The Cup of a Carpenter

"The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle. "

To assume an affected pose.

Luxury, perhaps, is to be afforded the opportunity to concern oneself and reflect upon the immaterial. So consider from luxury.
The underlying principle I am concerned with is pose, or to pose, or poise-- choose your favorite iteration.

Aurelius said, "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." I substitute pose for perspective-- Everything we see is posed, not the truth.

I posit, identity is derived from responses to demands: both material and immaterial. One's response to the question of need: abstinence/indulgence: shapes, qualitatively and quantitatively, their identity.
A twentieth century example: orthodox Jewish ethicisism and homosexual aestheticism.
Poise. Identity has developed, from material emphasis to an immaterial emphasis-- with the satisfaction of material necessity in Majority-American life.

As preemptive response: It is marketing's 20th century victory that material goods have been abstracted to immaterial worth-- the connotations of item are as perceptibly valuable as item itself-- if not frequently more so.

Identity's dependence on immaterial has offered, (postmodernism), the opportunity to shape a malleable self identity--for export. To control the presentation of one's desires' and necessities' satisfaction. One can wonder endlessly which receives precedence, self-affiliation or group acknowledgment-- but in the argument's confines, each rely upon abstract immaterial indicators.
A painfully cultural dependent example: identity connotations between clothing items, flannel & spandex or oil-stained Jynco jeans & faded ICP logo printed on an american apparell 100% cotton t-shirt.

Identity has entered an implicit crisis. (Class is the unmentioned elephant, that for hermetic simplicity we'll leave for the moment) For the visible portion of the population material necessity has never been more distant, though even for the invisible portion-- cultural saturation has demanded their conformity to an immaterial model.
Poise and the Crisis of Identity. With the freedom to control and choose, from admittedly limited commercial options, identities have been chosen and summarily purchased.
Identity, however, exerts pressures upon its individual-- ascribing patterns of behavior and perspective in exchange for the immaterial indicators it provides. Individuals must live into the identities they purchase.
Opportunities for existential friction abound. Or do not, their occurrences perhaps in proportion to the benefits identity association provides the individual.
However one reacts, control and production of these immaterial cultural indicators is ample power for many competing agendas.

Poise. In delving into identity, it has been my purpose to examine the difficult cultural question of the hipster brand-- the very word's visceral response in majority individuals has passed into cliche. While an unassociated grouping of young individuals they represent in their varied and multiple iterations a common response to the underlying questions of identity.
Young people lumped into this group, still operate through immaterial cultural indicators but aspire to material identities that satisfied necessity has made irrelevant.
Material associations are fetishized. Material indicators of identity are perceived as more valid indicators than immaterial indicators. The words Authenticity & Authentic. I withhold judgment of the validity of these desires. Although, I might point out that attempting to align oneself with a preferably perceived material based identity is as abstractly an assumed pose/poise as the majority immaterial indicator.

Again, to clarify: attempting to resolve a crisis of navigating an immaterial identity, hipsters and young people have sought to identify themselves through the methodology of satisfying their material needs.
Hence, in some cases cultural phenomenons of vegetarianism/veganism-- deferentiating oneself from the majority through food choices.
Hence, a preference for material career aspirations: cooking/restaurant business--providing food; taxi/bus/public transit careers-- facilitating transportation; construction-- facilitating shelter, aid/nonprofit/not-for-profit-- facilitating material necessities of others; etc.
Career Addendum (employment genre is of itself a strong immaterial cultural identity indicator --even when employed in a material job sector) : Even should an individual be employed in majority-immaterial concerns, individuals yearning for material association often pursue other activities perceived as indicative of the material identity: i.e. pass times to distract after labor or violent voicing of pent-up frustrations/stress perceived as indicative of their meeting their material necessities -- drinking, concerts, vandalism, release through violence, group protest, sex, general rebellious acts-- and through abstaining from these activities.
(When abstracting choices to affiliate oneself with or differentiate oneself from a group, whether indulging or abstaining-- it is in terms of these material {and immaterial} need satisfaction indicators-- resulting in that desired identity.)

Associations through these means might be the most prevalent, case in point through aphoristic example: "Yeah, Casey's a lawyer, but she's cool. You should see that girl drink. She went with me to the guerrilla show downtown, she didn't bring money for the cover charge and punched the bouncer in the gut and slipped into the club! She swears like a sailor! She was at the vegg protest at the butcher shop!"
In this case, Casey works through immaterial means (possibly enjoying its benefits within other social spheres from immaterial identity association) but shows her aspiration for a material necessity based identity by acting examples of culturally associated behavior.

Even should an extreme example grow their food and butcher their cow, they'd never know to need it- necessity has been preceded by the supersaturated availability of industrial agriculture. It would be to assume an affected pose. Identifying themselves by material satisfactions that cannot, through circumstance, be their own necessities.

Sleeping on a park bench- if there's the option of a home behind you, there is no identity of necessity.

And if there is no home, you've certainly many jealous friends longing silently for and presently absorbing the awful cultural identity rays of authentic material necessity.



The cup of a carpenter, be humble:

"We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that. "
-M.A.