INTRODUCTION: ESSENTIAL VS EFFECTIVE UNDERSTANDING
You can define something essentially or you can define it effectively.
For example:
Essentially, a human is a sort of ghost in the shell, a sentience-fugue-dream that exists within a corporeal body and which ponders, feels, wonders, speaks and acts through it.
Effectively, a human is an ape with a more evolved prefrontal cortex that is capable of higher rational thought, but which still (generally-speaking) ultimately ends up rationalizing its lizard brain impulses ex post facto if so allowed
Are humans predictable essentially? Not really. Everyone is unique and has their own past patterns, and inner self, which form something entirely unique and, arguably, special.
Are humans predictable effectively: To some extent yes. If you understand humans in terms of what they *are* biologically. How their biology drives their psychology. How their mutual psychologies form a culture and so forth.
Each individual human being may not conform to the general pattern of behavior every time, because each human is different. And yet, over time most conform to patterns of observable behavior that are repeated. Cyclically. Individually and societally.
The RR for predicting what the human in front of you will do in any one moment is relatively good, if you gain an understanding of what core principles drive the machine that, effectively-speaking, *is* that human.
This is useful in games of strategy, like trading or RTS games. It is not so useful when trying to forge a meaningful human connection (as you are prioritizing understanding a human in an essential manner, rather than an effective manner).
What is a society of humans but a bat-like collective using value sonar to adjust one anothers’ gauge of sanity. Our biology drives us to survive and thrive, to reproduce and pass on our genes. To crave the sense of “better”. Once “Value” is no longer “that which enables us all to survive”… what does it become. What does sanity become. What does prestige become in an advanced, modern, digital age?
HEALTHY PRESTIGE
A healthy form of prestige in a society creates value through the forging and uplifting of an amalgamated ideal. It is, perhaps, best defined not by material accolades which follow it, but by the set of characteristics by which a human attains and maintains it.
A healthy societal prestige could be one wherein a person acts with honor and virtue. honor comprising of a constructive, just code of conduct. Virtue comprising of pro-social and pro-survival choices like honesty, fairness, good sense, groundedness, mercy and integrity.
The healthiest, truest form of prestige will always be within a person, organically gained, and slowly built up. This person will be upheld as a paragon of their community through *who and what they are* and the accomplishments, large and small, which emerge from this.
ERSATZ PRESTIGE
What is Ersatz Prestige? Sometimes, one wishes to attain a prestige-shortcut, or perhaps a symbol of what they believe to be good characteristics they have embodied in order to “jump the cue” of prestige by procuring a prestigious product, trophy or symbol.
In such cases, in the past, an Emperor might put on a grand parade. A billionaire might procure a rare and famous art piece. Or, in modernity, a whale might purchase a rare NFT art piece.
In each case above, the subject was trying to win over the object’s approval, or else garner with the object greater respect and admiration. Greater prestige with them, according to what the subject thought the object would value.
The Emperor is trying to win over the people by providing them with entertainment and festivity
The Billionaire is trying to win over his circle of friends, or else to impress someone that is enamored with the art he procured
The Whale is trying to buy coolness/dankness among other whales, large NFT accounts or whomever else The Whale wishes to impress.
You could say “what if the whale just wishes to procure this punk because he really likes it.”
What’s to like? It’s an ugly grouping of pixels that looks like it was thrown together for a 3rd grade project. If he likes it, *why* does he like it? (Penguins are cute AF and add another interesting dimension to this, more on that later)
These purchases lead to what will be referred to as “Ersatz Prestige” in this essay. The Prestige gained by these purchases is not as valuable as the Healthy Prestige, described earlier, which is cultivated slowly and organically — rather it is an Ersatz form, a somewhat inferior expedient version of Healthy Prestige, but which still conveys *some* of the admiration and glory of it, and which is purchased for money rather than time and repeated habit.
So why is NFT Art becoming valued? Why is it now the object of those striving to acquire Ersatz Prestige? Because this is the Digital Age. fooo didn’t get it at first either, but fooo is a 30 year old gigaboomer. The fact is, with physical art, you can merely display it on one wall in one place. You can display your Digital art everywhere online, to a million screens in a million homes at once.
It could be argued that fooo came around to see the value in NFT art in no small part due to the advent of Pudgy Penguins. Pudgy Penguins are the first collection of NFT art popular on CT that fooo likes because they capture both the effective and the essential. Effecitvely, they can still be both a mode of speculation and also a product by which to secure Ersatz Prestige. Essentially, they’re cute AF and would make a great gift. Good at parties…etc
PRICEY NFT ART, THE CHIEFTAN FLEX & THE FISHERIAN RUNAWAY
Not all NFT Art is ugly but pricey punks. There are some magnificent pieces of actual art. Moving colors and scenes that could not be painted on a still, real-life canvas.
Mostly though, Crypto Twitter is concerned with the flipping of NFT Art like punks, rocks, cats etc.
Why do these NFT art pieces sell for hundreds of eth or higher? What is this force that compels people to scroll through nft art collections and mumble “damn, looks rare.” and drop the GDP of a small country on one
Throughout history, there are various incidents and recountings of powerful warlords, cheiftans and rulers that would make grand and public displays of burning their own excess supplies and crops at gatherings and ceremonies to flex on the other leaders assembled there. They did it because they could and they wanted to demonstrate that they could. This ceremonial wasting of excess was done purely to demonstrate that they had the power to do so.
Ersatz Prestige is typically sought because someone wishes to attempt to display that they have power or prestigious attributes in a swift and succinct manner. It is quite possible that there are those who buy NFT art for outrageous prices simply because a few hundred eth is like sand on a beach to their Net Worth and they want others to know it.
Ersatz prestige, when garnered in this way, is lesser than Healthy Prestige because it *can* (it depends on the situation) introduce a certain envy and toxicity into the mix. It is as if one was to purchase honor or virtue.
Probably it is wisest to use Ersatz prestige only as an initial expedient (an entrance into a circle of people, a grand and noble gesture to the people of your kingdom by throwing a festival and so on) after-which one strives to buttress it with Healthy Prestige. Still, this essay is ultimately more descriptive than prescriptive…
Just remember
Essentially, one might just want to purchase a punk because, for whatever reason, they think it looks good or it makes them happy.
Effectively, Ersatz Prestige signals that this person has wealth to burn sufficient to purchase a punk.
The Fisherian Runaway is an evolutionary mechanism by which certain males animals expend great caloric energy in developing lavish ornamentation on their bodies. Peacocks, for example, develop massive plumage; the bigger and more lavish the plumage, the hotter the females find the male peacock. By having bigger plumage, the peacock is effectively conveying that he has a ton of energy and can spare the extra to burn on growing bigger feathers.
And thusly we are clued in on a probable driving force for buying lavish and expensive punks. An Ersatz lavish plumage. It is as if one were a male peacock and he recognized that all around him, the peacocks that got laid the most had the biggest feathers. So he went to the store and purchased a massive fake plumage and glued it on in the hopes that some of the females would hop up on that peacock dick and do a full split.
It doesn’t just have to apply to Peacock Theory, either. Rather than mating, someone may wish to impress their bros.
There will always be a demand for something functionally-useless by which one can publically “waste” money in order to flex and gain Ersatz Prestige.
SO WHAT IS *VALUE* THEN
If we are to see prestige as something which either attracts, holds or exemplifies value, then we can come to understand that value, as we collectively perceive it, is rooted in our deepest biological/psychological hindbrain understandings.
The characteristics of honor and virtue that denote Healthy Prestige are ultimately, those which are desirable because they help society to survive and thrive optimally. Those who cultivate it will and should be admired, because it is optimal and constructive for the species. Thus we can see reflected in Healthy Prestige, the purest form of value.
This is not to say that value is merely survival. As we climb Mazlow’s Pyramid of Needs we will come to decently comprehend *value* both individually and collectively. This is not a criticism, then, of art. This is not to say that art is not valuable — it is. Art aids self-realization and a self-realized human, having fulfilled every level of Mazlow’s Pyramid of Needs, will be a human who is happy, well, and likely exemplifies Healthy Prestige.
Ersatz Prestige is a retrofitted into this in order to SIGNAL value. It is an insinuation, rather than a demonstration, of value. It is possible that this person has accumulated the wealth necessary to purchase a punk, for example, because they are someone with virtuous characteristics. Ersatz Prestige, then, is an insinuation of Healthy Prestige, and a reach at expediting a display of Value.
THE GREATER FOOL THEORY
And of course, Ersatz Prestige is the Narrative here. This is the great Essential “why” in the whole “why the fuck are people dropping bazillions of eth on these shits”
Effectively probably 80% of the time these are just bought by people who think they’ll probably be able to sell them higher.
Essentially this type of Narrative: the procurement of Ersatz Prestige, is why most “Supreme” -esque status symbol displays do well with a certain milieu
Effectively, most of the volume done is by rogues attempting to pawn their punk off on someone from the above milieu, thinking they’re probably the greater fool.
But hey.
One man’s punk is another man’s treasure, eh.
