Also, there's a line of thinking that suggests nobody falls for it, even when they buy the product advertised. Nobody with brand loyalty to Apple actually believes Apple is a 'good' company, yet they all believe Apple is a 'good' company. Just as nobody believes in the financial system anymore, but we all believe in it.
Well, you could offer other and more pragmatic explanations for that. For instance, Apple products are on the whole more user friendly than most of the competition, and if you're used to they way they work and like it, you'll tend to stick with it on the much underrated grounds of practicality. For my part I have more than once considered switching to Apple computers out of sheer exasperation with the endless and escalating aggravations connected with Windows. And we continue to believe in the financial system because we have no other choice, and probably also because we all realise at a practically animal level that if we stop doing so, everything will fall apart.
Well, let's look at your hostility to these coffeehouse guys and gals.
Can you honestly criticize someone who doesn't sit cooped up in an office, goes from coffeehouse to coffeehouse working on a laptop, travels frequently, conducts a vibrant social life, lives within the bounds of his or her conscience, has an eye for bringing design elements into his or her life, and gets paid well to boot?
In all seriousness, that kind of life is almost impossible to criticize. It's not even as execrable a life as the yuppies of the 80s; it's like a rehabilitated yuppie life, recalibrated to leave out the bad and retain the good. And yet it is criticized by some, and seen as symptomatic of a grave problem. Is there a paradox here, maybe a very revealing paradox? Or am I missing something?
PFTLT already nailed a large part of it - this is the sort of lifestyle chosen by people who choose to make their job their life, which is the only reason I can imagine why anyone would choose to conduct work in a setting that is constructed to serve enjoyment, relaxation and social life.
Not in the classic workaholic sense, because they find work so addictively absorbing that they have no room for anything else - in that case, they'd be happier with an office and scorn the coffehouse atmosphere and the vibrant social life. That would be respectable in a way, if also somewhat sad. Nor because they have chosen a job that corresponds to and blends in with some other laudable purpose in life, which is always respectable but rarely profitable.
But in the end, I guess I just have a fundamental and instinctive distrust of the sort of people who seem to think their brains will stop working unless they are constantly surrounded by social hubbub. To me, that amounts to escapism and self-mutilation at best, soullessness and questionable sanity at worst.
As for bringing design elements (broadly speaking) into one's life, that's actually in my opinion an excellent benchmark for people. To care nothing at all for that despite having the opportunity for it usually indicates a personality devoid of a capacity for appreciating beauty. The sort of people I like generally tend to treat it as the object of moderate interest and expense (relative to means). Then there's the sort of people who regard it with ravished fascination and spend the better part of their means and creative energy constantly updating their apartment. Which I suspect is the same sort of people who enjoys working out of coffehouses. And which is really nothing more than a slightly more elaborate form of having to have a bigger car than the neighbour. To put a sense for aesthetics to such uses is in my book far, far worse than the crassest fifties-type materialism, and considerably less respectable than having no aesthetic sense at all.
And just in case you are now about to inform me that you make a living working out of coffehouses yourself, let me state in advance that in that case you must clearly be an exception to the general rule.
I bring up the fact that Qvist isn't American, because I believe that most European societies don't have that intense pressure to identify with your work. People go to work, do their work, and then go home and live their lives. I'm not saying they don't work as hard, I just feel that there's a fundamental difference in what "work ethic" means.
There may be something in that, though I lack first-hand experience with American business life. But it's certainly moving in that direction in Europe too, although I think it is still considered normal by most people most places to mentally make a fundamental distinction between private life and work. The most common exception is still the classic workaholic, not the socialabourite, but of course he differs in that he drops private life practically altogether rather than blend private life into it.
But there are huge contrasts within Europe. In the south, you still largely have the classic "come in at ten, go home at eight/nine" model, with a long lunch break in the middle of the day. In Scandinavia, you generally have a less than 40 hours compulsory working week - people come in at nine, have a 20 minute sandwich break at midday and go home at four, with extensive use of flexitime to enable picking up of kids in kindergarten and so on. Combined with a generally goal-oriented management style which means that nobody really pays much attention to how much time you spend in the office as long as you get the job done. I'm a firm fan of the latter model. I think very few people really have the capacity for much more than six hours really effective work in a day over the long haul, and if you keep them around for much more than that they simply pace themselves accordingly. Or start moving bits of their private life into work.
cheers
Did I mention that I quite like the Foals'
Gold Gold Gold?
