Random Fashion Thoughts (Part 3: Style farmer strikes back) - our general discussion thread

[hendrix]

That's a completely artificial distinction that falls down under scrutiny.

The only way that your paradgm works is if you impose a puritanical view on what constitutes "productive" work. A lot of Americans do this nearty instinctively. For example, to many men, especially, spending on a bandsaw is not frivolous, but spending on a fashion item is. That strikes me as a particularly a joyless worldview.

Even within this paradigm, there are numerous examples, on this forum alone, of people who have made their obsessions into "productive" careers. So, does this mean that if you can parlay your acquired knowledge into financial gain, the acquired knowledge now has value that it did not previously? We can say the same about people on watch forums, audiophile forums, hell, forums specifically dedicated tp hypebeasting.

There is no reason that acquisition precludes something from being a "productive" interest.

You really think there's an artificial distinction between productive hobbies and frivolous collecting?

Do you really want me to define this distintion for you?

And even if I can't come up with a perfect, 100% infallible distinction - are you really telling me that it doesn't exist?

Yes, I can say that hypebeasting is Not Productive (tm) or whatever term you want to put in there. I'm not going to spend hours coming up with a scientific definition for something we all know to be what it is.

Actually, to go back on my previous point - even something like language learning can be meaningless - see all the "polyglots" on youtube.

As the dude above said, we know when somethings frivolous. I don't care whether you do it or not (I do it too) but it's ridiculous to ascribe this faux meaning to it.

 

[hendrix]

I can see both sides.

I think what makes an interest an interest is frivolousness. Whether acquisition-based or learning-based is largely irrelevant as long as it exists outside the logic of compensation. This does not have to mean economic. Once you cede an interest, any interest, to productivity discourse it becomes labor (to use the earlier example of learning a language – a business student who "picks up" Mandarin because it's useful. This is not a hobby.) .

Right, exactly

and yeah everything can be frivolous too e.g. all the "polyglots" on youtube learning language so they can have a wank when they surprise people or whatever.

This is not something that really needs to be defined here.

the faux nihilism is a bit tiresome.

 

[LonerMatt]

I like nerds but cannot stand pedants. People who enjoy something and give you a window into that joy (whether it has roots in collecting, buying, reading, knowing, w/e) are lovely. People who just want knowledge to be snide and think that serial snobishness reflects a more enlightened worldview are a waste of time (socially).

 

[LA Guy]

Right, exactly

and yeah everything can be frivolous too e.g. all the "polyglots" on youtube learning language so they can have a wank when they surprise people or whatever.

This is not something that really needs to be defined here.

the faux nihilism is a bit tiresome.

You are misunderstanding his point, which is actually better than mine. Once something is explicitly scented with utility value (i.e. value outside of the interest for interests sake) it ceases to be an interest and becomes work - something done for an external purpose.

You’ve basically proved his point. The polyglots want to impress people, some other dingbat wants to single his success, you apparently do things for self-betterment.

People who really love things do so only for their own sake, I think was his point. I can definitely say that about my interests in clothing and accessories serves no other purpose. And I play jiujitsu because I find it and interesting game that of like to get better at. Certainly, my lapel guard back takes have zero self defense applications. It’s just both fun and hard to do.

I don’t get where you are reading nihilism into this.

 

[LA Guy]

I like nerds but cannot stand pedants. People who enjoy something and give you a window into that joy (whether it has roots in collecting, buying, reading, knowing, w/e) are lovely. People who just want knowledge to be snide and think that serial snobishness reflects a more enlightened worldview are a waste of time (socially).

This.

 

[hendrix]

You are misunderstanding his point, which is actually better than mine. Once something is explicitly scented with utility value (i.e. value outside of the interest for interests sake) it ceases to be an interest and becomes work - something done for an external purpose.

You’ve basically proved his point. The polyglots want to impress people, some other dingbat wants to single his success, you apparently do things for self-betterment.

People who really love things do so only for their own sake, I think was his point. I can definitely say that about my interests in clothing and accessories serves no other purpose. And I play jiujitsu because I find it and interesting game that of like to get better at. Certainly, my lapel guard back takes have zero self defense applications. It’s just both fun and hard to do.

His point was different to mine and it's not something I agreed with - hence why I bolded out the parts that I wanted to discuss. I don't really have an opinion on the utilitarian vs interest for interest's sake dichotomy. It's not something I'm discussing here and I don't know if it's real or not but it doesn't effect my point.

I also don't think that it's between self-betterment vs success or anything like that. Because the process of doing things changes who we are anyway.

It's to do with what's meaningful.

 

[penanceroyaltea]

PMC=professional managerial class. From the basic marxist point of view that almost everyone in the western world has a familiarity with (i'm not saying they share Marxism's overall viewpoint) you need to take into account that contemporary capitalist structuring has more than the bourgeoisie (they own the means of production) vs the working class (they sell their labour), you now have roughly 20-30% of your population that has higher education and about 10-20% are needed to manage or give professional guidance in various sort of way to the incredibly complex economic organization we now have (they manage it but still sell their labour), they're distinguished bu their high educational attainment, belief in meritocracy and aligning with real bourgeois to form the bourgeois hegemonic block* that dominates our culture and determines our politics.

*that most people here have at least some notion of what is an hegemonic block (without having read Gramsci) should be quite telling when talking about how far certain concepts have been integrated, at least by the 20-30% of uni educated people in a given country.

Cultural elitist much?

 

[Chaconne]

I like nerds but cannot stand pedants. People who enjoy something and give you a window into that joy (whether it has roots in collecting, buying, reading, knowing, w/e) are lovely. People who just want knowledge to be snide and think that serial snobishness reflects a more enlightened worldview are a waste of time (socially).

Agree to a certain extent. I think there is a fine line however. A math teacher doesn’t necessarily have a more enlightened worldview than any of her students but she does, probably, have a more enlightened mathview.
Also, before someone can give you a window of joy into a subject you have to be meet them halfway and be willing to look into the window.
A lot of what is called pedantry or snobbishness to me seems to merely be knowledge and the accusers to me seem to be willfully ignorant. Willful ignorance of a subject is fine as long as one is aware of one’s limitations and others expertise or at least greater knowledge. I don’t know anything about cars or really want to know anything other than which ones look cool. If some folks are discussing which car is the best made sedan or whatever and they ask me I may tell them what my favorite is but also concede that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Too many people will state that their favorite car is the best and when those with a more enlightened carview correct them they will call that person a snob.

 

[penanceroyaltea]

I like nerds but cannot stand pedants. People who enjoy something and give you a window into that joy (whether it has roots in collecting, buying, reading, knowing, w/e) are lovely. People who just want knowledge to be snide and think that serial snobishness reflects a more enlightened worldview are a waste of time (socially).

Is this why we love dieworkwear but **** on Foo

 

[LA Guy]

It's to do with what's meaningful.

Bro, that's so broad as to be... meaningless? Correct me if I'm wrong, but going back to your first post, this just seems like a kneejerk reaction to consumption, mixed in with some Stoic or Platonic ideas, though not necessarily well formed?

I think that if you are going to throw in the concept of "meaning" that you are going to have to do a lot better than resorting to this old chestnut of an appeal to natural law "I'm not going to spend hours coming up with a scientific definition for something we all know to be what it is." when clearly, we have an axiomatic disagreement.

You distinguish between a "productive hobby" and "frivolous collection". I disagree with that. Something that is not work cannot be judged on the basis of whether or not it is "productive" Outside of work, broadly speaking, productivity has no meaning.

I dunno. Your ideas of this seem to be a hodgepodge of classic Greek and Roman concepts, puritanical ethos, and oddly, some Marxist analysis thrown in for good measure.

I really don't see much coherence there. From what I gather, you feel that collecting stuff is frivolous and doesn't count as a hobby, or that people can be geniunely interested in the things being collected,, which is patently silly, as a large fraction of hobbies is exactly collecting things, whether it be antiques, clothing, or art, stamps, coins, rocks, comic books, old records, old movies, etc.... and have vested a great deal of time and intellectual energy into learning about these things.

 

[hendrix]

I dunno. Your ideas of this seem to be a hodgepodge of classic Greek and Roman concepts, puritanical ethos, and oddly, some Marxist analysis thrown in for good measure.

Is it unreasonable that a 21st century person's personal philosophy is a mixture of previous thoughts and ideas? Is that a novel concept?

in any case there is close to zero marxist analysis in my thought and I'm not sure how you're getting that but whatever

Bro, that's so broad as to be... meaningless? Correct me if I'm wrong, but going back to your first post, this just seems like a kneejerk reaction to consumption, mixed in with some Stoic or Platonic ideas, though not necessarily well formed?

I think that if you are going to throw in the concept of "meaning" that you are going to have to do a lot better than resorting to this old chestnut of an appeal to natural law "I'm not going to spend hours coming up with a scientific definition for something we all know to be what it is." when clearly, we have an axiomatic disagreement.

I really don't see much coherence there. From what I gather, you feel that collecting stuff is frivolous and doesn't count as a hobby, or that people can be geniunely interested in the things being collected,, which is patently silly, as a large fraction of hobbies is exactly collecting things, whether it be antiques, clothing, or art, stamps, coins, rocks, comic books, old records, old movies, etc.... and have vested a great deal of time and intellectual energy into learning about these things.

- this is not an appeal to natural law
- Some things are worth spending time on. Other things are frivolous. Everyone does frivolous ****. It makes sense to limit that frivolous **** to a few things so as to be a good person.
- spending your time playing video games or watching Appreciation is more frivolous than going to university and working on being a productive member of society. (or getting your electicians ticket or working on raising a family or whatever)
- We all have choices in how we choose to spend our time, how we choose to build our careers, our lifes, and our character

None of this is "philosophy" so I don't know why you're trying to place me into some weird box as if I actually need to hash this out.

 

[hendrix]

Anyway I'm not sure how at all you're reading this as puritanical given that I'm posting on a ******* fashion forum.

It's just weird and annoying to see this backlash against any type of judgement. Like, one can't say anything. and I also have a lot of dislike for the creeping utilitarianism too but that's another story.

 

[LonerMatt]

Agree to a certain extent. I think there is a fine line however. A math teacher doesn’t necessarily have a more enlightened worldview than any of her students but she does, probably, have a more enlightened mathview.
Also, before someone can give you a window of joy into a subject you have to be meet them halfway and be willing to look into the window.
A lot of what is called pedantry or snobbishness to me seems to merely be knowledge and the accusers to me seem to be willfully ignorant. Willful ignorance of a subject is fine as long as one is aware of one’s limitations and others expertise or at least greater knowledge. I don’t know anything about cars or really want to know anything other than which ones look cool. If some folks are discussing which car is the best made sedan or whatever and they ask me I may tell them what my favorite is but also concede that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Too many people will state that their favorite car is the best and when those with a more enlightened carview correct them they will call that person a snob.

Clarifying what a pedant is is, like, such an unnecessary level of pedantry.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

High school philosophy class ruins everything :/

 

[LA Guy]

Is it unreasonable that a 21st century person's personal philosophy is a mixture of previous thoughts and ideas? Is that a novel concept?

in any case there is close to zero marxist analysis in my thought and I'm not sure how you're getting that but whatever



- this is not an appeal to natural law
- Some things are worth spending time on. Other things are frivolous. Everyone does frivolous ****. It makes sense to limit that frivolous **** to a few things so as to be a good person.
- spending your time playing video games or watching Appreciation is more frivolous than going to university and working on being a productive member of society. (or getting your electicians ticket or working on raising a family or whatever)
- We all have choices in how we choose to spend our time, how we choose to build our careers, our lifes, and our character

None of this is "philosophy" so I don't know why you're trying to place me into some weird box as if I actually need to hash this out.

How to be a good person and what constitutes good character are important philosophical questions.

An individual's relationship with and duty to society is an important philosophical question.

Appeals to self-evident truths is an appeal to natural law.

And of course you need to hash it out. You were the one who made the initial set of statements. If you hadn't, you wouldn't need to hash anything out. But you did.