Luxury and Pleasure vs The Spiral

So, in shameless imitation of a master and tastemaker, here are my notes on “taste.”

1. To start very generally, taste is a mode. It’s a manner of interpretation, expression, or action. Things don’t feel tasteful, they demonstrate taste. Someone’s home can be decorated tastefully. Someone can dress tastefully. The vibe cannot be tasteful. The experien

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Mandeville shocked his audience with the starkness of the choice he placed before them. A nation could either be very high-minded, spiritually elevated, intellectually refined, and dirt poor, or a slave to luxury and idle consumption, and very rich. Mandeville’s dark thesis went on to convince almost all the great anglophone economists and politica

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Historically, luxury was expressed in the soaring vaulted ceilings and dazzling stained glass of a cathedral; now, luxury is in a piece of technology so perfect that it seems human hands cannot possibly have created it. Luxury is the market equivalent of feathers on a bird. It’s irrational and sexual, and it easily overwhelms the killjoy, rational ... See more