wield it and those upon whom it is exercised frequently fail to recognize the power dynamics at play. He observes that “wokeness” has become a key source of cultural capital, serving as a sign that someone is of an elite background or is well-educated. By expressing or affirming “woke” (i.e., “luxury”) beliefs, symbolic capitalists demonstrate that they are “part of the club” of those who respond appropriately when cued.
Luxury Surveillance, Chris Gilliard and David Golumbia
Gilliard and Golumbia explore this idea of “luxury surveillance” — data and device tracking that we willingly pay for, and from which, in other contexts, we might desperately wish to pay for deliverance.
The authors contrast wearable tech such as the Apple Watch and FitBit with ankle monitors and other “e-carceration” devices. In the first example, we hand over data about our movements, biology, and emotional states — in the name of self-quantification, improvement, and security— to companies who use and sell that data to study, predict, and control human behaviors and populations. In the second example, that same data is extracted for the maintenance of social subordination and the constant leverage of power over formerly incarcerated and marginalized populations.
Gilliard and Golumbia point out that those who think they have nothing to hide “willingly submit to surveillance, pay more for it, and put themselves into a highly privileged category.” They observe that when we think “social power” is on our side, and we’re the ones watching, we tend to believe that surveillance technology works for us, and can’t be used against us.
But just as digital culture stubbornly maintains a costly, sophisticated, and exploitative material infrastructure, so to does our luxury surveillance come at the expense of those we deem “not us,” and thus require? necessitate? being controlled by us.
Luxury surveillance—like luxury beliefs—trends toward those who have the economic and social power to escape its most obvious controls. As Gilliard and Golumbia observe,
“The pleasure of belonging to the “luxury” class is always maintained at the expense of those who do not belong, much as the misery of imposed surveillance comes partly from its constant reminder that we have to submit to external control.”
And on that cheery note…
What can we take away from all of this?
I’ve read these essays several times over several months, reflecting on the idea of “luxury beliefs” and “luxury surveillance.”4 I’ve gotten used to thinking of these things in economic or emotional terms: we’re constantly sold “the next new thing,” or we feel the need for safety and security. But, while these forms or expressions of luxury might be new or unique to our moment, their impulse isn’t new at all.
In fact, I think we find this impulse throughout all of human history, and it comes from a single source: pride.
In his essay “The Inner Ring,” C.S. Lewis talks about the two different systems or hierarchies that exist within any social group: the formal, written, explicit set of rules and relationships; and the informal, unspoken, intuited web of interactions indicating where a person might actually stand on the social ladder. Lewis calls this the “inner ring.”
Lewis remarks that all of us, at some point in our lives, experience the desire to be “inside the local Ring and [feel] the terror of being left outside.” This desire comes in forms such as snobbery and ambition, and none of us are immune to it. If you’ve ever experienced that glow of satisfaction at hearing “she’s one of us,” or found yourself feeling a bit smug that you’re sitting at the executives’ table while your coworker remains with the peons… Well, you’re certainly human.
But what kind of human, Lewis asks?
He points out that this desire frequently motivates us to take action, but unless we deliberately examine our own motives and behaviors, we may well find ourselves “inner ringers.” In fact, that desire—to remain inside “with the others” and not unexpectedly find ourselves on the outside—has the potential to make a “man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” If, when asked to look the other way for “a friend,” to laugh at “a joke,” we find ourselves so desperate to be welcomed that we simply go along to get along, Lewis says we will one day find ourselves a “scoundrel.”5
Let’s go back a bit, shall we?
In his latest post blogging through the Hebrew book of Genesis, Alan Jacobs explores the dichotomy of the country and the city: between innocence and simplicity, and noisy corruption.
Jacobs proposes that “the country” in Genesis presents an image of constant fragility, the awareness that life and livelihood rely on other, higher powers, namely, the G-D of Israel.
By contrast, “the city” of the Pentateuch is actually an image of “human self-reliance,” a human-built system in which all of its inhabitants collaborate in the attempt to eliminate uncertainty, to “bring everything under human control.”
But why stop there?
Before we ever get the boundary between the country and the city, we read in Genesis 3 about the first ring: the knowledge of good and evil, and the promise of “being like God” in knowing the difference. The desire to see, to know, for ourselves, to have some measure of control over the process and the outcome…
In a word, the desire for power.
It’s not that we’re wrong to acquire certain goods or hold specific beliefs. The danger comes when we congratulate ourselves on being insulated from the abuses of luxury by virtue of being “in the know,” of having greater education, insight, or moral superiority than “those people.” The danger comes when we believe we’ve acquired a measure of control over the world around us, including “those people.” The danger comes when we wield our power against,6 rather than for7 “those people.”
It’s a danger I confront every time I look in the mirror.
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
Share
Did this resonate with you? If so, and you think someone else in your life might enjoy it, please share!
Support
If you liked this issue and want to leave a tip, you can do so here.
You can also support this publication through annual or monthly patronage subscriptions.
Hire
Are you a solopreneur, faith leader, or small business owner struggling with leading and communicating in a world of constant change and uncertainty?
I'm available for one-on-one sessions in personal coaching, as well as strategic development for your business or program. Together, we identify and disrupt old habits and stories that no longer serve, while expanding your field of vision to explore new approaches, outlooks, and tools for doing your most meaningful work in the world.
I also offer workshops for business, ministry, or team leaders, student groups, and more.
Visit me online to learn more!
Of course he said more than this, but you get the point.
Emphasis mine.
I’ve grown increasingly more Luddite over the last few years, ever more reluctant to adopt new technologies without wondering what I would sacrifice in the process. I still don’t know how to get (halfway-decent) output from ChatGPT and Midjourney. It’s unlikely I ever will.
In today’s terms, an asshole.
