Tag Archives: Thorstein Veblen

waste and taste

Conspicuous waste.Is it envy? If he had fun with his money through the pleasures of mistresses, race horses, public bequests, fine art, play actresses, first folios of Shakespeare could we think more in that these disbursements had “character?” In part … Continue reading

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gilded age: worthy esteem

While the rich wore diamonds, the poor contented themselves with rags. The “Gilded Age” filled with Horatio Alger’s and every man a millionaire in waiting. An era when American socialite Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish held a dinner party in honour of … Continue reading

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veggie: strong Swallowing Impulse

Pursuing health in the promised land. Our unprecedented passion and intensity with which we appear to be pursuing the holy grail of perfect health has a long tradition… Sylvester Graham’s dietary reform views, imbued as they were with ideas of … Continue reading

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spartan stamp of approval

Intense and strenuous physical exercise, we may take it for granted, do not go back as far as the days of the cavemen and women, who got all the exercise hey needed in the normal course of things. The Neolithic … Continue reading

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pursuit of salubrity

Is civilization dangerous to our health? There is a good chance. In any event, people have pursued salubrity throughout history. In fact, no fad has been untested, no tonic untasted, no muscle unflexed. The health seeker is easy to recognize … Continue reading

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status system: picking through the wreckage

…With the Keynesian economy operating at full throttle, it can be said that idleness and wealth have been scattered with a generous hand, and everyone is condemned to be a consumer to some degree. The heady atmosphere of abundance has … Continue reading

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status: iron crowns of glamour

…a large number of customers were indicating that they simply wanted no part of it. Money that used to go into the difference between a Detroit automobile and a functional means of transportation was now going elsewhere: into boats, swimming … Continue reading

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c. wright mills: status panic

To C. Wright Mills, the 1950’s caustic critic of America, the twentieth century was the period par excellence of the middle class, which to him had slipped half-consciously into historical prominence without any sense of organized identity, without continuity with … Continue reading

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status system: chasing proclivities

…The idea of social class is one of the most useful, and most risky, weapons in the armory of the social scientist. … Once you have assumed that there is such a thing as “class,” proofs of its existence follow … Continue reading

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status: enduring symbols

…Actually, we are living not so much in a status system as in the wreckage of one, a storeroom full of broken monuments; for the process of destroying status is self-destructive, and ruins each new idol that it raises. Once … Continue reading

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