Opinion | The Book That Explains Our Cultural Stagnation - The New York Times - 0 views
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The best explanation I’ve read for our current cultural malaise comes at the end of W. David Marx’s forthcoming “Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change,” a book that is not at all boring and that subtly altered how I see the world.
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Marx posits cultural evolution as a sort of perpetual motion machine driven by people’s desire to ascend the social hierarchy. Artists innovate to gain status, and people unconsciously adjust their tastes to either signal their status tier or move up to a new one.
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“Status struggles fuel cultural creativity in three important realms: competition between socioeconomic classes, the formation of subcultures and countercultures, and artists’ internecine battles.”
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