谁是文化精英

Picture a coffee shop in a big city almost anywhere on earth. It is filled with stylish, firm-bodied people aged under 50 drinking $5 coffees. Fresh from yoga class, they are reading New Yorker magazine articles about inequality before returning to their tiny $1.5m apartments. This is the cultural elite — or what Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, calls the “aspirational class”. Her book The Sum of Small Things anatomises it using fascinating American consumption data. Currid-Halkett herself is a class member (as are some of my best friends), and yet she helps explain why the cultural elite is so despised as to have generated a global political movement against it. Though Trump is the unmentioned elephant in the room in her book, you think of him on almost every page as the antithesis of this class — indeed, in the minds of his supporters, as the antidote to it.

请想象地球上几乎任何一座大城市的一间咖啡店，里面满是穿着入时、身形健美、年龄不到50岁的人在喝着5美元一杯的咖啡。他们刚上完瑜伽课，这会儿读着《纽约客》(New Yorker)上关于不平等的文章，一会儿会回到他们150万美元的小公寓里。这就是文化精英，或者用南加州大学(University of Southern California)公共政策教授伊丽莎白?霍尔德—哈尔凯特(Elizabeth Currid-Halkett)的话来说，“有抱负的阶层”。她的新作《琐事的总和》(The Sum of Small Things)利用引人入胜的美国消费数据对该阶层进行了剖析。虽然霍尔德—哈尔凯特本人即该阶层成员（我的一些至交好友也是），但她帮助解释了为什么文化精英如此遭人鄙视，以致催生了一个全球政治运动来反对它。虽然在她这本书里，特朗普是未提到的房间里那头大象，但几乎每一页都会让你想到他，他就是该阶层的对立面——的确，在其支持者脑海里，他是对抗文化精英阶层的良方。

Trump likes to tag the cultural elite as “the elite” but not all class members are rich. Adjunct professors, NGO workers and unemployed screenwriters belong alongside Mark Zuckerberg. Rather, what defines the cultural elite is education. Most of its members went to brand-name universities, and consider themselves deserving rather than entitled. They believe in facts and experts. Most grew up comfortably off in the post-1970s boom. Their education is their insurance policy and, so almost whatever their income, they suffer less economic anxiety than older or lesser educated people. Their political utopia is high-tax, egalitarian, feminist and green. They aim to be “better humans” rather than simply rich, writes Currid-Halkett. Though often too busy to be happy, they feel good about themselves. The inequality they see everywhere is never their fault.

特朗普喜欢给文化精英贴上“精英份子”的标签，但这一阶层并非都是富人。除了马克?扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)，还有兼职教授、非政府组织(NGO)工作人员、失业的编剧。相反，界定文化精英的是教育背景。该阶层多数成员上的是名牌大学，且认为自己对所得当之无愧，而不是凭特权。他们相信事实和专家。大多数人在20世纪70年代后的繁荣时代衣食无忧地长大。他们的教育背景就是他们的保单，而且基本上无论收入多少，他们承受的经济压力要小于老一代或教育程度较低的人群。他们的政治乌托邦是高税收、平等主义、女权主义和环保主义。霍尔德—哈尔凯特写道，比起单纯当一个富人，他们的目标是成为“更好的人”。虽然经常忙到没有时间快乐，但他们对自己感觉良好。他们处处看到的不平等绝不是他们的错。

When it comes to consumption, the cultural elite’s core belief is a scorn for stuff. Branded goods no longer convey status now that any old oaf can buy them. The top 10 per cent of American earners (which includes most of the cultural elite) spends a shrinking slice of its income on cars, TVs and household items, things that the middle class still values. With the sharing economy taking off, hipsters barely own anything at all. Forget shared bikes — Americans can now rent designer dresses.

消费方面，文化精英的核心信念是鄙视炫耀性商品。名牌商品不再传递身份信息，因为任何一个老傻瓜都买得起它们。美国收入最高10%的人群（这包括了大多数文化精英）在汽车、电视机和家用产品等中产阶层仍然看重的东西上支出不断减少。随着分享经济兴起，潮人们几乎“一无所有”。共享单车算什么，美国人现在连设计师服饰都能租。

What stuff the cultural elite does buy is used to adorn their bodies. Living in dense cities where everyone is on display, they need expensive clothes. New Yorkers in particular also have watch fetishes. In 2010 they “spent about 27 times more on watches as a share of total expenditures than everyone else — no city even compares”, writes Currid-Halkett in a typically delicious titbit.

文化精英确实喜欢买的是能装饰他们身体的物品。生活在人人都在展示自己的繁华都市，他们需要昂贵的服饰。纽约人尤其迷恋手表。霍尔德—哈尔凯特笔下一个有代表性的趣闻是，2010年纽约人“购买手表在总支出中的占比是其他人的27倍，没有城市比得上。”

The cultural elite spends relatively little on beauty products, but splurges on exercise, because it thinks that bodies (like food) should look natural. The thin, toned body expresses this class’s worldview: even leisure must be productive. Instead of trawling shopping malls, class members narrate their family hikes on Facebook.

文化精英在美容产品上支出相对较少，但在锻炼上毫不手软，因为他们认为人体（就像食物一样）应该看起来很自然。修长、健美的身体诠释了这个阶层的世界观：即使休闲也要富有成效。该阶层成员不逛购物商场，而是在Facebook上介绍自己的家庭远足见闻。

These people maximise what Currid-Halkett calls “inconspicuous consumption”: things you cannot see. They buy nannies to save time, elite magazines to feed their brains and status, and education to propel their children upwards. “The top 1-5 per cent [of American earners] spend on average 5 per cent of their total expenditures on education, while the middle class barely spends 1 per cent,” writes Currid-Halkett. Her intellectual ancestor Thorstein Veblen, in his 1899 study The Theory of the Leisure Class, portrayed Wasps frittering away money, but today’s cultural elite is engaged in a ruthless project to reproduce its social position. Barring some huge economic shift, today’s breastfed elite toddlers will be the elite of 2050. The meritocracy is becoming hereditary.

这些人将霍尔德-哈尔凯特所说的“隐性消费”（那些你们看不到的东西）发挥到极致。他们雇用保姆节省时间，购买精英杂志填充大脑和地位，投资教育以便为子女提供较高的平台。霍尔德-哈尔凯特写道：“（美国收入）最高的1%至5%人群在教育上的支出平均为总支出的5%，而中产阶级勉强达到1%。”她的理论前辈索尔斯坦?维布伦(Thorstein Veblen)曾经在他1899年的著作《有闲阶级论》(The Theory of the Leisure Class)中，描写了盎格鲁萨克逊裔美国白人(WASP)挥金如土的行为，但如今的文化精英们则在坚定地传承其社会地位。除非发生翻天覆地的经济变迁，否则如今还在吃奶学步的精英二代们将成为2050年的精英。精英阶层正呈现出世袭色彩。

This is where the cultural elite’s self-image diverges from the view held by its critics. Trump voters see a class that talks equality while living privilege and exuding contempt. Here are Greenpeace members who are always on planes, proclaiming their goodness instead of improving the world. Maybe if everyone shopped at Whole Foods (the upscale grocery chain nicknamed “Whole Paycheck”) the world would improve, suggests Currid-Halkett. But there’s a counterargument: if everyone shopped at Whole Foods, it would lose its status, and the cultural elite would have to shop elsewhere.

这就是文化精英的自我形象有别于其批评者观点的地方。特朗普的选民们看到的是这样一个阶层：他们过着特权的生活，却在讨论平等，而且散发出轻蔑。比如绿色和平(Greenpeace)的成员老是在飞来飞去，他们向外界夸耀自己的善举，而并没有致力于让世界变得更美好。霍尔德-哈尔凯特提出，或许，如果所有人都在全食（Whole Foods，高端食品超市，绰号为“整张工资单”）购物的话，世界确实会变得更美好。 但这里有一个反论：如果所有人都在全食购物，那么它也就丧失了地位象征，文化精英们将不得不转到别处购物。

These people live in places and ways that hardly anyone else can afford. The only poor people they know are their nannies. Their New Yorker subscriptions might cost just $90, but are usually premised on expensive educations.

这些人居住的地段和生活的方式是几乎其他任何人都无法负担得起的。他们认识的穷人只有他们的保姆。《纽约客》(New Yorker)的全年订费可能只需要90美元，但通常前提是昂贵的教育。

Though Currid-Halkett is too polite to do more than hint at this, class members regard outsiders with either scorn or pity. Overproductive themselves, they look down on iPad parents, the obese and the uninformed. Many even mock their own parents as kitsch provincials. There’s an element of this in the relationship between Ivanka Trump (raised in Manhattan) and her father (from Queens). In fact, long before Trump became president, he was the exemplar of everything the cultural elite abhors. His hair and orange skin scream artificiality. He loves buying stuff. He is fat and ignorant. He thinks exercise depletes the body. He gets his information from cable TV.

霍尔德-哈尔凯特礼貌地暗示，这个阶层的人对外部人士要么嘲讽，要么可怜。注重成效的他们看不起让iPad陪伴孩子的父母、肥胖者和学识浅薄者。很多人甚至嘲笑自己的父母是乡巴佬。伊万卡?特朗普（Ivanka Trump，在曼哈顿长大）和她父亲（在纽约皇后区长大）之间的关系带有一点这种元素。实际上，早在特朗普当选总统之前，他就成为文化精英厌恶的一切的化身。他的头发和橘色皮肤都暴露了人为色彩。他喜欢购物。他肥胖且无知。他认为锻炼会消耗身体。他通过有线电视获取信息。

No wonder the key rite of cultural-elite conversation has become Trump-dissing (see previous paragraph). And so the cultural wars that got him elected rage on.

难怪文化精英们的主要话题已变成嘲讽特朗普。就这样，把他推上总统宝座的这场文化战争正在延续。