Luxury is social privilege, which means that luxury is a result of the working of societal forces and that the receiving of luxury is a privilege (and not a right).
Typically, wealthy people believe they earn their wealth. In fact work is only socially-contracted effort and a derivative of the social order. Perhaps ironically it is only the criminal who “earns” his wealth in the sense of what “to earn” generally is taken to mean.
Thus with luxury comes degrees of implied social acceptance and passivity to the social order. A more refined society is deep enough to allow many competing separate pockets of social passivity-acceptance, the mutual conflict and opposition between these giving the illusion that one is “fighting the social order” when in reality they are complicit in it. The most easily recognizable of these artificial conflict-oppositional models is seen in the dueling political parties.
Revolution takes the form of a rejection of luxury, and for good reason. The embrace of luxury will quickly quell any revolution, although not the revolutionary impulse, which then must be re-directed elsewhere, usually at some “others” in society or at an external enemy. At other times the impulse can be directed at totally invisible, made-up enemies, as is the case with religion.
A poet once wrote that the people of the future will know how to temper their love of freedom with a distrust of luxury; perhaps we do well to examine the early roots of this future growth now, while incipient, to better understand, for certainly any civilized, useful, rational human model is going to be predicated upon luxury, status and wealth to some extent. Luxury lifts man up out of the animal kingdom of the suffering hell of nature- it is our birthright as a conscious species. Now we must learn to control this right else its power ruin us by setting itself up continually as a limitation.
Love of luxury and distrust of luxury; to enjoy and despise, to be comfortable and also contemptuous of that very comfort- I have seen some few examples of this ethos, but yes, very few. Art appears to be the domain where this budding ethos will flourish.
The luxury is a very special phenomenon, especially for human beings. Human beings are luxury beings. They make their artificial island of luxury in the sea of nature. Evolution is not just about adaptation to nature, but also about distancing from nature, thus about the luxury islands.
For human beings luxury is not the exception but the rule.
No. The so-called “revolutions” are also and especially a part of the luxury. They are a special kind of luxury for they occur because the so-called revolutionary want the power and thus the greatest possible luxury gratis, without any work, without any effort, … and so on.
If we tried to control that, it would merely lead to more njustice, unfairness, and so on because it would make the upper class very much richer (in an expoentially way, so that it perhaps will lead to a new human species), but the middle and lower class very much poorer, so that there soon will be no middle class anymore.
Obviously by “controlling” luxury, luxury as a human-social limit, I mean something other than the exponential increase of the rare wealthy class at the expense of everyone else.
As for revolutions, of course they want the “comforts of life” and their revolution is in part a rejection of that society which has not granted these to them. Yet in the more basic sense theirs is a rejection of the luxury of their particular age and place in so far as that luxury is a symbol and status of the dominant status quo power, which it always is. The revolutionary is limited in his impulse to overthrow and start anew by his own luxury-need, again as I stated which is his very birthright as a human being. He wants/needs luxury in this sense but in another sense he rejects the luxury afforded him and instantiated by his particular place and time.
A lot of revolutionaries would reject handouts from the ruling powers if it meant quelling their rebellion. Then again if you make these handouts large enough you can arrest the revolution entirely. A nice double pincer structure, which helps explain the troubled nature of rebellion and revolution across history.
I did not mainly mean the “exponential increase of the rare wealthy class at the expense of everyone else”, but I mainly meant the character, the being of humans because I said:
The classes are merely a part of the consequences. Either there are two classes (upper and lower) or there are three classes (upper, middle, lower), and believe me: the higher the number of classes, the better the society as a whole. A “classless society” is no society but a primitive horde, often without real houses. In any other case: a “classless society” is rhetoric of those who want to become the upper class, thus the power, thus the luxury.
That’s merely their rhetoric. They do not reject anything of that society, but they have to “say” the reverse, the lie. That’s all rhetoric in order to get the power and have more of the comforts of life than those who are allegedly / reportedly the “bad men” (“capitalists” an so on) - in reality both are bad, and the revolutional followers are even worse than their predecessors.
They merely want the power and thus the luxury - that’s all!
There are merely two kinds of human get-together possible: (1) a modern one (with a middle class and modern luxury) or (2) a non-modern one (without a middle class, but with non-modern luxury). What remains? The power, the classes (either two or three), and the luxury, but either as (1) a modern one or as (2) a non-modern one. If there will be no human luxury anymore, then the Earth will have become an inhabitable planet.
Yes, politics is a consequence of the human lack of philosophy. This lack is substantial, and significant; its direct effect is “the world” we see around us, including all politics and culture.
Class is differentiation, which increases naturally. “Equality” is how humans attempt to value and understand that nature, to place a limit around it that it might become articulable to them. But humanity is still far too young to use this implicit philosophizing spirit for much other than their unconscious animal urges.
If “classlessness” did ever appear and the world became “unlivable” that situation would quick degenerate and undo itself, as it has every time some group or culture came close to “perfecting” its ideal. The fear of death is just that, a fear, and quite unjustified. Reality itself can educate us much better with regard to what we might properly fear or not fear. And there are limits in the self which explode into existence only as a consequence of “madness”, which means deterritorializing reason. Learn what you fear and why you fear it, and then learn the nature of that thing you fear so that nature may call out unto nature as image to image, locking consciousness firmly in place, a tether and bridge across the abyss.
If the only definition is to step outside your “social norm” yes. Thankfully there are other definitions. Note; the other definitions do not qualify what “to earn” is, in a way that excludes criminals. The old line, “crime doesn’t pay,” is dumb, because it does, the question should be, how much, and to who. That matters much more.
No, it doesn’t. (I have now given as many examples and as good an explanation as you. Declaring something does not make it true.)
With your definition, yes, with any other, no. Revolutions can be performed by people living in relative luxury, the American Revolution was orchestrated by the rich.
Poets are stupid, insipid and devoid of relevance for anything except to say something pretty like.
Knowledge is wealth. The cave man had as many resources as we do now, the difference is we have the knowledge to apply them more efficiently than they did. You want to help people gain more wealth, do something useful.
So? Perhaps you need someone to connect the dots for you to something you consider “interesting” or “important”? If you expect that from me you will be disappointed. I’m not here to do your thinking for you.
“Connecting the dots”… this is what we call… thinking for yourself… hm.
Banality and being dense for its own sake is useless. This isn’t KT. If you have nothing to say, when… why are you here?
Yes. All so-called „revolutions“ were, are, and will be orchestrated by the rich. Else the so-called „revolutionaries“ would not have any real weapon, for example.