Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/
Geoffrey Miller
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
New York: Viking, 2009
When I was asked to review this book, I half groaned because I was sure of what to expect and I also knew it was not going to broaden my knowledge in a significant way. From my earlier reading up on other, but tangentially related subject areas (e.g., advertising), I already knew, and it seemed more than obvious to me, that consumer behavior had an evolutionary basis. Therefore, I expected this book would not make me look at the world in an entirely different way, but, rather, would reaffirm, maybe clarify, and hopefully deepen by a micron or two, my existing knowledge on the topic. The book is written for a popular audience, so my expectations were met. Fortunately, however, reading it proved not to be a chore: the style is very readable, the information is well-organized, and there are a number of unexpected surprises along the way to keep the reader engaged.
Coming from a humanities educational background, I was familiar with Jean Baudrillard’s treatment of consumerism through his early works: The System of Objects (1968), The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures
(1970), and For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
(1972). Baudrillard believed that there were four ways an object acquired value: through its functional value (similar to the Marxian use-value); through its exchange, or economic value; through its symbolic value (the object’s relationship to a subject, or individual, such as an engagement ring to a young lady or a medal to an Olympic athlete); and, finally, through its sign value (the object’s value within a system of objects, whereby a Montblanc fountain-pen may signify higher socioeconomic status than a Bic ball-pen, or a Fair Trade organic chicken may signify certain social values in relation to a chicken that has been intensively farmed). Baudrillard focused most of his energy on the latter forms of value. Writing at the juncture between evolutionary psychology and marketing, Geoffrey Miller (an evolutionary psychologist) does the same here, except from a purely biological perspective.
The are three core ideas in Spent: firstly, conspicuous consumption is essentially a narcissistic process being used by humans to signal their biological fitness to others while also pleasuring themselves; secondly, this processes is unreliable, as humans cheat by broadcasting fraudulent signals in an effort to flatter themselves and achieve higher social status; and thirdly, this process is also inefficient, as the need for continuous economic growth has led capitalists since the 1950s to manufacture products with built-in obsolescence, thus fueling a wasteful process of continuous substandard production and continuous consumption and rubbish generation. In other words, we live in a world where insatiable and amoral capitalists constantly make flimsy products with ever-changing designs and ever-higher specifications so that they break quickly and/or cause embarrassment after a year, and humans, motivated by primordial mating and hedonistic urges that have evolved biological bases, are thus compelled to frequently replace their consumer goods with newer and better models — usually the most expensive ones they can afford — so that they can delude themselves and others into thinking that they are higher-quality humans than they really are.
Miller tells us that levels of fitness are advertised by humans along six independent dimensions, comprised of general intelligence, and the five dimensions that define the human personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability, and extraversion. Extending or drawing from theories expounded by Thorstein Veblen and Amotz Zahavi (the latter’s are not mainstream), Miller also tells us that, because fraudulent fitness signaling is part and parcel of animal behavior, humans, like other animals, will attempt to prove the authenticity of their signals by making their signaling a costly endeavor that is beyond the means of a faker. Signaling can be rendered costly through its being conspicuously wasteful (getting an MA at Oxford), conspicuously precise (getting an MIT PhD), or a conspicuous badge of reputation (getting a Harvard MBA) that requires effort to achieve, is difficult to maintain, and entails severe punishment if forged. Miller attempts to highlight the degree to which these strategies are wasteful when he points out that, in as much as university credentials are a proxy for general intelligence, both job seekers and prospective employers could much more efficiently determine a job seeker’s general intelligence with a simple, quick, and cheap IQ test.
As expected, we are told here that signaling behavior becomes, according to experimental data, exaggerated when humans are what Miller calls “mating-primed” (on the pull). Also as expected, men and women exhibit different proclivities: males emphasizing aggression and openness to experience by performing impressive and unexpected feats in front of desirable females, and females emphasizing agreeableness through participation in, for example, charitable events. And again as expected, Miller tells us that while dumb, young humans engaging in fitness signaling will tend to emphasize body-enhancing consumption (e.g., breast implants, muscle-building powders, platform shoes), older, more intelligent humans, educated by experience on the futility of such strategies, instead emphasize their general intelligence, conscientiousness, and stability through effective maintenance of their appearance, via regular exercise, sensible diet, careful grooming, and tasteful fashion. Still, this strategy follows biologically-determined patters: as women’s physiognomic indicators of fertility (eye size; sclera whiteness; lip coloration, fullness, and eversion; breast size; etc.) peak in their mid twenties, older women will apply make-up and opt for sartorial strategies that compensate for the progressive fading of these traits, in a subconscious effort to indicate genetic quality and stability, as well as — as mentioned above — conscientiousness.
Less expected were some of the explanations for some human consumer choices: when a human purchases a top-of-the-line, fully featured piece of electronic equipment, be it a stereo or a sewing machine, the features are less important than the opportunity the equipment provides its owner to talk about them, and thus signal his/her intelligence through their detailed, jargon-laden enumeration and description. This makes perfect sense, of course, and reading it provided theoretical confirmation of the correctness of my decision in the 1990s, when, after noticing that I only ever used a fraction of all available features and functions in any piece of electronic equipment, I decided to build a recording studio with the simplest justifiable models by the best possible brands.
Even less expected for me where some of the facts outside the topic of this book. Miller, conscious of the disrepute into which the evolutionary sciences have fallen due to foaming-at-the-mouth Marxist activists — Stephen Jay Gould, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, and Richard Lewontin — and ultra-orthodox nurture bigots in modern academia, makes sure to precede his discussion by describing himself as a liberal, and by enumerating a horripilating catalogue of liberal credentials (he classes himself as a “feminist,” for example). He also goes on to cite survey data that shows most evolutionary psychologists in contemporary academia are socially liberal, like him. It is a sad state of affairs when a scientist feels obligated to asseverate his political correctness in order to avoid ostracism.
Unusually, however, Miller seems an honest liberal (even if he contradicts himself, as in pp. 297-8), and is critical in the first chapters as well as in the later chapters of the Marxist death-grip on academic freedom of inquiry and expression and of the cult of diversity and multiculturalism. The latter occurs in the context of a discussion on the various possible alternatives to a society based on conspicuous consumption, which occupies the final four chapters of this book. Miller believes that the multiculturalist ideology is an obstacle to overcoming the consumer society because it prevents the expression of individuality and the formation of communities with alternative norms and forms of social display. This is because humans, when left to freely associate, tend to cluster in communities with shared traits, while multiculturalist legislation is designed to prevent freedom of association. Moreover, and citing Robert Putnam’s research (but also making sure to clarify he does not think diversity is bad), Miller argues that “[t]here is increasing evidence that communities with a chaotic diversity of social norms do not function very well” (p. 297). Since the only loophole in anti-discrimination laws is income, the result is that people are then motivated to escape multiculturalism is through economic stratification, by renting or buying at higher price points, thus causing the formation of
low-income ghettos, working-class tract houses, professional exurbs: a form of assortative living by income, which correlates only moderately with intelligence and conscientiousness.
. . .
[W]hen economic stratification is the only basis for choosing where to live, wealth becomes reified as the central form of status in every community — the lowest common denominator of human virtue, the only trait-display game in town. Since you end up living next to people who might well respect wildly different intellectual, political, social, and moral values, the only way to compete for status is through conspicuous consumption. Grow a greener lawn, buy a bigger car, add a media room . . . (p. 300)
This is a very interesting and valid argument, linking the evils of multiculturalism with the consumer society in a way that I had not come across before.
Miller’s exploration of the various possible ways we could explode the consumer society does get rather silly at times (at one point, Miller considers the idea of tattooing genetic trait levels on people’s faces; and elsewhere he weighs requiring consumers to qualify to purchase certain products, on the basis of how these products reflect their actual genetic endowments). However, when he eventually reaches a serious recommendation, it is one I can agree with: promoting product longevity. In other words, shifting production away from the contemporary profit-oriented paradigm of cheap, rapidly-obsolescing, throwaway products and towards the manufacture of high quality, long-lasting ones, that can be easily serviced and repaired. This suggests a return to the manufacturing standards we last saw during the Victorian era, which never fails to put a smile on my face. Miller believes that this can be achieved using the tax system, and he proposes abolishing the income tax and instituting a progressive consumption tax designed to make cheap, throwaway products more expensive than sturdy ones.
Frankly, I detest the idea of any kind of tax, since I see it today as a forced asset confiscation practiced by governments who are intent in destroying me and anyone like me; but if there has to be tax, if that is the only way to clear the world out of the perpetual inundation of tacky rubbish, and if that is the only way to obliterate the miserable businesses that pump it out day after day by the centillions, then let it mercilessly punish low quality — let it sadistically flog manufacturers of low-quality products with the scourging whip of fiscal law until they squeal with pain, rip their hair out, and rend their garments as they see their profits plummet at the speed of light and completely and forever disappear into the black hole of categorical bankruptcy.
If you are looking for a deadly serious, arid text of hard-core science, Spent is not for you: the same information can be presented in a more detailed, programmatic, and reliable manner than it is here; this book is written to entertain as much as it is to educate a popular audience. If you are looking for a readable overview, a refresher, or an update on how evolved biology interacts with marketing and consumption, and would appreciate a few key insights as a prelude to further study, Spent is an easy basic text. It should be noted, however, that his area of research is still in relative infancy, and there is here a certain amount of speculation laced with proper science. Therefore, if you are interested in this topic, and are an activist or businessman interested in developing more effective ways to market your message or products, you may want to adopt an interdisciplinary approach and read this alongside Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Jean Baudrillard’s early works on consumerism, and some of the texts in Miller’s own bibliography, which include — surprise, surprise! — The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, and The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide
, by Richard Lynn, among others.
TOQ Online, August 14, 2009



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Dans son roman policier Le Phare, paru en 2008 à LGF/Livre de Poche et qu’elle situe à Combe Island, au large de la Cornouailles, l’Anglaise P. D. James signale à plusieurs reprises la terreur exercée par les pirates maghrébins, surtout ceux de Rabat-Salé, sur les côtes sud de l’Angleterre où ils s’étaient emparés de plusieurs îles, transformées en bastions. Le sort tragique et « l’histoire extraordinaire des esclaves européens en terre d’islam », c’est justement ce qu’a étudié l’historien Giles Milton, anglais lui aussi, dans Captifs en Barbarie.



Sans doute le grand romancier trouva-t-il aussi dans le livre du philosophe, comme le remarque José Luis Goyenna dans son intéressante (quoique pleine de fautes) préface, en plus d'images étonnantes bien propres à enthousiasmer l'écrivain, une authentique philosophie de la liberté comme accomplissement métaphysique du moi qui, à la différence de celle de Sartre qualifiée par l'auteur d'Ultramarine de «pensée de seconde main» (2), ne se dépêcherait pas bien vite de déposer aux pieds de l'idole le fardeau trop pesant, enchaînant ainsi la liberté à la seule discipline stupide des masses. Tout lecteur de La révolte des masses aime je crois, en tout premier lieu, l'écriture de ce livre érudit, pressé, menaçant, parfois prodigieusement lucide et même, osons ce mot tombé dans l'ornière journalistique, prophétique.

Hervé Juvin n’est pas qu’un économiste, ni uniquement un essayiste, non plus seulement le président d’Eurogroup Institute, il est encore et surtout un analyste incomparable, aussi lucide que courageux, du monde comme il ne va plus.
« (…) Tout dans l’Amérique est une copie grotesque de la réalité », constate l’universitaire et géopoliticien Tomislav Sunic dans Homo americanus, rejeton de la postmodernité, passionnante étude que viennent de publier les éditions Akribeia. « L’Amérique postmoderne fonctionne depuis 1945 comme une photocopie géante de la métaréalité ; non l’Amérique telle qu’elle est, mais l’Amérique telle qu’elle devrait être dans le monde entier. La seule différence est que, au XXIe siècle, l’histoire (…) est passée à la vitesse supérieure. Les événements se succèdent de façon désordonnée et foncent à toute allure vers un chaos total » – ce « chaos total » que l’idéologue néo-conservateur Michael Ledeen, pilier de la World Jewish Review et l’un des principaux inspirateurs de George W. Bush dans la guerre contre l’Irak, appelait de ses vœux dès 2001 car il y voyait le seul moyen d’instaurer un gouvernement mondial.
« Pendant que les Juifs russes inventent le socialisme et que les Juifs autrichiens découvrent la psychanalyse, les Juifs américains participent, au tout premier rang, à la naissance du capitalisme américain et à l’américanisation du monde », a reconnu, cité par Sunic, Jacques Attali dans Les Juifs, le monde et l’argent (Fayard 2002). Il est donc logique que Homo americanus et Homo sovieticus aient présenté tant de points communs tels le non-respect des Conventions de Genève sur les prisonniers de guerre ou l’envoi des dissidents dans des hôpitaux psychiatriques – sort réservé en 1945 à Ezra Pound, le plus grand poète états-unien jugé trop favorable au fascisme italien. Et logique aussi que « l’américanisation du monde », y compris du monde ex-soviétique (par le truchement de certains oligarques patrons de presse), soit menée tambour battant.
Fiction: en juillet 1940, Hitler parvient à forcer la main au général Franco qui laisse passer les troupes allemandes sur son territoire. Gibraltar tombe et les panzers, après avoir traversé le Maroc et l'Algérie, foncent sur Le Caire. 300.000 prisonniers français sont libérés et commis aux moissons. La popularité du vieux maréchal est au zénith. Un débarquement allemand a lieu en Irlande du Sud. Malte tombe aux mains des paras de la Luftwaffe de Goering. Churchill est mis en minorité et remplacé par Lord Halifax, qui fait la paix, en échange des puits de pétrole du Moyen Orient, qui restent sous contrôle britannique. Pourquoi faire la guerre dans ces conditions? Le succès de l'opération Barbarossa est quasi complet et, rapidement, les troupes de l'Axe font jonction dans le Caucase. Par un coup d'audace inouï (Skorzeny?), Vladivostok tombe. C'est la panique au Japon, qui se rapproche des Américains. Dans l'Empire, c'est le délire: d'ailleurs, à Berlin, on joue Sartre à guichets fermés! Dans cette atmosphère de triomphalisme, l'épuration ethnique dont sont victimes les Juiffss prend heureusement fin et l'Empire favorisera même, pour gêner les Anglais, la naissance d'un Etat hébreu, armé par l'Allemagne. A Berlin, l'aile modérée menée par Bibbentrop, le cher Otto Tabetz, ou Krommel élimine les “natzis” forcenés. Une fausse explosion nucléaire, vers 1943, calme les Américains, qui se contentent d'armer la résistance soviétique (Staline combat toujours en Yakoutie). Une vraie bombe, que le Führer obtient grâce à ses réseaux d'espions (juiffss?) aux Etats-Unis, assure définitivement la neutralité américaine. Hitler meurt le 30 décembre 1946, à la veille du réveillon. Speer, l'amiral Panaris et surtout Gersdorff entreprennent une première “dénatzification” et, de 59 à 78, Stendel, le Führer suivant, proscrit le racisme et le remplace par le différentialisme critériologique: les Juiffss sont incités à collaborer ou à émigrer en Israël, où ils forment une tête de pont de l'Empire.
L'Empire est résolument non humaniste et rejette sagement les droits de l'homme, qui ne sont jamais que “les droits du client”: “droit de chier des litanies de progénitures débilo-crédulo-proliférantes, pulluliques, malsaines, ivres de tuer leur prochain ou de leur passer la Grande Maladie”. Car la Maladie, venue de l'Ouest est interdite dans l'Empire: un corps d'élite veille et nettoie, liquidant impitoyablement malades infiltrés par les démothalassocrates, agents d'influence de la pourriture utilitairo-protestante et militants nationalistes (des Gagaouzes aux Vourdalaks). Pas question d'affaiblir l'Empire! Les chrétiens, et les croyeux
Jean-Claude Rolinat a publié dernièrement, aux éditions Dualpha, une remarquable biographie d'Eva Peron. 


There is no question for him that the liberal project is doomed: although its proponents paint it as good and inevitable, egalitarian modernity is, in fact, a highly artificial condition, an unsustainable one, which will fall victim to the very processes it set in motion. Faye believes that we are currently facing a ‘convergence of catastrophes’. These include: the colonization of the North by Afro-Asian peoples from the South; an imminent economic and demographic crisis, caused by an aging population in the West, falling birthrates, and unfunded promises made by the democratic welfare state; chaos in the countries of the South, caused by absurd Western-sponsored development and development programs; a global economic crisis, much worse than the depression of the 1930s, led by the financial sector; ‘the surge of religious fundamentalist fanaticism, particularly in Islam;’ ‘the confrontation of North and South, on theological and ethnic grounds;’ unchecked environmental degradation; and the convergence of these catastrophes against a backdrop of nuclear proliferation, international mafias, and the reemergence of viral and microbial diseases, such as AIDS. For Faye, the way out is not through reform, because a system that is contrary to reality is beyond reform), but through collapse and revolution. As a catastrophic collapse is inevitable, revolutionary thought and action must today be post-catastrophic in outlook. He further suggests that inaction on our part will only open European civilization to conquest by Islam.
VARSOVIE (NOVOpress) – Boguslaw Woloszanski, journaliste polonais, continue dans son nouvel ouvrage, 39-45 : les dossiers oubliés, aux Editions Jourdan, d’explorer les faces méconnues de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, sur la base notamment de la récente ouverture des archives de l’ex-Union Soviétique.


Man mag nicht glauben, daß 56 Jahre seit der Erstveröffentlichung des vorliegenden Bandes vergangen sind! Die Fragen, denen Sieburg sich hier in neun Kapiteln (etwa »Die Kunst, Deutscher zu sein«, »Vom Menschen zum Endverbraucher«) widmet, lesen sich nicht als Rückblick auf Gefechte von gestern. Sie sind noch ebensogut unsere Themen: Identitätssuche, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Konsumwahn, die Grenze zwischen Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit. Auch wo seine Angelegenheiten einmal der unmittelbaren Aktualität entbehren – etwa in seiner bemerkenswerten Replik auf Curzio Malaparte (d.i. K.E. Suckert) oder in seinen Einlassungen zum Verlust der Ostgebiete – nickt man staunend. Ohne Twitter oder Ryan Air gekannt zu haben, spottet Sieburg über »das Management des Vergnügens«, die »Mechanisierung der Freizeit«. Er meinte damit – wie bescheiden aus heutiger Warte! – »Betriebsausflüge an den Comer See« und Klassenfahrten in die Alpen. »Der Vorschlag, die Kinder sollten an der Nidda Blumen suchen, würde heute auf allen Seiten große Heiterkeit hervorrufen.« Für Sieburg waren die Deutschen »ein Volk ohne Mitte«: »Im Deutschen, so glaubte die Welt gestern noch, ist mehr Explosivstoff angehäuft als in jedem anderen Erdenbewohner. Hat sich diese Ansicht geändert, sind beim Anblick des fleißigen und lammfrommen Bundesdeutschen, der sogar den Karneval straff organisiert und wirtschaftsbewußt dem Konsum dienstbar macht, der das Wort Europa dauernd im Mund führt, (…) den kein Aufmarsch mit Fahnen mehr aus seinem Wochenendhaus, seinem Faltboot und Volkswagen herauslocken kann, der nur noch zu den Vertretern versunkener Fürstenhäuser und zu Filmstars aufschaut, der einen harmonischen Bund zwischen Preußentum und Nackenfett eingegangen ist, (…) der vom Golf von Neapel bis zum Nordkap die schnellsten Wagen fährt, sich in Capri bräunen läßt (…), der sich aus Ordnungssinn mit der abstrakten Kunst und dem Nihilismus beschäftigt – sind, so frage ich, beim Anblick dieses Musterknaben, der sich in der Schule der Demokratie zum Primus aufarbeitet, alle Ängste und mißtrauische Befürchtungen verschwunden? Ich antworte, nein.«
Müdigkeit und Geschichtslosigkeit zeige, »die mit einer nie dagewesenen Nüchternheit« gepaart sei. »Nur der Deutsche schwärzt seinen Landsmann bei Fremden an, nur der Deutsche verständigt sich lieber mit einem Exoten als mit einem politischen Gegner eigenen Stammes (…), nur der Deutsche verleugnet Flagge, Hymne und Staatsform des Mutterlandes vor Dritten.« Als »dümmstes Schlagwort« seiner Zeit erschien dem Publizisten der schon damals opportune Vorwurf, »restaurative Tendenzen« zu befördern. Alles Große, Geniale, das Heldenhafte ohnehin, dessen die Deutschen einst fähig waren, werde nun verhöhnt und gegeißelt unter dem Vorwand, »daß die alten Zeiten nicht wiederkommen dürfen«. Ja, und wie furchtbar war auch der »deutsche Spießer!« Allerdings, so Sieburg, sei zu befürchten, daß der Spießer in neuem Gewand, nämlich mit »heraushängendem Hemd« nach US-Vorbild wiedergekehrt sei, und daß die »Vorurteilslosigkeit in der Kleidung, im Umgang mit dem anderen Geschlecht und den Nerven der Mitmenschen nicht eine höhere sittliche Freiheit und einen souveränen Geist« mit sich führe.

