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Dude Man's avatar

Conspicuous production is next. Making a living out of "what you love" will be the next in thing, if it isn't already.

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myrealitie's avatar

I've started to notice articles that are critical of "authenticity" as a pursuit, especially from the perspective of business and leadership. The handful of articles I am referring to have essentially claimed that being authentic can be an excuse for being lazy and refusing to develop aspects of yourself that are not your core strengths, thereby sabotaging your success in group environments. So, maybe the next status move will be more fully developing yourself, balancing your "authentic" self with your social self, so to speak.

That said, I am not sure that I look at the progression that you outlined as purely a status game (although certainly it has that component).

In addition to that, though, It seems to me that the progression of leisure, consumption, non-conformity, and authenticity as values represents an improvement in the sense that they accommodate and are accessible to a broader scope of people, albeit with some overshooting (i.e. buying authentic South American alpaca sweaters is not accessible to a broad group). If I am right that the next adopted value will be a light pendulum swing back to being sophisticated about group dynamics (without abandoning your true self but not all the way back to the super group conscious keeping-up-with-the-joneses), then it does in fact seem like our culture is on net getting closer to balancing group harmony with individual self-actualization.

But maybe this is my idealism talking.

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