Time was, Henry Ford told customers they could have cars in the color they wanted, as long as they wanted black. Time was, Walter Gropius, the minimalist architect, when asked what he would say if some students did not like the way he had arranged the furniture in a Harvard dorm he designed, replied, "Then they are neurotic."
But the breakdown of cultural homogeneity in the 1960s has been followed by what Postrel says are the twin propellants of today's aesthetic abundance -- rising incomes and falling prices. Household income has increased about 30 percent in less than 30 years, and family size has shrunk, further expanding disposable income.
Economic data do not measure what aesthetics add to the quality of life. Statistically, a $20 steak dinner in an aesthetically pleasing restaurant is indistinguishable from a $20 steak dinner in a banal environment. Which means we are exaggerating inflation and underestimating the economy's real production of value.
"Aesthetics," says Postrel, "shows rather than tells, delights rather than instructs. The effects are immediate, perceptual and emotional. They are not cognitive, although we may analyze them after the fact." Aesthetics, Postrel stresses, are not irrational or anti-rational, they are pre-rational or non-rational That does not mean aesthetics should be distrusted, as rhetoric has come to be, as a manipulative force manufacturing synthetic desires. Aspiration, Postrel believes, is an aspect of identity, including aesthetic identity -- "I like that" means "I am like that." Her cheerful analysis of all this puts her athwart a tradition of disapproving intellectuals.
Half a century ago, Adlai Stevenson, Democratic presidential nominee and darling of the intelligentsia, asked: "With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purposes and inspiring way of life?" His question radiated what was then and still is: Everything changes except the views of "progressives" -- the intellectuals' conventional disdain of America's "consumer society."
Today, however, thoughtful people have more appreciation of the complex prerequisites -- social, political and intellectual -- of a society that produces the abundance, and honors the emancipation of choice and desire, that results in supermarkets, advertising and other things that are woven inextricably into the fabric of a free society. Those mundane things actually are related to what exalts America and makes it inspiring.
Unbounded, imaginative desiring can be a problem for democratic governance. However, it certainly is both a cause and a consequence of a democratic culture.