I did write that I don’t know how burdensome their own peculiar signaling competitions are in comparison. The important point is that a lot of what seems like poverty and low living standards in the lives of these people is not actual deprivation, but a genuine lack of incentive to acquire the things in question, since they are not locked in the signaling arms race that motivates acquiring them in the mainstream. When it comes to things they care about, they’re not any worse off than the regular middle classes.
A few details leave them worse off, as far as I can tell.
First, the items Chassidim use as signals are almost all consumable or have their costs over the long term, in contrast to the middle class. Weddings and kosher food are examples of the first type, number of children and isolation from secular knowledge/intensive religious schooling for young men are of the second. The middle class has expensive weddings and vacations, but primarily is enslaved to owned cars/houses or educations that merely fail to be fully worth their opportunity cost.
Second, having religious values in addition to other values deemphasizes the focus one can put on the other values. E.g., if I value my happiness, family, career, etc., I will put effort into each of them. If in addition I value baseball cards, I do so by taking money and attention from the other categories. It is true that one who only values happiness is unlikely to achieve it, and that valuing additional things such as the Yankees’ winning would or does make some people happier. Nonetheless, the body of ordinances, injunctions, and so forth that these people are expected to follow is amazingly comprehensive and capable of crowding out much having to do with happiness.
The middle class has expensive weddings and vacations, but primarily is enslaved to owned cars/houses or educations that merely fail to be fully worth their opportunity cost.
I see quite a bit more stuff among the regular middle classes that looks like pure signaling waste, though you’re clearly more knowledgeable how this compares with the analogous phenomena among orthodox Jews.
However, one very important issue you’re not taking into account is that the primary objective that drives the North American middle classes to work their asses off is the need to afford living in an expensive enough neighborhood to insulate oneself and one’s family from the underclass. (Clearly, various signaling and purely instrumental goals are entangled here.) With some luck and creativity, you can skimp on all kinds of signaling consumerism, but with this issue there’s no joking, and it keeps imposing a horrible threat should you ever slack off. The lack of this pressure seems to me like a major point in favor of life in a deeply traditionalist community, so I think it counts in favor of the KJ setup.
Nonetheless, the body of ordinances, injunctions, and so forth that these people are expected to follow is amazingly comprehensive and capable of crowding out much having to do with happiness.
I find the orthodox Jewish observances a puzzling question: is it a matter of extreme runaway signaling that imposes excruciating burdens on these people, or are these just their natural folkways that merely look strange and arbitrary due to cultural distances? (Of course, it’s a complex question whether and how these two things can even be distinguished in some objective sense. Many modern middle-class Americans would claim that they are more free than any other people in human history, and many of them undoubtedly really feel that way, even though from an outside perspective their lives can look frightfully regimented and devoid of any meaningful personal freedom.)
even though from an outside perspective [the lives of modern middle-class Americans] can look frightfully regimented and devoid of any meaningful personal freedom [emphasis added].
I find this claim surprising. I could just be ethnocentric, but it genuinely seems to me that modern middle-class Americans have significantly more personal freedom (of speech, of belief, of dress, of diet, of sexuality, &c.) than members of ultraorthodox communities. Is there any chance you could try to explain the outside perspective of which you speak?
My wording wasn’t very clear here—I didn’t mean to compare middle-class Americans with ultra-Ortodox communities specifically, but to make a more general point about how people can consider themselves very free and really feel that way, even though things may look very different from an outside perspective.
Generally speaking, people feel unfree when they’re suddenly constrained from doing something that they’re used to and care about, or when constraints lower their status. In contrast, constraints that are ingrained in a culture are often not even noticed consciously by its people, or they are seen as self-evidently reasonable and necessary, since people are used to living under them, and are also at peace with the existing status hierarchy. However, this won’t seem so to an outsider who is used to a different way of life and who perhaps derives status in his own community from some freedoms that are absent in their culture. Similarly, the level of discipline and regimentation (in both scope and intensity) is perceived subjectively depending on what one is used to.
So, ultimately, it depends on how you choose to measure freedom. In some extreme cases, it may be that one society is freer than another across the board, or very nearly so, for example if you compare modern-day U.S. with North Korea. [1] But usually, the impression greatly depends on what regime of constraints one is used to seeing as natural, and on one’s subjective evaluation of the trade-offs involved. For example, many of those modern freedoms you mention are due to disappearance of strong informal communal norms that restrained people’s behavior in the past, but as these social structures broke down, the necessary trade-off was the establishment and growth of impersonal bureaucracies that took over their necessary functions, and which now regulate, micromanage, and re-engineer practically all aspects of life and society. Whether you like this trade-off, and what you think of communities that preserved the older traditional modes of social organization, is of course your call.
[1] Though even this case might not be so clear-cut. Once I saw a documentary showing some illegal recordings of everyday life smuggled out of North Korea, and one of those showed a lady getting into a shouting match with a policeman, who eventually relented! In the U.S. this would be an invitation to get tazered, arrested, and likely charged. This of course doesn’t mean that North Korea is not every bit as awful as people imagine—if anything, it’s probably even worse—but this does suggest that some aspects of social regimentation may be more relaxed over there.
I partially agree with this Vladmir’s statement. I doubt that modern middle-class Americans feel significantly more personally free or unfree than many other historical groups, despite being more free.
I see quite a bit more stuff among the regular middle classes that looks like pure signaling waste...
To take another angle on this, assume for simplicity that anything not wasted is “reinvested” in signaling. E.g. a Prius is somewhat practical and not just a signal, so more is spent on lawn care than if an SUV was purchased.
An important factor will then be willingness to borrow and be in debt, and Orthodox societies have a very, very high tolerance for this. One explanation would be the prominence of the LORD as provider.
There is one major signaling factor that the middle class does “spend” far more on, and that is aversion to certain government benefits (but not others, such as mortgage based tax benefits).
I see quite a bit more stuff among the regular middle classes that looks like pure signaling waste
Could you please list some examples? I’ve been trying to think of some myself, and I came up with things like gift-based holidays (Christmas, Father’s day, birthdays, etc...), brand-name color-and-style-matching clothes, and the search for high status jobs (there is a reason “flipping burgers” is an insult). But it feels like there is so much difference between a homeless man living in a shelter with cheap food/clothing/electronics and a typical middle class man that I fear I might be missing something big, even after reading all the things you and lessdazed already mentioned. Which would bother me, because if it means I am unable to see the middle class as a special case of how to live a life.
I lack the context in which your comment makes sense as a counterargument or response to what I said. My argument is that they are worse off. You imply otherwise on the basis that they seem to try harder at one facet of life.
Assuming that: religious people not only seem to put more effort into family, but do, and assuming this is true either on average, as a non-binary sliding correlation, or in some other significant way, and assuming that religiosity drives this, rather than this correlation being driven by a third factor, and assuming that it isn’t having kids that causes religiosity, and assuming that the effort spent into family produces happiness at least as effectively than atheists produce it through their sundry efforts...why also assume that religious people would only (seem to) put that effort into family if it made them at least as happy as atheists when their religion itself is demanding that they do so on pain of ostracization and hellfire?
Citation needed, I think. Also separate “seem to put more effort” from “have better family life”; seeming to put more effort in doesn’t always means getting better results, but in your sentence it still appears to score points.
I did write that I don’t know how burdensome their own peculiar signaling competitions are in comparison. The important point is that a lot of what seems like poverty and low living standards in the lives of these people is not actual deprivation, but a genuine lack of incentive to acquire the things in question, since they are not locked in the signaling arms race that motivates acquiring them in the mainstream. When it comes to things they care about, they’re not any worse off than the regular middle classes.
A few details leave them worse off, as far as I can tell.
First, the items Chassidim use as signals are almost all consumable or have their costs over the long term, in contrast to the middle class. Weddings and kosher food are examples of the first type, number of children and isolation from secular knowledge/intensive religious schooling for young men are of the second. The middle class has expensive weddings and vacations, but primarily is enslaved to owned cars/houses or educations that merely fail to be fully worth their opportunity cost.
Second, having religious values in addition to other values deemphasizes the focus one can put on the other values. E.g., if I value my happiness, family, career, etc., I will put effort into each of them. If in addition I value baseball cards, I do so by taking money and attention from the other categories. It is true that one who only values happiness is unlikely to achieve it, and that valuing additional things such as the Yankees’ winning would or does make some people happier. Nonetheless, the body of ordinances, injunctions, and so forth that these people are expected to follow is amazingly comprehensive and capable of crowding out much having to do with happiness.
I see quite a bit more stuff among the regular middle classes that looks like pure signaling waste, though you’re clearly more knowledgeable how this compares with the analogous phenomena among orthodox Jews.
However, one very important issue you’re not taking into account is that the primary objective that drives the North American middle classes to work their asses off is the need to afford living in an expensive enough neighborhood to insulate oneself and one’s family from the underclass. (Clearly, various signaling and purely instrumental goals are entangled here.) With some luck and creativity, you can skimp on all kinds of signaling consumerism, but with this issue there’s no joking, and it keeps imposing a horrible threat should you ever slack off. The lack of this pressure seems to me like a major point in favor of life in a deeply traditionalist community, so I think it counts in favor of the KJ setup.
I find the orthodox Jewish observances a puzzling question: is it a matter of extreme runaway signaling that imposes excruciating burdens on these people, or are these just their natural folkways that merely look strange and arbitrary due to cultural distances? (Of course, it’s a complex question whether and how these two things can even be distinguished in some objective sense. Many modern middle-class Americans would claim that they are more free than any other people in human history, and many of them undoubtedly really feel that way, even though from an outside perspective their lives can look frightfully regimented and devoid of any meaningful personal freedom.)
I find this claim surprising. I could just be ethnocentric, but it genuinely seems to me that modern middle-class Americans have significantly more personal freedom (of speech, of belief, of dress, of diet, of sexuality, &c.) than members of ultraorthodox communities. Is there any chance you could try to explain the outside perspective of which you speak?
My wording wasn’t very clear here—I didn’t mean to compare middle-class Americans with ultra-Ortodox communities specifically, but to make a more general point about how people can consider themselves very free and really feel that way, even though things may look very different from an outside perspective.
Generally speaking, people feel unfree when they’re suddenly constrained from doing something that they’re used to and care about, or when constraints lower their status. In contrast, constraints that are ingrained in a culture are often not even noticed consciously by its people, or they are seen as self-evidently reasonable and necessary, since people are used to living under them, and are also at peace with the existing status hierarchy. However, this won’t seem so to an outsider who is used to a different way of life and who perhaps derives status in his own community from some freedoms that are absent in their culture. Similarly, the level of discipline and regimentation (in both scope and intensity) is perceived subjectively depending on what one is used to.
So, ultimately, it depends on how you choose to measure freedom. In some extreme cases, it may be that one society is freer than another across the board, or very nearly so, for example if you compare modern-day U.S. with North Korea. [1] But usually, the impression greatly depends on what regime of constraints one is used to seeing as natural, and on one’s subjective evaluation of the trade-offs involved. For example, many of those modern freedoms you mention are due to disappearance of strong informal communal norms that restrained people’s behavior in the past, but as these social structures broke down, the necessary trade-off was the establishment and growth of impersonal bureaucracies that took over their necessary functions, and which now regulate, micromanage, and re-engineer practically all aspects of life and society. Whether you like this trade-off, and what you think of communities that preserved the older traditional modes of social organization, is of course your call.
[1] Though even this case might not be so clear-cut. Once I saw a documentary showing some illegal recordings of everyday life smuggled out of North Korea, and one of those showed a lady getting into a shouting match with a policeman, who eventually relented! In the U.S. this would be an invitation to get tazered, arrested, and likely charged. This of course doesn’t mean that North Korea is not every bit as awful as people imagine—if anything, it’s probably even worse—but this does suggest that some aspects of social regimentation may be more relaxed over there.
I partially agree with this Vladmir’s statement. I doubt that modern middle-class Americans feel significantly more personally free or unfree than many other historical groups, despite being more free.
To take another angle on this, assume for simplicity that anything not wasted is “reinvested” in signaling. E.g. a Prius is somewhat practical and not just a signal, so more is spent on lawn care than if an SUV was purchased.
An important factor will then be willingness to borrow and be in debt, and Orthodox societies have a very, very high tolerance for this. One explanation would be the prominence of the LORD as provider.
There is one major signaling factor that the middle class does “spend” far more on, and that is aversion to certain government benefits (but not others, such as mortgage based tax benefits).
Could you please list some examples? I’ve been trying to think of some myself, and I came up with things like gift-based holidays (Christmas, Father’s day, birthdays, etc...), brand-name color-and-style-matching clothes, and the search for high status jobs (there is a reason “flipping burgers” is an insult). But it feels like there is so much difference between a homeless man living in a shelter with cheap food/clothing/electronics and a typical middle class man that I fear I might be missing something big, even after reading all the things you and lessdazed already mentioned. Which would bother me, because if it means I am unable to see the middle class as a special case of how to live a life.
Yet for some reason religious people seem to put more effort into family then atheists.
I lack the context in which your comment makes sense as a counterargument or response to what I said. My argument is that they are worse off. You imply otherwise on the basis that they seem to try harder at one facet of life.
Assuming that: religious people not only seem to put more effort into family, but do, and assuming this is true either on average, as a non-binary sliding correlation, or in some other significant way, and assuming that religiosity drives this, rather than this correlation being driven by a third factor, and assuming that it isn’t having kids that causes religiosity, and assuming that the effort spent into family produces happiness at least as effectively than atheists produce it through their sundry efforts...why also assume that religious people would only (seem to) put that effort into family if it made them at least as happy as atheists when their religion itself is demanding that they do so on pain of ostracization and hellfire?
Citation needed, I think. Also separate “seem to put more effort” from “have better family life”; seeming to put more effort in doesn’t always means getting better results, but in your sentence it still appears to score points.