The weakening of permanent convictions drives modern consciousness toward fashion

Evidence

We can discover one of the reasons why in these latter days fashion exercises such a powerful influence on our consciousness in the circumstance that the great, permanent, unquestionable convictions are continually losing strength, as a consequence of which the transitory and vacillating elements of life acquire more room for the display of their activity. The break with the past, which, for more than a century, civilized mankind has been laboring unceasingly to bring about, makes the consciousness turn more and more to the present. This accentuation of the present evidently at the same time emphasizes the element of change, and a class will turn to fashion in all fields, by no means only in that of apparel, in proportion to the degree in which it supports the given civilizing tendency. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 724

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Simmel’s own argument in The Metropolis and Mental Life that the modern mind, lacking stable convictions, becomes oriented to the immediate present — usable as causal scaffolding for the blasé-attitude essay. — connects to: Rapid fashion change signals nervous exhaustion in an era — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 722; Fashion heightens the felt presence of the present moment — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 723; Emancipated women signal status through indifference to fashion. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 731 (+1 more)
• SEED: Could make a small essay on how fashion’s spread into taste, convictions, and morality prefigures today’s content cycles and hot-takes as ‘fashion’ overstepping apparel.

Related

• Fashion heightens the felt presence of the present moment (similarity 0.89)
• Rapid fashion change signals nervous exhaustion in an era (similarity 0.87)
• Modern society’s weak judgment makes fanatical conviction socially magnetic (similarity 0.87)
• Emancipated women signal status through indifference to fashion. (similarity 0.85)
• Fashion dictates styles with no objective, aesthetic, or practical justification. (similarity 0.82)
• Fashion recurs cyclically because old forms regain the charm of difference once forgotten (similarity 0.81)
• Fashion goods resist the rationalization that transforms other production (similarity 0.80)
• Fashion arose to reconcile individual identity with mass-produced industrial aesthetics (similarity 0.79)
• Fashion is abandoned by a class once it diffuses to other classes (similarity 0.79)
• Opposing fashion is itself a form of conforming (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Fashion heightens the felt presence of the present moment #expands (0.60) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 723