Why I started this blog, why I called it "conspicuous cognition", and why the desire for social approval drives the evolutionary weirdness of our species.
Interesting essay - although not 100% clear that your somewhat contradicting ideas support your title thesis which is fine because as you write - humans are weird (complex) as compared to most other animals. And as many secular social science academics do - you seem to often mention/refer to evolution and its main founder, Darwin. Which I assume means you may be an atheist? I ask this because it pertains to my own ideas about prestige and power. As a spiritual person, my main concern about who to please or seek approval from is God first and then my wife and family friends etc. A prioritized social karass of ringlets/entities moving outward from me (like a pebble being dropped in a calm lake) to the rest of the universe I temporarily inhabit in this physical body. How do I know what pleases God - you are thinking? Like many others, I use my own mix of learned knowledge/wisdom of religions and philosophies from around the world (most overlap as far as good behavior concepts) and my own intuitive intelligence to guide me. Am I 100% sure I am right all the time - not at all - but when one is calm, mindful and satiated, one's inner moral compass is a trustworthy guide - our direct connection to the greater source. I was always popular throughout my life - probably because I am decent looking in a superficial world dominated by our eyes and not snobby based on my own big, typically American dysfunctional middle class family environment and moving around a lot during my childhood which forces one to either be extroverted or more introverted to navigate through our first collective tribal encounters with strangers aka schools. I chose extro (or it chose me?) - again based on my family/society environmental influences. Being an artist and as far as my own creative pursuits throughout my life - my own motives for doing so changed and evolved as I grew older - thank God! When I was young - my ego was huge and it was all about being a Rock Star which I pursued seriously for 15 years in LA and NYC - the core motives were carnal - getting hot women to hang out (wink-wink), which I guess would be a social aspect and of course getting rich enough to have FU money aka freedom from the stress caused from the lack thereof. The fame aspect would fit in with what you say about prestige - though I never achieved that, I did have some level of success but honestly having a big crowd dig your art is great but does not fill the hole in your soul - nor does sleeping with lots of women, unhealthy addictions to drugs, gambling and too much food etc. nor does money but I have to admit - to this day I still wish I had enough to be free and really pursue my art dreams full time - a luxury for folks lucky enough to have those resources available. And honestly I would not be heart broken if I never really make it as an artist while I am alive because some my heroes did not either. But I would love to win the lottery and live off the grid as much as is now possible - this my point - that goes against your over arching general social status hypothesis - because recognition and social status is not as important to me now as a middle aged man as is the freedom and luxury of just making art in a decent environment and being a good partner to my wife and son/brother to my family. But like most I have a day job and I like it most of the time. I am a middle school art teacher and it pays the bills and I do get some free time per year to do some art and writing etc. but the muse does not always line up with summer break! Motivation is the great mystery in education - how do I motivate my students to care about/respect Art and its unique role in our human development? Every day is a challenge and I dig it for the most part. Wow - what a tangent! Look forward to reading your future posts and some of the new school academics you mentioned. God bless and Happy New Year!
Good comment and good pushback. I am an atheist, yes, with a very Darwinian worldview. I have a lot of respect for religion but I don't think of religious beliefs as being true of very well-grounded in evidence. I tend to think they serve other - often social - functions. I think the point you make about wanting to live off the grid is a very good point (and one I personally sympathise with a lot). I definitely don't think recognition and status are the only drivers of human behaviour, and in many cases they are not even the main ones. But I do think they are extremely important and often unacknowledged, and that in subtle and often not-very-conscious ways they drive us to behave in strange and seemingly non-functional ways. Will be writing more about this topic this year so looking forward to more comments from you.
Brilliant stuff! I nodded along with a lot of what you said, but I'm afraid I disagree with you about the core of your argument, which I take to be: "To understand such evolutionarily weird behaviours, we should embrace Veblen’s core insight about luxury goods and services: human behaviours that seem odd, irrational, and wasteful are often rooted in social goals."
I have a bunch of disagreements, probably because I find more to agree with in Bataille's writing on waste and excess than Veblen or Mauss:
- All behaviour is weird and wasteful. This is because life is weird and wasteful. Waste does not serve a social function because waste is an end in itself (and, ultimately, what we desire - and the reason we accumulate power in the first place - is to escape and exceed systems of utilitarian logic and the regulation of waste). To say we waste in order to accumulate power doesn't tell me anything if the reason we accumulate that power is in order to waste.
- To prevent or reduce waste is to invite catastrophe, not for functionalist reasons, but rather because excess must be wasted. If excess energy is not wasted through ritualised / formalised sacrifice then it will be wasted through war or violence, and I worry that a functionalist approach to waste carries implicit normative claims aiming to make waste somehow more "efficient". I do see a distinction between catastrophic waste and productive waste, so perhaps this is somewhere our mental models overlap.
- More broadly, I worry that evolutionary explanations for social behaviour are deterministic, simplistic and (ultimately) politically reductive. I really enjoyed David Graeber and David Wengrow's discussion on potlach and waste in "The Dawn of Everything", and I thought they made important points criticising social evolution and emphasising multiplicity, change, and variety within cultures around the world historically.
Still, I hope you'll accept my comment not as criticism, but rather as an attempt to better understand your argument and test it against other ideas. I've subscribed, and I very much look forward to reading more!
Thanks, Joe. This is really good pushback. I agree with some of what you say, but I am reluctant to think that waste is generally an end in itself - maybe sometimes it is, but sometimes (e.g., "wasting" money on expensive watches) the appearance of waste or irrationality really does emerge from underlying goals, and I think this is relevant to much of human cognition.
I'm also sympathetic to your worries about evolutionary explanations for social behaviour - they can be simplistic and misguided - but I think an evolutionary lens is ultimately indispensable for understanding human psychology and social behaviour. I will be publishing a full-length defence of evolutionary psychology at some point so I will be interested to get your thoughts then. I also might write a review of The Dawn of Everything - a book I found quite frustrating!
Cheers! I'm obviously still thinking this through and testing it against your arguments, so appreciate your patience (e.g. the concept of "productive waste" makes no sense in the context of Bataille, I should have called it something else). I guess I'm arguing that "waste" (or disorder, disorganisation, entropy, etc.) is the fundamental output of life. In fact, one definition of "life" (among others) might be a form of order through the generation of waste / disorder in an environment (and not just through metabolic processes, but through most interactions with that environment). I know the concept "waste" is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but I think it's fundamental.
This is one reason why I am still unconvinced by the watch example. Individuals might buy a watch in order to increase status or power, but that status or power is not an end in itself. Status and power are means for social animals to consume and generate waste / disorder, which is what life does. There are ways to suppress or delay this consumption of surplus (e.g. through capitalist reinvestment of profits, or ascetic self-denial) but I think that way lies catastrophe.
As for evolution: I'm less interested in the concept of selection than I am in the concept of variety of traits. Evolution is not (at least, as I understand it) the creation of fixed structures over time, but instead flows of variety migrating and interacting with changing environments (and also changing those environments / being changed by those environments).
I really would love to read a full-length defence of evolutionary psychology, and would definitely be interested in a review of The Dawn of Everything - please do write that!
Anyway, thank you again for the patience and looking forward to your upcoming articles!
P.S. If you're considering additional topics, I'd love to read a defence of evolutionary psychology from the DeleuzoGuattarian critique of psychoanalysis as oedipalisation. That is (crudely) that despite claiming to explain the world, evolutionary psychology is actually structuring the world.
That sounds like an interesting critique. I'm not familiar with it so it would be good to know if my (qualified) defence of evolutionary psychology address it when I get round to publishing it here.
I think Market For Rationalizations* is an extremely important idea and a good phrase, sort of like Luxury Beliefs. Haven’t read The Dawn of Everything, but of recent similar books I’m most impressed by Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox.
Competitive Cooperation, or is it Cooperative Competition?
What do people want? Related to what do I want to do? Next?
Substack , Twitter, books, TV, games, exercise… now it’s lunchtime in Slovakia.
*probably a better title for your book, not sure it’s the main focus tho.
Thanks! Yes, I loved the Goodness Paradox - great book. I really like the title "Competitive Cooperation", but my book will explore slightly broader themes.
really a good primer to marketplace of rationalisation and your conspicuous cognition exploration.
One thing that I wish you can do is to include a good citations as an endnotes for all your writings just like [Reasonable People Tom Stafford Substack] (https://tomstafford.substack.com)
I understand that all references are well link with good descriptions, but it require the reader to go into the links to identify what's the source.
At least if you can complement the linkings with reference list at the end of each article it'd be a nurturing read for everyone.
Btw, I guess you want to collaborate with Tom and Lionel as many of his writing reference your work.
Big fan of both Tom and Lionel's work. Good idea about including citations at the end. At the end of next week's post on misinformation I include several references for further reading (in addition to all the links throughout the article). Hopefully that sort of thing will help.
Interesting essay - although not 100% clear that your somewhat contradicting ideas support your title thesis which is fine because as you write - humans are weird (complex) as compared to most other animals. And as many secular social science academics do - you seem to often mention/refer to evolution and its main founder, Darwin. Which I assume means you may be an atheist? I ask this because it pertains to my own ideas about prestige and power. As a spiritual person, my main concern about who to please or seek approval from is God first and then my wife and family friends etc. A prioritized social karass of ringlets/entities moving outward from me (like a pebble being dropped in a calm lake) to the rest of the universe I temporarily inhabit in this physical body. How do I know what pleases God - you are thinking? Like many others, I use my own mix of learned knowledge/wisdom of religions and philosophies from around the world (most overlap as far as good behavior concepts) and my own intuitive intelligence to guide me. Am I 100% sure I am right all the time - not at all - but when one is calm, mindful and satiated, one's inner moral compass is a trustworthy guide - our direct connection to the greater source. I was always popular throughout my life - probably because I am decent looking in a superficial world dominated by our eyes and not snobby based on my own big, typically American dysfunctional middle class family environment and moving around a lot during my childhood which forces one to either be extroverted or more introverted to navigate through our first collective tribal encounters with strangers aka schools. I chose extro (or it chose me?) - again based on my family/society environmental influences. Being an artist and as far as my own creative pursuits throughout my life - my own motives for doing so changed and evolved as I grew older - thank God! When I was young - my ego was huge and it was all about being a Rock Star which I pursued seriously for 15 years in LA and NYC - the core motives were carnal - getting hot women to hang out (wink-wink), which I guess would be a social aspect and of course getting rich enough to have FU money aka freedom from the stress caused from the lack thereof. The fame aspect would fit in with what you say about prestige - though I never achieved that, I did have some level of success but honestly having a big crowd dig your art is great but does not fill the hole in your soul - nor does sleeping with lots of women, unhealthy addictions to drugs, gambling and too much food etc. nor does money but I have to admit - to this day I still wish I had enough to be free and really pursue my art dreams full time - a luxury for folks lucky enough to have those resources available. And honestly I would not be heart broken if I never really make it as an artist while I am alive because some my heroes did not either. But I would love to win the lottery and live off the grid as much as is now possible - this my point - that goes against your over arching general social status hypothesis - because recognition and social status is not as important to me now as a middle aged man as is the freedom and luxury of just making art in a decent environment and being a good partner to my wife and son/brother to my family. But like most I have a day job and I like it most of the time. I am a middle school art teacher and it pays the bills and I do get some free time per year to do some art and writing etc. but the muse does not always line up with summer break! Motivation is the great mystery in education - how do I motivate my students to care about/respect Art and its unique role in our human development? Every day is a challenge and I dig it for the most part. Wow - what a tangent! Look forward to reading your future posts and some of the new school academics you mentioned. God bless and Happy New Year!
Good comment and good pushback. I am an atheist, yes, with a very Darwinian worldview. I have a lot of respect for religion but I don't think of religious beliefs as being true of very well-grounded in evidence. I tend to think they serve other - often social - functions. I think the point you make about wanting to live off the grid is a very good point (and one I personally sympathise with a lot). I definitely don't think recognition and status are the only drivers of human behaviour, and in many cases they are not even the main ones. But I do think they are extremely important and often unacknowledged, and that in subtle and often not-very-conscious ways they drive us to behave in strange and seemingly non-functional ways. Will be writing more about this topic this year so looking forward to more comments from you.
Brilliant stuff! I nodded along with a lot of what you said, but I'm afraid I disagree with you about the core of your argument, which I take to be: "To understand such evolutionarily weird behaviours, we should embrace Veblen’s core insight about luxury goods and services: human behaviours that seem odd, irrational, and wasteful are often rooted in social goals."
I have a bunch of disagreements, probably because I find more to agree with in Bataille's writing on waste and excess than Veblen or Mauss:
- All behaviour is weird and wasteful. This is because life is weird and wasteful. Waste does not serve a social function because waste is an end in itself (and, ultimately, what we desire - and the reason we accumulate power in the first place - is to escape and exceed systems of utilitarian logic and the regulation of waste). To say we waste in order to accumulate power doesn't tell me anything if the reason we accumulate that power is in order to waste.
- To prevent or reduce waste is to invite catastrophe, not for functionalist reasons, but rather because excess must be wasted. If excess energy is not wasted through ritualised / formalised sacrifice then it will be wasted through war or violence, and I worry that a functionalist approach to waste carries implicit normative claims aiming to make waste somehow more "efficient". I do see a distinction between catastrophic waste and productive waste, so perhaps this is somewhere our mental models overlap.
- More broadly, I worry that evolutionary explanations for social behaviour are deterministic, simplistic and (ultimately) politically reductive. I really enjoyed David Graeber and David Wengrow's discussion on potlach and waste in "The Dawn of Everything", and I thought they made important points criticising social evolution and emphasising multiplicity, change, and variety within cultures around the world historically.
Still, I hope you'll accept my comment not as criticism, but rather as an attempt to better understand your argument and test it against other ideas. I've subscribed, and I very much look forward to reading more!
Thanks, Joe. This is really good pushback. I agree with some of what you say, but I am reluctant to think that waste is generally an end in itself - maybe sometimes it is, but sometimes (e.g., "wasting" money on expensive watches) the appearance of waste or irrationality really does emerge from underlying goals, and I think this is relevant to much of human cognition.
I'm also sympathetic to your worries about evolutionary explanations for social behaviour - they can be simplistic and misguided - but I think an evolutionary lens is ultimately indispensable for understanding human psychology and social behaviour. I will be publishing a full-length defence of evolutionary psychology at some point so I will be interested to get your thoughts then. I also might write a review of The Dawn of Everything - a book I found quite frustrating!
Cheers! I'm obviously still thinking this through and testing it against your arguments, so appreciate your patience (e.g. the concept of "productive waste" makes no sense in the context of Bataille, I should have called it something else). I guess I'm arguing that "waste" (or disorder, disorganisation, entropy, etc.) is the fundamental output of life. In fact, one definition of "life" (among others) might be a form of order through the generation of waste / disorder in an environment (and not just through metabolic processes, but through most interactions with that environment). I know the concept "waste" is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here, but I think it's fundamental.
This is one reason why I am still unconvinced by the watch example. Individuals might buy a watch in order to increase status or power, but that status or power is not an end in itself. Status and power are means for social animals to consume and generate waste / disorder, which is what life does. There are ways to suppress or delay this consumption of surplus (e.g. through capitalist reinvestment of profits, or ascetic self-denial) but I think that way lies catastrophe.
As for evolution: I'm less interested in the concept of selection than I am in the concept of variety of traits. Evolution is not (at least, as I understand it) the creation of fixed structures over time, but instead flows of variety migrating and interacting with changing environments (and also changing those environments / being changed by those environments).
I really would love to read a full-length defence of evolutionary psychology, and would definitely be interested in a review of The Dawn of Everything - please do write that!
Anyway, thank you again for the patience and looking forward to your upcoming articles!
P.S. If you're considering additional topics, I'd love to read a defence of evolutionary psychology from the DeleuzoGuattarian critique of psychoanalysis as oedipalisation. That is (crudely) that despite claiming to explain the world, evolutionary psychology is actually structuring the world.
That sounds like an interesting critique. I'm not familiar with it so it would be good to know if my (qualified) defence of evolutionary psychology address it when I get round to publishing it here.
Very interested to see what you work out here, and looking forward to more.
Great to see you on substack, from twitter. Maybe I’ll comment on Jan 8 in your discussion
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/for-paid-subscribers-on-january-8 (his paid subs)
I think Market For Rationalizations* is an extremely important idea and a good phrase, sort of like Luxury Beliefs. Haven’t read The Dawn of Everything, but of recent similar books I’m most impressed by Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox.
Competitive Cooperation, or is it Cooperative Competition?
What do people want? Related to what do I want to do? Next?
Substack , Twitter, books, TV, games, exercise… now it’s lunchtime in Slovakia.
*probably a better title for your book, not sure it’s the main focus tho.
Thanks! Yes, I loved the Goodness Paradox - great book. I really like the title "Competitive Cooperation", but my book will explore slightly broader themes.
The set of essays I want to see is
The Market For Rationalizations.
Both Reps and Dems look for such confirmation, are biased about it. But rationalizations are similar yet different from bias.
really a good primer to marketplace of rationalisation and your conspicuous cognition exploration.
One thing that I wish you can do is to include a good citations as an endnotes for all your writings just like [Reasonable People Tom Stafford Substack] (https://tomstafford.substack.com)
I understand that all references are well link with good descriptions, but it require the reader to go into the links to identify what's the source.
At least if you can complement the linkings with reference list at the end of each article it'd be a nurturing read for everyone.
Btw, I guess you want to collaborate with Tom and Lionel as many of his writing reference your work.
Big fan of both Tom and Lionel's work. Good idea about including citations at the end. At the end of next week's post on misinformation I include several references for further reading (in addition to all the links throughout the article). Hopefully that sort of thing will help.