JAW ON THE FLOOR: Starbucks to Release Sonic Youth Celebrity Compilation (WTF)

My experience doesn't jibe with the picture painted of Starbucks in this thread, which makes the whole thread read as reactionary and silly to me.

Yeah, but see, my experiences don't jibe with yours. Doesn't make me think any less of you or your opinions.

Also, I think that looking for spiritual enrichment in a hotel hallway is probably going to lead to disappointment 100 times out of 100. Is your life REALLY so devoid of meaning that you need for everything around you to feed you spirituality?

Gah. Again, I think it's appropriate and GOOD that hotel hallways are spiritually empty. I think it's sad, on the other hand, that we seem to want to extend that emptiness into so many other parts of the world.

P.S. Lowering this to the level of "is your life so devoid of meaning that..." just totally sucks.

"no starbucks" could be the indie rock "no homo"

HD: I do think that all Starbucks feel more or less the same. Some more grubby, some immaculate. Some harried, some leisurely. Some expansive, some cramped. Yes, but all variations on a theme. And the variations don't make the corpse seem any more animate.

If you think it's good that hallways are spiritually empty, why did you use them as an example of a public space that is leeching the spirituality out of our society?

Arguments like this are exactly why people need religion.

(By which I mean, the absence of religion creates the need for people to look for meaning in all kinds of bizarre places, like for example airport lounges.)

CAN O WORMS RIGHT HERE

GETCHA LIVE BAIT

^_^

Ha, Dan, I find it hard to believe you're quite as mystified by "nonsensical" doubts about airport-like public space as you're claiming here

It's not so much that as much as it is the idea that an airport lounge is a space where people should be enriched spiritually. Or, for that matter, that a coffee shop is a place where people should be enriched spiritually; a coffee shop is a place where people should be able to buy some coffee.

I used hotels hallways as a template example of a kind of emptiness that is being exported into other parts of the built environment. When I first talked about this, I said, "Problem is that this kind of emptiness is conducive to certain kinds of financial transactions, too. And it's cheap. And it offends no one. So it grows."

So the roblem isn't that transitional spaces are themselves soulless, but that they're a kind of self-replicating machine that's growing to eclipse the rest of the world. Like JG Ballard's planet that consisted of an endless airport lounge.

"Spiritual enrichment" frames it in overreaching terms -- we could spend all day just figuring out what the spirit it, leave alone what enriches it. But point being there's a regimented and anti-social atmosphere that comes with these kinds of spaces, one in which massive amounts of industrial psychology are being deployed to make large groups of humans use the spaces profitably and efficiently and quietly, etc. -- it's not at all nonsensical to compare these kinds of environments to ones that have specific personal influences on them, spaces that are not somewhat industrial and impermanent and modular!

Starbucks is a bad example in that comparison, because most customers desire to use it in an efficient, industrial sense -- purchase coffee and move along. But as a greater issue, umm ... I don't think it's at all strange or bullshitty or mystical to worry that the atmosphere and social effects of spaces like the airport food court might expand farther than makes many people happy.

The thing is, the emptiness/meaninglessness isn't intrinsic to the built environment as much as it is the overpopulation of the built spaces and the need to supply as much service to as many people as possible with the highest margins. We could be having this same kind of discussion on ILE if we were a bunch of Londoners complaining about chain pubs. Or replace Dan with Laurel and the rest of us are beer enthusiasts who despise anheuser busch products.

I think the worst thing about starbucks is no different than the problems with all suburban shopping centers, and that's not starbucks' problem, it's an urban planning one. An urban planning problem caused by overpopulation that began two generations ago. *wrings hands, shakes head, etc*

Tombot OTM. Nabisco OTMOTM.

HD: It's not that I want all coffee shops to be pregnant with spiritual possibility, but that I am bothered the fact that the efficiency of our production (production of ideas, objects, values, spaces, etc.) often seems to be directly proportional to the essential vacancy of the things we produce. Meanwhile, population density, the profit motive and resource depletion all seem to demand ever greater efficiency. Nowhere to go but up, right?

Agree w/ Nabisco that Starbucks is often a transitional space, so it's emptiness isn't necessarily a failure. The failure, as I see it, is how how successful we've been in marketing transitional emptiness as desireable, fun, distinctive and meaningful.

it's != its

Agree w/ Nabisco that Starbucks is often a transitional space, so it's emptiness isn't necessarily a failure. The failure, as I see it, is how how successful we've been in marketing transitional emptiness as desireable, fun, distinctive and meaningful.

wtf are you talking about here? Pop music?

Pizza Hut

i like drinking coffee.

I want to know where transitional emptiness is being marketed as meaningful. From what I've seen of modern society, NOTHINg is being marketed as meaningful and that's kind of the point; "meaning" is practically a dirty word on par with "hypocrisy" and the resultant cognative dissonance is slowly turning everyone's minds to mush.

wtf are you talking about here? Pop music?

Not so much, though I guess an argument could be made (by somebody else). I'm talking primarily about the built environment, but also about how we construct corporate, civic and individual identity. I mean, the "emptiness" that I'm talking about isn't a physical absence.

I posit that the metaphysical absence you are talking about has existed since time began in practically every building ever built that wasn't a palace, cathedral or landmark skyscraper.

or the Big Hunt

I said "practically" for a reason, Tom!

From what I've seen of modern society, NOTHINg is being marketed as meaningful and that's kind of the point; "meaning" is practically a dirty word on par with "hypocrisy" and the resultant cognative dissonance is slowly turning everyone's minds to mush.

I agree entirely. But I think that we're also being indoctinated with a new, debased kind of "meaning". We're told that things are meaningful to the extent that we desire them, and that we should desire things to the extent that they make us happy. In this context, our purchasing decisions become arbiters of meaning in our lives.

"meaning" is practically a dirty word on par with "hypocrisy"

you mean this to be like a current cultural conceit, right?

we should desire things to the extent that they make us happy

Why else should we desire things?

I posit that the metaphysical absence you are talking about has existed since time began in practically every building ever built that wasn't a palace, cathedral or landmark skyscraper.

Dunno about the beginning of time, but I agree about the 20th century. I'm concerned about degrees and increase.

Why else should we desire things?

The quote yr responding to was predicated on this: "things are meaningful to the extent that we desire them." But I don't know that desire and satisfaction are the only way to construct meaning. We can base meaning on the desires of some diety. Or on the dictates of absolute truth and justice. Or as the product of the intrinsic beauty of the universe. Etc. There are lots of ways to construct meaning.

Last one to Euler.

From what I've seen of modern society, NOTHINg is being marketed as meaningful

I disagree with this entirely, good lord: every single thing you do or buy is totally coded with cultural meaning, on levels that even aspire to the spiritual! You can't even pick up a furniture catalog without it saying "it's not furniture, it's a LIFESTYLE, it's a WAY OF BEING" -- this is everywhere. And it's completely off to imagine that even the people who just want to grab coffee and go do not view the Starbucks purchase as having cultural meaning; the place's rep has blanded out a bit for sure, and Britney Spears is not helping, but there is still a coding of urbanity and sophistication that goes with getting a half-caf latte and scone (vs. a McMuffin!), and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

Or at least seem to. That's what I'm wringing my hands over here. Again, thanks for sorting and saying it so clearly.

(In fact another efficient marketing success for Starbucks has been to put VALUE on being a grab-and-go store user: "You are an awesome sophisticated go-go-go-getter, and you need your morning cappucino to feel vigorous and businesslike.")

(xpost - This is not some kind of grand lie, either: I can certainly remember getting my first office job and having the morning coffee pick-up become an awesome-feeling routine that signified I was no longer a post-collegiate slacker record-store clerk but now a clever active worker in nice slacks. I consider that kind of thing meaningful, yeah; it's the bits of the tenor of your life that you piece together into feeling and narrative, you know? I think those things are terrifically important, which is part of why I do think there's significance in whatever we're calling the airportification of space.)

you mean this to be like a current cultural conceit, right?

I suppose so, insomuch that I studied computers instead of history and can't off the top of my head point at specific examples in ages past that show that this, too, is a fact of life on Earth rather than a social construct that's arisen as a side-effect of modern life.

I disagree with this entirely, good lord: every single thing you do or buy is totally coded with cultural meaning, on levels that even aspire to the spiritual!

That's kind of my point, Nabisco; if everything is laden with "meaning", nothing is actually meaningful.

And it's completely off to imagine that even the people who just want to grab coffee and go do not view the Starbucks purchase as having cultural meaning; the place's rep has blanded out a bit for sure, and Britney Spears is not helping, but there is still a coding of urbanity and sophistication that goes with getting a half-caf latte and scone (vs. a McMuffin!), and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

This is really reaching. I'm willing to wager that more people go to Starbucks because it's the ubiquitous coffee place rather than it's the ubiquitous coffee place; in fact, the people I know who actually care about that kind of thing specifically avoid Starbucks in favor of independantly-owned clones precisely because everyone else goes to Starbucks.

right, nabisco, so one way to understand Bob is that he wants people to stop desiring what's coded as urbane and sophisticated but isn't really, and instead to desire what really is urbane and sophisticated; another way to understand him is that he wants people to start desiring things coded with other meanings (something "more lasting", I guess, here I don't know what the view is); or else he's saying that the problem is that desire and meaning are linked at all. I am not following the view very well though.

ARGH.

"I'm willing to wager that more people go to Starbucks because it's the ubiquitous coffee place rather than it's the POSH coffee place;..."

Everybody go read LOST IN THE COSMOS

Um, no.

(Unless it has sci-fi boobs in it...?)

no it's got some pretty funny questionnaires in it though

Dan you're evaluating "posh" on a kind of top-down scale here, like versus other coffee shops. That's not what I mean. I'm saying that for a great deal of America, grabbing a latte on the way to work still reads as urbane behavior -- as opposed to going to McDonalds on the way to work, or stopping in a small-town diner for a cup of black coffee. Whether or not it's actually the posh spot, that's part of what it sells, or what it offers you the potential to feel like. And again I will tell you from experience that when Starbucks started appearing in smaller Midwestern towns, the prevailing reaction was a bit "oo la la," and the people who frequented those places were very much placing themselves, in the context of their towns, as being somehow ... sophisticated. Urbane.

And I think it's a bit of an easy paradox to say "if everything's laden with meaning, then nothing is" -- the point was things are very much marketed in terms of meaning. But sometimes the meaning sticks, and sometimes it doesn't; some products are successful in creating that sense around themselves (haha APPLE), and others are not

right, nabisco, so one way to understand Bob is that he wants people to stop desiring what's coded as urbane and sophisticated but isn't really, and instead to desire what really is urbane and sophisticated; another way to understand him is that he wants people to start desiring things coded with other meanings (something "more lasting", I guess, here I don't know what the view is); or else he's saying that the problem is that desire and meaning are linked at all. I am not following the view very well though.

Geez. Under the microscope.

I do not want people to desire "what is really urbane & sophisticated". Nor do I want people to desire things coded with other meanings.

What I'm saying is that it makes me sad to live in a time when putative and intrinsic meaning have become so entirely separated from one another - to the point where "intrinsic meaning" seems absurd, and coded meaning is the only kind we accept. The fact of this separation doesn't make me sad in and of itself. In isolation, it's actually pretty fascinating. But inhabiting, day to day, the eroded social/cultural/physical landscape that results depresses me terribly.

That's kind of my point, Nabisco; if everything is laden with "meaning", nothing is actually meaningful.

I think a number of monks would disagree with this - that's forty-five degrees off of what you're saying I know, but I just wanted to aside that abundance of meaningful actions/stimuli doesn't have to detract from the general fund of meaning

But we can degrade the value and function of meaning by separating it from any sort of objective reality and manufacturing vast piles of it to suit our every need.

The air-quotes are important there; my argument hinges on the central thesis behind all of our metaphysical posturing, namely the codification of false meaning into things that are ultimately "unimportant" (ie, luxuries).

Bob, please stop.

Actually I should stop, too; going home to see my wife is more important than this conversation.

The air-quotes are important there; my argument hinges on the central thesis behind all of our metaphysical posturing, namely the codification of false meaning into things that are ultimately "unimportant" (ie, luxuries).

yes, this is OTM. Assignation of meaning to things that don't merit it is a neat parlor trick, and a popular one, but is pointless/probably harmful

HD: You've pushed this along just as much as anyone else. If you've got an objection to what I've said, just lay it out. Keep the playground gamesmanship to yourself.

warning: more bullshit

It's been a long time since thinking things were "intrinsically meaningful" was credible in our culture. Like, since the seventeenth century.

I read folks like Rilke as trying to make objects speak their meanings to us again, but Rilke seems to have seen himself as a "medium" for the transmission of meaning. So that's not really intrinsic meaning either, but meaning mediated by the sensibility of a person. What we've seen in "modernity" is how powerful we can be when we get good at serving as such a "medium"---advertising is a pretty good example of this.

Bob, I take issue when people start talking about "objective reality" in support of arguments about the devaluation of individuality because it really makes it clear that the central point of their argument is "Why doesn't everyone think like me?"

yo dan:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/boy-survives-mo.html

also see http://www.figureprints.com/