Like most dress codes worldwide, the evening suit is a symbol of elitism and exclusion. When people are required to put on special dress, you don’t need to be an anthropologist to recognise that it is designed to emphasise the difference in status between those who wear it and those who do not.
ReadWe often feel it is important to preserve what we have inherited, but unless we appreciate that we would not even have such an inheritance unless others had been willing to tamper with what they in turn were bequeathed, we cannot understand what is really at stake and what matters.
ReadThere is good sense in Roger Ames’s suggestion that we would be better to talk in terms of human becoming rather than human being. If we are like books that are still being written or plays in mid-performance, then clearly we are still in the process of becoming who we are. But this is not the kind of becoming that ends in being, like the building of a house which ends with a complete construction. Rather, our only being is becoming: when the becoming ends, we end, too. A performance is thus a better metaphor for the human narrative than a novel.
ReadThe last of three podcasts on conceptions of self, East and West, asks whether the West suffers from “too much self”. With Rebecca Goldstein, Peter Herschock, Pico Iyer, Jay Ogilvy and David Wong. Produced in association with the Berggruen Institute’s Philosophy and Culture Centre.
ReadWhat embarrasses us also tells us a great deal about how we want others to see us. This can be surprisingly revealing. It shows that no matter how much we strive to be our own people, it is hard not to crave the approval of others.
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