Widening inequality, shifting fortunes and social media neediness are lifting our anxiety about status to new heights.
proved such a prescient diagnosis of the ills of the age that status angst, in the 21st century, is our new, steady struggle. The battle to gain, or regain, orAbout four billion voters in the United States, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, the UK and Mexico – to name a few – are heading for the polls this year, and politicians on the right will be pitching hard to constituencies angered by perceived or real status loss.
, luxury has a near-universal allure. “We are so easily impressed and make judgments based on superficial evidence, but sometimes luxury provides a psychological boost to confidence that improves our wellbeing,” he writes. “Wearing designer clothes can make us feel better about ourselves, which then becomes self-reinforcing. When we put on luxury apparel, we feel special and behave accordingly. Luxury goods light up the pleasure centres in our brain.
In global politics, there is no more unnerving case of the protean power of status anxiety than Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have died because an ageing Russian dictator has been brooding over his country’s loss of empire – of status. That status works through something as trivial as luxury attire and as profound as an existential battle for nationhood – for life – suggests how deeply wired the status calculus is in the human brain.
It wasn’t that he was consciously looking for a status boost, but he was certainly looking to make a mark – which is more or less the same thing. “You know, I could have written a book with some wanky title like ‘Disruptive Museology in …’ ‘… Post Urban Dogmatics’ or something,” he says with the gravelly tone of a big-talker. “It would have sold to people who buy books with bullshit titles that they put on coffee tables and never read – like me.
Is MONA itself an expression of status enhancement? He pauses as if chewing on the question, before replying brusquely. “Obviously. There is no form of human endeavour that isn’t.”exhibition skews towards a more benign side. It’s more concerned with status as a form of white magic that confers a kind of glamour – a sparkle of awe, power and envy – on rare and exclusive objects.
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