Achieving high-status taste requires deep knowledge, congruence, and bounded originality

Evidence

To gain status from great taste involves progress across three attributes: deep knowledge, congruence, and bounded originality. … Great taste first requires a deep knowledge of potential choices. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 251

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the chapter’s organizing framework of the three attributes of great taste.
• XREF: connects to: Western elites long defined taste as the faculty of identifying beauty — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 241; Taste judgments measure personal skill, not just classify social position — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 250; Refining taste requires conscious learning beyond trusting one’s initial palate — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 251 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Great taste requires bounded originality beyond copying what one ought to like #expands (0.92) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 256
• Elite taste favors forms requiring cultivated knowledge to enjoy #corroborates (0.90) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 253
• Astute taste in others excludes what creativity requires #complicates (0.72) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1332