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Marxy popped up on yesterday's thread about Ku:nel magazine after I criticized Jean Snow for having been so down on the late, LOHAS-themed Relax magazine. Jean seemed to like Relax only when it was suggesting he smarten up and wear a celebrity-endorsed suit; he expressed perplexity when the magazine told him to go find his spirituality in a forest or to consume less. This, I thought, was understandable; Jean is a design commentator, and design is pretty heavily invested in the idea of aspirational consumerism -- the quest for ever-more-bling. Marxy's defense of Jean's peevish boredom with post-materialism fell into three parts, the first drawing on Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital as a strategy of distinction:
1. Maybe most of us are just so attuned to use cultural information as a way to distinguish between each other that KU:NEL can't help us with everyday competitive society?2. An average post-materialist, non-consumerist young Japanese though would probably buy zero magazines rather than a magazine that speaks to his/her tastes.
3. Japanese youth are generally becoming less materialist, but we are seeing this split into two groups: those that aestheticize their non-consumption and those who don't. Seems like only the first group read KU:NEL.
Before addressing those, I want to go back to the allowance I made for Jean -- the idea that design commentators are naturally invested in bling. Actually, I don't think this has to be the case, for three reasons:
1. The idea that bling makes us happy is delusional. As John Lanchester put it, reporting in the New Yorker on Richard Layard's research into happiness: "Americans are about twice as rich as they were in the 1970s but report not being any happier; the Japanese are six times as rich as they were in 1950 and aren’t any happier, either. Looking at the data from all over the world, it is clear that, instead of getting happier as they become better off, people get stuck on a “hedonic treadmill”: their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach." Even without a looming environmental crisis, that would justify post-materialism right there. Or, as the National Bureau of Economic Research put it: "As economies get richer, they can afford to question the need for further riches. In a country where people are starving, economic growth remains regarded as a vital objective to overcome hunger and other poverty problems."
2. Although you wouldn't know it from Jean Snow's site (well, not until you followed his links to commentators from PingMag to Monocle, anyway), much design coverage elsewhere has shifted, for these reasons, to a more noticeably post-materialist position. As Artek's Tom Dixon told Tyler Brulé, "one of the themes that's running through the stuff that we're doing is -- I dunno, that overused word of "sustainability", really. The way we're tackling it is by even going to the point of not designing at all." Rather than making new stuff, Dixon was therefore buying back old Artek pieces and celebrating their signs of wear and tear, their patina.3. If we can accept the paradox that not-designing might be a way of designing, it shouldn't be hard to accept the paradox that not-consuming might be a way of consuming. As the Wikipedia entry on post-materialism puts it: "Cohorts who have experienced high material affluence start to give high priority to values such as individual improvement, personal freedom, citizen input in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on humanism, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment... As increasing post-materialism is based on the abundance of material possessions or resources, it should not be mixed indiscriminately with asceticism or general denial of consumption. In some way post-materialism may be criticized as super-materialism."
The Nationmaster site suggests caution over the idea that the whole of society will grow more post-materialist over time. "In countries with a relatively high level of postmaterialism such as The Netherlands or Sweden, the degree of post-materialists in society never grew higher than 30 percent, and during some years even declined." The World Values Survey found positive correlations between post-materialism and a country’s economic level (.66), human development (.56) and civil liberties (.46). But they too stress that this doesn't mean some kind of Fukuyama-style "end of history" is at hand, some kind of post-materialist Nirvana for all. The reason this isn't on the agenda is that inequality between nations is increasing, not decreasing: "In 1963 the GNP per capita in the richest world region (North America) was 40 times higher than in the poorest region... By 2000 it was 108 times." Overall, though, the World Values Survey agrees with Ron Inglehart: most societies, they think, are heading towards post-materialist values.I was looking on Saturday at market segmentation sketches which show how some nations have post-materialist classes currently making up about 10% of their populations. Meanwhile, others have almost no post-materialist types. A magazine like Ku:nel, according to this data, could launch in Germany, Sweden or the UK, but not Poland, Bulgaria, Greece. Here's a chart showing the World Values Survey's estimation (circa 2000) of the percentages of post-materialists in various countries:
Okay, that's the general background to the whole post-materialist magazines scenario. How about Marxy's points? Magazines, he seems to think, are about giving us information we can use as cultural capital in a competitive comparison with others. I'm not so sure this really describes what magazines are, and what they do. I'd rather see them as "notes on beautiful life", aspirational, morale-boosting glimpses of happiness, or even answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy (Socrates' "How then should we live?") As for post-materialist magazines failing because post-materialists simply don't buy stuff (either the mags themselves or the stuff being advertised), I think we've seen how post-materialism is a mindset that exists precisely amongst some of the most affluent consumers, and is more a shift towards ethical consumption than no consumption. Advertisers -- especially those with eco- or ethical things to sell -- love to connect with these consumers.
Marxy's third point is that many or most Japanese youth consumers don't aestheticize their non-consumption, which is more to do with lack of money than a conscious choice to consume ethically. This is where I'd go back to the magazine that is, in many ways, Ku:nel's precursor: Kurashi No Techo. This is a consumer magazine that accepts no advertising, a magazine founded in the era of post-war austerity, a magazine which aestheticizes thrift, modesty, stoicism, good-heartedness -- values which actually run pretty deep in Japanese society, whether it's doing well or badly. In other words, I think things like a concern for nature, or an interest in the style of thrift, apply whether Japanese are rich or poor. Whether, that is, they're pre-materialist or post-materialist. There are interesting parallels between the pre-bling and the post-bling Japanese mindsets, and they're apparent in the similarities between Kurashi No Techo and Ku:nel.
If pre-materialists are traditional, materialists modern and post-materialists post-modern and post-industrial, maybe the brief, fleeting, vulnerable and hard-to-explain thing is modernity. If we understand "before bling" as an aspiration for material goods (Jean for the celebrity-style suit that will bring him success, or the poor people on the kartoffelngrafik charts who are the most materialistic in outlook precisely because they're the poorest social groups there are), and "after bling" as the realisation that material goods don't make you happy and that the "hedonic treadmill" is a waste of time, the hard thing to pin down is "during bling". Exactly where does mo' money equate to mo' happiness? And how long does that glow last before discontent sets in?
The happiness scientists have an answer. They mostly tell us that "during bling" is just a blip. People living in poverty become happier if they become richer, economist Richard Layard tells us, but the effect of increased wealth cuts off at a surprisingly low figure: $15,000 a year. Many sociologists and psychologists tell us that it's social connectedness that makes for happiness, not material affluence (Durkheim found that connectedness to others -- even via duty and obligation -- was the factor most negatively correlated with suicide). Behavioral geneticist David Lykken thinks there's a genetically-determined "happiness set point" in each of us which events in our lives can't really alter much. A study he made of identical twins concluded that "trying to be happier is like trying to be taller”. 
Here's Lanchester in the New Yorker again: "Contrary to everything you might think, “in the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you,” Jonathan Haidt writes. Consider the opposing examples of winning the lottery or of losing the use of your limbs. According to Haidt, “It’s better to win the lottery than to break your neck, but not by as much as you’d think... Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics have both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.” "Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi made people carry a pager, and told them that every time it went off they should write down what they were doing and how much they were enjoying it. The idea was to avoid the memory’s tendency to focus on peaks and troughs, and to capture the texture of people’s lives as they were experiencing them,
rather than in retrospect. The study showed that people were most content when they were experiencing what Csikzentmihalyi called “flow”—in Haidt’s definition, “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” We are at our happiest when we are absorbed in what we are doing; the most useful way of regarding happiness is, to borrow a phrase of Clive James’s, as “a by-product of absorption.”"I guess I was happy (in a post-materialist, flowy sort of way) putting together this report on happiness. In the words of Agnes Bernelle: "You want to be rich? But isn't that what you are?"
(Photos on this page are snaps shot this weekend in recycling designer Jan Lindenberg's flat; he's the Ku:nel subscriber, not me! Bigger versions on my Flickr page.)
A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-14 11:56 am (UTC)1) I'm not so sure this really describes what magazines are, and what they do."
I would be careful to construct a universal theory of how magazines work as media. Comparing a mainstream Japanese magazine to a mainstream UK/US magazine, it's pretty clear that they have separate aims and means. Japanese fashion magazines' consumerist message is much more clear, more functional, and more didactic than GQ, which preaches and teaches but has to speak to its readers "like adults." CanCam and ViVi, both very popular, teach exactly how to compete in the modern romance rat race, not how to "fit in."
KU:NEL does not read like a standard Japanese "consumer bible," so it may be closer to your conception, but I would hardly say it's close to the Japanese standard.
2) In other words, I think things like a concern for nature, or an interest in the style of thrift, apply whether Japanese are rich or poor.
There are different taste cultures based on socioeconomic class in Japan, and the "slow life" aestheticized post-materialist section seems to correlate perfectly with household income and education. Magazines like Egg or Men's Egg have tastes grounded in the working class/rural lower middle class/non-salaried class cultures. I don't see the "Green" spirit of frugality, preservation, etc. in these magazines or as part of this culture. That's to say, I do think that environmental consciousness is growing in Japan but its aesthetic facet is helping it spread through the structures of the consumer society. It's "in." This isn't bad, but I think it's too easy to assign pro-environmentalism as a "deep structure" inherent to Japanese culture and biology, somehow brought back to life.
3) Jean is a design commentator, and design is pretty heavily invested in the idea of aspirational consumerism -- the quest for ever-more-bling.
What RELAX had was a message that consumerism was about sophistication and not about pure expenditure. Japan is sorely lacking a central media source with this kind of attitude about money and culture these days! It's all bling.
(By the way, some Pew poll showed Americans to be very happy: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=160955)
Marxy
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-14 03:14 pm (UTC)I assumed you meant those who didn't aestheticize their lack of consumption were just too poor to consume (which is why I brought up Kurashi No Techo's similarity to Ku:nel). But it seems you're saying the kids who don't aestheticize their lack of consumption are Egg readers? Surely they're aestheticizing their consumption, though?
it's too easy to assign pro-environmentalism as a "deep structure" inherent to Japanese culture and biology, somehow brought back to life.
I do think there's a much deeper pro-environmental streak in the Japanese character and culture than in any other advanced nation I know. I think it relates to Shinto and I think it's measurable in all sorts of ways -- people's care about recycling, for instance, or the extremely high percentage of forest in Japan (70% of the nation's entire surface area, compared with a mere 11% in the UK), or the frequency of plant motifs in Japanese visual culture.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-14 11:37 pm (UTC)Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-15 12:54 am (UTC)I think there is greater material for historical justification/inspiration, but the Japanese have also been fiercely anti-environment when it suits their economic needs (pollution in the 60s), development priorities (the tsukaisute idea of buildings and lack of insulation etc.), and national pride ("scientific" whaling.) I don't think every single Japanese manager and politician makes policy decisions based on Shinto values of ritual cleanliness or nature worship, etc.
This goes back to the point that those that embrace "conscientious consumerism" in Japan are primarily upper middle class, educated Japanese who most likely feel greater pulls from contemporary social pressures than ancient Shinto magic. Green consumption gives them a way to shame nouveau riche bling in a very Bourdieuian way. If Shinto was so strong, why do not see environmentalism and environmentally-friendly consumption as a strong force in 1961 or 1935 or 1868 or 1988, etc.? There's a reason it's happening now and I doubt it's because of a Shinto revival.
But it seems you're saying the kids who don't aestheticize their lack of consumption are Egg readers?
Men's Egg readers tend to mix delinquent subcultural fashion with classic lower-class aspirational tastes (think the high-paid hosts). There is also a growing number of youth who are neither consumers nor magazines readers nor have any sort of conscious philosophical reasoning for it. They are hard to see - the "silent majority."
Marxy
shinto
Date: 2008-01-15 03:09 am (UTC)the 'forestation' of japan is itself a problem because it's thoughtlessly over-forested , it can't be enjoyed as nature , can't even be used to make those disposable chopsticks. allright for carbomonoxide and stuff i guess - but it's basically all like one big bonsai farm gone wild. no, no it's more like a bonsai battle royale.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-15 03:10 pm (UTC)The "pro" in the Japanese environmental thinking is merely sloganeering meant to assuage the guilt of the Hive Mind as they toil endlessly in factories that spew pollution into the air as they have always done. Even if you don't mindlessly buy wholeheartedly into the CO2=global warming canard, notable levels of sulfur dioxides and nitrous oxides are being put into the air. How is this pro-environmental?
Again, we must remind you that tatemae means nothing in terms of reality. You of all people should be able to see that.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-15 03:46 pm (UTC)It's interesting to see your need to slam Japan on this eco-issue conflicting with your need to say it's a non-issue!
How are things like "amongst the advanced industrial world's most-forested nation" (Japan is over 60% forested, Finland 74.2%) mere tatemae?
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-16 04:59 am (UTC)Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-16 10:22 am (UTC)I am slamming Japan in their release of pollutants OTHER than CO2 (as I stated). You should have read the rest of the sentence.
You don't work a regular job, you should have time to read things carefully and check things on Google.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-18 12:57 am (UTC)I think much of this discussion of pro- vs anti-environment Japanese ideals is duplicitous, just as most of the discussion about gender and queer issues in Japan is duplicitous. For all three of these topics Japan is not rightly "better" or "worse" than nations in the Western world, it is simply "different": in some ways better, in some ways worse, but most importantly the groupthink that backs the nation's culture and actions are often orthogonal to the concerns we're used to and without addressing that fact meaningful comparisons cannot be drawn.
That said, the Japanese stance on the environment is purely one of pragmatics (as one might expect from an archipelago). In ways this is pro-green because a functioning environment is the best kind to utilize, makes people happy, makes society sustainable/stable, etc. And in ways this is anti-green since their interest in the environment is purely one of what resources can be obtained from it with the idea that when that runs out Japanese/human ingenuity will find some new way to extort whatever remains for material resources. Both the high levels of forestation (how can you use a forest if you don't have one?) and the extremes of pollution and concretizing (what good is a river that doesn't go where it's supposed to?) stem from the same source. Reuse and low-impact are good things, but they're good because they help extend the resources, not because they're less wasteful.
The idea of thinking about "the environment" as some holistic entity and about "saving the environment" (as well as the idea of a "materialistic" vs "spiritual" dichotomy), ideas which we take for granted, is not one I have ever heard framed by a Japanese person. Our idealization of the environment stems from the philosophical background of Europe, with ideas like Cartesian Duality and Zoroastrianism. Japanese idealization of the environment comes from Shinto beliefs more than I think you realize. Though nature was worshiped, it was worshiped to appease the spiteful and whimsical spirits that lived within it, not because of some idea of a blessed Mother Earth sharing her bounty. Our vision of the natural world is as the source of all life, something sacred and worth protecting; the Shinto vision is as the source of death, the sublime and transient beauty of life as something worth experiencing (you're going to experience it anyways, might as well enjoy it).
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-18 02:03 am (UTC)But I'd say the pragmatism point isn't, on its own, enough to explain the differences. Japan is 60% forested "just so they can use the wood". Japan makes the world's most advanced, best-selling hybrid car "just to make Toyota a profit". And yet other nations, equally pragmatic, also islands, have 11% forest, and no hybrid car models.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-18 08:49 am (UTC)In the past week in Japan, the paper industry has been at the centre of a scandal. Initially, Nippon Paper sold new year's greeting cards claiming they used recycled paper. Under contract, the recyled content should have been 40% but it turns out it was as low as 1-4%. The company has admitted falsifying data since 1996. Further investigation revealed that its copy paper contained 59% of recycled content while claiming 100%, and that its notebooks contained 35% scrap while claiming 80%. Other paper companies have admitted similar falsifications.
Re: A couple of points
Date: 2008-01-19 12:04 am (UTC)For many of us post-materialists, neo-ascetics, and politicophilosophical citizens of the world, our perspective of our perspective on the environment is that it should be saved and that we're doing our part to save it. (Not all PM/NA/PphCoW are green folks, some are simply hyperurban, but often the two groups seem to go hand in hand.) However, neigh invariably we own a computer (or a dozen) which is running constantly to play our music, movies, and internet; we spew 802.11 and cellular signals all throughout the atmosphere; wind power causes dramatic environmental changes and solar power requires clearing large swaths of land; the total environmental cost for hybrid cars is often higher than for less technological fuel-efficient cars; and even when we walk and bike around town, we often think nothing of flying halfway around the world; in many urban centres the organic food we're offered is shipped from far off farms rather than produced locally. Whether such a lifestyle is on the whole better for the environment does not greatly affect our framing of our decisions about what to buy and where to live as being from a green perspective.