Inconspicuous Consumption

-- By TheodorBruening - 27 Feb 2009

Introduction

This essay concerns Thorstein Veblen’s work on the Leisure Class, chapter 4: Conspicuous Consumption .

Veblen argues that the ruling superior leisure class distinguishes itself through wasteful consumption of luxuries: liquors, activities, ornaments and rituals. These luxuries and their consumption become glorified, dignified and exclusive; they’re taboo for the working or slave classes.

Mr. Veblen is correct – except that what he describes is hardly conspicuous but common, natural and utterly inconspicuous; it can equally be observed in the animal kingdom. It is part of being human.

Selection

Humans distinguish themselves from one another through means of luxurious consumption for the same reason that a peacock’s tail is colorful. Why do peacocks have such a lavish ornament, and why do humans like luxuries? The answer is sex – more precisely, sexual selection. Natural selection cannot account for a costly, colourful display like the peacock’s tail. It is cumbersome, attracts predators, slows the bearer and costs many precious calories to grow. But unlike natural selection, which functions by adapting the organism to its environment, sexual selection functions by adapting the organism to the opposite gender. The peacock’s tail helps peahens select their mates.

Simple economics dictate that in every sexually reproducing species females choose while males establish their worth as a partner. This is not only due to the fact that human males produce over one trillion sperm in their lives whilst females only produce a few thousand eggs, if that many. The fact that procreation only takes ten minutes for men while it takes nine months for women cautions women to be choosy. Abundance lessens value, while scarcity heightens it. This males-court-females-choose dynamic is visible in the animal kingdom: male humpback whales sing all day long hundred decibel songs during mating season, male elephant seals waste a thousand pound of fat fighting each other, male weaverbirds build enormously intricate nests and humans waste energies in going to the moon, fighting wars and inventing ideologies, not to mention wasteful luxuries.

But why would peahens choose the peacock with the most colorful tail, something which is so utterly impractical that it will attract predators and slow down an escape; why would any reasonable peahen want to hand this genetic handicap to their progeny? In fact, peahens, like any other female mammal, look for a mate with strong genes that provide for health, fertility, mental stability, longetivity and the smallest possible number of malevolent genetic mutations. Hence things like a peacock’s tail or a whale’s song are fitness indicators. The more complex the indicators, the more genetic information they summarize. Only an individual of high genetic strength could afford to grow a costly tail or spend hours on singing without dying through lack of energy or falling prey to predators. Precisely how the effort is wasted matters little. One species of apes displayed its fitness through growing large wasteful muscles and developed into gorillas, another through colorful facial skin and became baboons, while a third displayed its fitness through developing creative intelligence and became humans.

Thus came about art, science, war, language, luxuries and all the mixed blessings of what is known as civilization.

Wealth is still in almost every culture the determining factor of fitness. In the same way as the peacock’s tail developed did the rule that an engagement ring must cost two months’ salary. This handicap cost is moreover not fixed but commensurate with the fitness, or salary, of the individual. The most highly paid occupations – law, finance – each contain high levels of competition and prestige.

(Male-female sexual selection also exists in evolution as well as in everyday life and is equally important; men alone did not invent civilization, but I have limited space)

Lie To Me

Some genetic qualities have non-transferable fitness indicia. They are communicated in the usual mating playbook in which the man has to show the usual mix of confidence, charm, disinterest, wit and social acceptance as well as features such as height and facial symmetry to display his favorable genes. Wealth as a fitness indicator, however, is directly transferable to one’s children. Given that proliferation of one’s genes is the closest thing to immortality, the wealth indicia of fitness become entrenched in caste-like structures in the way Veblen describes.

Yet since wealth indicia of fitness are transferable, they may not be in accord with the actual genetic reality of the bearer. People may lie about their achievements, their jobs or education. They may have never earned a dime. This is why so much of human brainpower and literature is concerned with finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. In Titanic, Mr. Right shows his true qualities (wit, confidence) despite shortcomings in transferable fitness indicators (wealth); poor Cinderella overcomes her lack of wealth and ends up with (the very wealthy) Prince charming due to her superior beauty (read: fertility).

Amassing wealth and glorifying wasteful consumption is perfectly natural for both humans and animals. A peahen reading Veblen might think it preferable if the wasteful tail was abandoned and the energy used for more fruitful endeavors. Males should simply proclaim their fitness honestly. But this would be impossible to police and everyone would have incentives to lie. It would be equally pointless to forego human indicia of fitness; an edible potato is more useful than diamond ring or a night at the theatre, but I cannot forego millennia of evolution and replace the flirtatious handbook with a simple ‘Hi, I’m Theo. Love me.’ The wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. And yes, non-transferable indicia have a direct relationship with wealth, for ambition, confidence and intelligence strongly tend to lead to wealth. For what other reason should lawyers enjoy such high prestige if not due to their intellect and ability? Incidentally, women do the same, for what do lipstick, rouge and silicone implants do other than enhance the display of fertility?

Conclusion

None of this is to say that ‘might makes right’, to endorse eugenics or to discourage career women. The essay is a descriptive slice of evolutionary biology, it is not normative. My point is rather that our drives and tastes for power, waste, wealth, greed and consumerism are no more unnatural than the force of gravity. There is nothing conspicuous about consumerism and consumerism will not change under a different ideology or the New World Order. ‘Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what ‘do-gooders’ and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.’

• I don't understand what was gained by the discussion of what was conspicuous or inconspicuous at the top of the essay. I also don't understand why the strong-form sociobiology was necessary. Neither Veblen nor Darwin requires a fully reductive corrspondence between each human social or cultural phenomenon and one supposed mating advantage. Those peculiarities aside, this seems to me pretty straightforward, but not very novel, Darwinism.