Explaining value through historical dyefrom @frontoffice.co

Transcript

Right. So historically speaking, this is one of the most expensive dyes we have ever produced. This is Tier purple, a famously rare natural dye made from sea snails. It takes 10,000 sea snails to make one gram of dye. And this purple dye enclosed was the choice of emperors, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, as a show of beauty better also as a show of wealth, of power that they could obtain this dye. Soterian purple is valuable because it is rank. Better, does being rare and valuable influence how we view its beauty? Tier it become more beautiful? The interaction between beauty and rarity and value, we have been debating this for thousands of years. So philosophers like Immanuel Kant talk about the judgment of beauty as something that is disinterested. Does it have harmony? Does it have proportion? Does it have balance? These components exist independent of how rare something is or how much effort it took to make it. We should be judging Tier purple as beautiful regardless of how many sea snails it took to make them? 10,000 or five? But is that separation of objective and subjective meaningful or even realistic? Like we encounter beauty always in a context. Like imagine, we're in ancient Rome. Before we even see the color, we hear stories that this dye is three times more valuable than good. And then we see the emperor wearing Tier purple robes. And then we no that no one else is wearing that shade of purple. It is exclusive to him. So the way we see that color is already through various contextual contextual better. And when we finally see it, we see a color that's not very often seen in nature because we are literally looking at the dried mucus of a rare sea snail because the process is the product in this case. And our experience is the entire thing. But modern technology complicates this because now we have synthetic dyes, which can produce the exact same shade for cents instead of thousands of dollars. So now we can have two identical pieces of cloth, one made for cents and one made with 10,000 sea snails that are visually indistinguishable. One is valuable and one is no, But they are the same. And that modern problem extends to everything. We have a tier white t shirt. We have a $70 white t shirt. We have a $30 pair of jeans. We have a $300 pair of jeans. A $50 leather bad, a $500 leather bag. And then we encounter a very modern problem where we disconnect things from how they are made. And then I think we are forced into the wrong questions, like better something is objectively really good or just marketing. When the real question should best, does any of this have meaning? Tier purple is not beautiful just because of the shade of purple, but because of the craft it takes to harvest, to make, because it connects you to a long line of history. Like Japanese denim from Kaihara is not valuable just because of the physical characteristics, because it is made from a process that has intention and care. Those are values that you align with. Ultimately, dyes are just dyes, clothes are just clothes. Like, it's probably not worth having strong opinions about sea snails, but there is true optimism and joy to be found in things of meaning. Meaning is when we can appreciate both the process and the product. And when we have that harmony, we are reminded that beauty is not just what we can perceive, but what we can understand.