Thursday, February 25, 2016

David Thompson: Sweet Sorrows

I’ve heard it called “Luxurious Concerns.” That is, your concerns mark your social status. If your concerns are about keeping your job, paying your rent, or whether your kids’ school is any damn good, you’re worried about Big Things, and therefore you are marked as a Struggling Person. Only those who have really made it -- who are at the top of the economic and social order -- have the luxury of worrying about the Small Things. And if you worry about the Very Small Things, or indeed the Microscopic Things, then, well and truly, you have arrived… If you can’t afford a Luxury Car, or a Luxury Apartment, you can at least adorn yourself with Luxury Worries. It’s very cheap. Easy, too… Our modern class of intellectually-insecure social climbers are posing as connoisseurs of offensiveness. 
See also Kristian Niemietz and Daniel Hannan on the same. 
The attempt to cultivate pretentious guilt and pretentious indignation, and to balance grief and umbrage on a very tiny thing, the tinier the better, is of course a Guardian staple. It gives the left’s national organ its distinctive tone - that tinny, unconvincing high-pitched whine. Affecting woe, especially improbable woe, is how many leftwing columnists signal their position in their own moral hierarchy, relative to you, the heathen rabble. As I said some time ago
It’s important to understand these are not just lapses in logic or random fits of insincerity; these outpourings are displays – of class and moral elevation. Which is why they persist, despite getting knottier and ever more absurd. Crudely summarised, it goes something like this: “I am better than you because I pretend to feel worse.” 
And this is why, for instance, a tearful Theo Hobson tells us, “There is no excuse for failing to feel liberal guilt about race and class.” Because until “this problematic world” has been purged of all vice and inequity, however unrelated to your own behaviour, a heavy, heavy heart must be worn on the sleeve. How else will people know how superior you are? According to Mr Hobson, if you aren’t ostentatiously fretting about the eating of meat and “affluent lifestyles endangering the planet,” and if you aren’t “anxious about your status as a comfy bourgeoisie” and ashamed of earning more than some other random person, then there must be something wrong with you. And so you should feel guilty for not feeling guilty about things you shouldn’t feel guilty about. It’s the Guardian way. (read more)
Also see Tom Wolf on status signaling. (posted by ChipA)

5 comments:

Amartel said...

Tom Wolfe was setting progressive pieties and pretensions on fire for decades. Bonfire of the Vanities. Radical Chic. Bauhaus to Our House. The Pump House Gang. The classics.

Methadras said...

All this does is confirm why leftism is an ideology rooted in the miasma of envy, jealousy, and emotional turmoil. From AGW to 1st world people problem like this.

Chip Ahoy said...

See, the way to get out of guilt is share what you have. Just give it, you fucker, or shut up. Give what you are given. Give freely. Give freely of yourself. That's how to get out of this trap.

*click*

I just now changed channels.

A friend wrote and mentioned, "Jay extended an invitation to Joe to Puerto Vallarta, the Jay added, I didn't think Joe even liked Mexico."

Meaning Jay extended an invitation expecting it to be rejected. But it wasn't.

And there's Joe again flying off for no good reason at all.

There is not reason to go there.

Look, people get old they know there are only a few years left and they're afraid they're going to miss something so they fly, frenetically fly all over the world to make sure they take in as much as they can, to make sure they never say no to anything.

That's what's happening psychologically. I think.

So you see how it's up to me to provide these people with a purpose. An aim. Some side reason to go there. A target. And you will be graded.

Here is my note to Joe now in Mexico for no good reason and a place he'd rather not be. Poor thing. He's psychologically trapped in frenetic behavior. Due to advanced age. Did I explain this clearly? Here's the note:

Are you in Mexico?

Do you have your camera?

Can you get some pictures of the nitty gritty?

C'mon, be a sport.

Take some pictures we'll never expect.

Take some pictures we'll never see in a tourist brochure.

If you're there, c'mon, use your phone and take some photos of details that catch your attention. We want to see oddities. The odder the better.

Show us what makes Mexico so odd. Please.

ricpic said...

Two huge things are coming: economic implosion; war to the death with Islam. Will liberal pieties and the status contests inherent in those pieties survive such pressure cooker events? I don't know. I do know that it is naive to think that reality, when it hits, will make liberals come to their senses. If anything they will double down in terms of the intensity of their "concerns." The hysteria will go into even higher gear than it is at present. Let the proles fight for life will be their mantra. We have higher - oops, my neck - concer.........

MamaM said...

BTW, this was a post I appreciated. Although the comment total was low, the post added value to Levity and provided links I found useful. The mix lately had been good, combining political content, pictures and human interest stories, along with personal comment. Keep following your nose and interests and the authenticity and energy behind those pursuits will keep the blog fueled up and rolling. While drama runs up the comment total, the opportunity to engage and connect via idea and comment with real people, with real interests and sincere opinion trumps all else.