[eightysixfour]

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis.

I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite stance of that reference point. I think this model fits in with that pretty well - there are groups who want to be "not-the-elite" which, if successful, the elite adopt. Classic "hipsterism."

It also fits in with a lot of local, national, and global politics, market differentiation, etc.

[belugacat]

Oh wow, super fascinating reference, thank you for posting it! I’ll have to check it out, I’ve been prototyping game concepts with many thousands of agents who all do interesting things for the player to investigate (the key here is that they don’t have to be particularly complex or meaningful, they just have to overlap in enough thought provoking ways to keep the player engaged), and I’ve had a similar insight (“make agents identify a position and adopt the opposite stance”) that seems to yield interesting early results.

(sorry, nothing concrete to share and likely won’t for a long time)

[crawfordcomeaux]

I feel excitement over reading this. Would you be open to trying out some ideas to experiment with? I've been wondering if a framework for amplifying/accelerating evolution in bacterial cultures that's based in graph theory holds for culture in general. Also, trying to identify a sustainable model for a gift economy that can outperform debt economies.

[eightysixfour]

If you're looking for a playground for this kind of thing (and can code), check out https://hash.ai/

[crawfordcomeaux]

Thanks! How's what you're doing different?

[eightysixfour]

I'm not the gamedev above, just thought you may be interested.

[sdwr]

Sounds interesting! I see games in a similar way, as collections of simple mechanics that overlap/intersect/stack.

I think one of the keys to a complementary bundle of mechanics is that they're distinct. Acting on different time scales, different reward structures that tug the brain around, creating choices that feel meaningful and don't ever repeat exactly.

[crucialfelix]

As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them".

Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.

[eightysixfour]

I won't suggest that you did not FEEL that way when you were doing it, but what you just wrote sounds exactly what I said in socially-coded language.

> I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit

Here you state that the mainstream elite was "lifeless bullshit."

> we wanted to express something new

And you wanted to express NOT lifeless bullshit.

> that only we could sense. We were being us

This is what the mainstream elite couldn't see or make. It was NOT mainstream elite thought.

> it's what the mainstream now sounds like

The mainstream adopted it, and now there's a new generation of people who think that sound is mainstream lifeless bullshit and will create something that is NOT mainstream lifeless bullshit. This is not part of the Graeber thesis, but aligns well with the original post.

I also want to be clear that I don't think this is supposed to be a conscious process - there are times when people are intentionally contrarian but there are also people and groups who are unconsciously contrarian simply by saying "I don't like this thing."

[jancsika]

> The mainstream adopted it, and now there's a new generation of people who think that sound is mainstream lifeless bullshit and will create something that is NOT mainstream lifeless bullshit.

That doesn't follow.

1. a blues singer listens to mainstream

2. a blues singer hears a variety of blues influences on the mainstream

3. a blues singer says, "Hey great, we got some blues influences in the mainstream, let me try to add some more"

[eightysixfour]

What? I think we're talking about different processes and different time frames. The blues musician who just wants to be popular/mainstream isn't really what I'm going for, because they stop at step 2:

1. "Hipster" creates music that is anti-mainsteam, becomes popular for doing something different (and doing it well, at the right time/place, etc.)

2. Over years, mainstream music adopts unique thing hipster did. <- this is where you stop

3 New generation of hipsters create music that is anti-mainstream... <- this is what is relevant to this discussion

You can find examples of the above in any modern genre of music and I would argue is a part of a bigger pattern that happens to any sub/counter culture.

[crucialfelix]

I agree, its a different framing of the same process.

On further reflection there was a lot of deliberate removal of pop or mainstream rave signals. We were excluding their signals to create our own space. Minimal Techno is pretty much defined by it's rules of what isn't allowed. So that's conscious differentiation.

[oblak]

Exactly. OP is the poster child for lack of self awareness

[turdnagel]

See also Dr. Seuss' seminal "The Sneetches".

[throwaway894345]

> I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point

I don't think the error is in defining ourselves by what sets us apart--it's fine and good to acknowledge our differences. I think the bad thing is leaning into those differences due to an aversion to the outgroup, which is the very essence of tribalism (or nearly so).

[eightysixfour]

Apologies, I was too soft at that point when I wrote it. He does not suggest we merely acknowledge our differences, he suggests we literally define ourselves as opposites of others.

He also does not assign a property of good or bad to this observation, just that we do it.

[anm89]

very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff.

I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.

[eightysixfour]

Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.

[crawfordcomeaux]

What are some of these political changes?

[eightysixfour]

Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy.

That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far:

* I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage.

* There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined.

* There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair.

* This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.

[crawfordcomeaux]

I haven't finished reading your reply. I got to this point:

"I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy."

There exists a natural hierarchy between the category of needs for humans to survive and the category of needs for humans to thrive. Nature provides enough.

[eightysixfour]

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say or how it relates to what you quoted from me. What I am saying is that I don't think you can have a large scale population of humans sharing resources cohesively without some sort of sociopolitical heirarchy forming. Graeber argues this is not true and that, as a result, inequality is unnecessary.

[BoysenberryPi]

Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?

[martythemaniak]

I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it.

There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In fact, if people focused on the value their so-called "bullshit" jobs provide other people, rather than on their own assessment of how meaningful their job is, they would likely end up much happier.

It's an incredibly condescending and self-centered way to look at the world.

[t-3]

If the "bullshit" jobs were valuable to anyone, they wouldn't be bullshit, they would be highly coveted and celebrated positions.

[anm89]

The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me.

Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employee's perspective is one where the wage isn't worth it for the bullshit they have to put up with. In that case they should find a new one. If they can't, than putting up with that specific bullshit is still their best choice. If they keep showing up to work and taking that trade, apparently they don't think it's bullshit. And if the employer keeps thinking that the money is a good trade for their time, they apparently also don't think it's bullshit, otherwise they'd fire them.

So if two people freely engage in the same trade of time for money everyday for years on end, then simply calling it bullshit isn't that profound. It starts to sound a lot like some way to intellectualize whining about not liking your job.

So yeah, no amount of writing is going to save a totally broken premise.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee.

This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both.

Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit.

There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.

[biomcgary]

Unfortunately, in some cases, the "value" is things like: keeping headcount up, not dealing with a problem employee.

[anm89]

Sure but if both parties freely decide to engage in this time money trad what do you propose to do?

Do we want some congressional committee to sit around and decide which jobs are bullshit? I sure don't.

It turns out the Nash equilibrium of the world is that some people have jobs that seem silly on the surface but end up being the optimal move for everyone involved. Out of all the problems in the world this seems like a weird one to fixate on.

[yodelshady]

I'm a little surprised at that reading, but fair enough.

I admit I only skimmed it, but I thought the point was "the employer" is not a homogeneous entity. "The employer" therefore doesn't make the wage decision. Managers with some extreme perverse incentives do.

What's bullshit is the idea that as soon as an enterprise does something inefficient, boom, they'll be outcompeted. They might, eventually, if no market failures or regulatory capture exists. So in reality, large and even small/medium organization with a successful pattern can tolerate a lot of bullshit.

[anm89]

I will also admit I gave up on it and frustration and didn't make it in the end. Maybe there was some magical nugget of wisdom on the last page.

Your evaluation seems fair to me but it's still not clear to me what he's saying should be done or even why this is a problem.

My suspicion is that people find it exciting to read a book with a curse word in the title that tells them they are right for hating their job

[kelseyfrog]

Is that simply one aspect of cultural dialectics[1] or am I missing something?

1. https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercul...

[March_f6]

Mimetic theory, while not entirely complete, seems to cover the common impulse behind dominating trends. Whether it accounts for the initial spark of “anti” I guess is another question.