It's a fantastic thought experiment, and yes, it's a huge problem. A gaping problem. There are two things going on here: the first is utility maximization. In this realm, subjectivity counts for something. The apologists eat ice cream instead of drink wine. Okay, great. But in terms of the personal notoriety that comes with high consumption, this is a problem. Remember, the apologists are using their high consumption in terms of travel, literature, and food, as means to "-t-rump" any criticism coming from the critics. They don't need to answer a question if the critic isn't qualified to ask it because the critic has a lower social attainment, but that only works so long as we all implicitly agree on the comparative yardstick.Doctor Scratch wrote:Here is a thought experiment for you. So, apologists cannot drink the great wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne (etc). And there is obvious resentment about this. Like, if you are someone who measures your self-worth via your experience with “worldly” things, and yet, you’re deprived from tasting something that Alexandre Dumas said should only be drunk while one is “on one’s knees,” how are you supposed to feel about that?
Here's the crazy thing: I *somewhat* agree with the apologists here. Very few of us are "jealous" if somebody reveals they spent all day doing crack, even if that means they experienced impossibly high level of pleasure that we will never experience. There is an objective side to living a worldly lifestyle that instills envy within other people that goes beyond brute measures of pleasure. Somebody driving a fancy car instills more envy than somebody shooting up heroin even if the level of pleasure is technically lower and even if the car costs less than the drug habit.
Let's go back to Jack Chick's pamphlet, "This was your life". It's a total classic. Think about what's going on here. If instead of having the rich guy smiling and swirling his glass of wine, the rich guy has got a cone with four scoops of ice cream, it wouldn't connect, it would seem ridiculous. Of course somebody going around eating a bunch of ice cream and bragging about it is a fool! We know that without needing a cartoon to satirize it. The big house, the nice car, and drinking expensive wine are iconic jealousy triggers. Yeah, we can see the absurdity of it, we might have good reason to believe many such people are empty, but most of us wouldn't mind giving that lifestyle a try should we have the chance.
And so even with all the exotic travel destinations, there are all these gaps in the travel logs of the apologists, such as the inability to enjoy a fine glass of wine that, that render the iconography of their conspicuous consumption unintelligible.
