The Natural chic

Today’s radical chic are the natural chic, those who have substituted Marxist-Leninism with the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics and an alleged sensibility towards eco-sustainabile farming methods.

The expression radical chic was coined in 1970 by the American author and journalist Tom Wolfe. He invented it for an article on a party organized by a very rich New York socialite, Felicia Montealegre, the wife of the famous composer Leonard Bernstein, to raise funds for the revolutionary Black Panther movement. Its aim was to underscore how members of the upper middle class, who owed their wellbeing to the neo-capitalist system, were actually trying to legitimatize themselves as firm opponents of that world without, however, giving up any of their privileges. In France the terms gauche caviar or gauche cachemere mean more of less the same thing.

In my own modest way, I would like to suggest another definition for such behavior that still exists today even if times have greatly changed and the focus is much less on issues that are more or less revolutionary. Today, the radical chic have become the natural chic and Marxist-Leninism has been replaced with the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics and an alleged sensibility towards eco-sustainabile farming methods. These intellectuals are proud to define themselves “on the Left” but are decidedly well-off and owe their wellbeing to well-paying professions and they send their children to Steiner-inspired schools, are strong supporters of biodynamic philosophy and have a New Age vision. They also only eat and drink products that are eco-sustainable and sometimes they adopt positions that are surreptitiously anti-scientific.

Just to be clear, there is nothing wrong in this.

One point, though: do they really know what they are doing? Can they really maintain their intellectual coherency with principles often inspired by historic materialism? Or is it that they do not realize that we are dealing with one of the usual “luxury utopias” that are popular in more wealthy countries and among people with high economic means.

Rudolf Steiner was a spiritualistic philosopher who lived in Austria and Germany between the 19th and 20th centuries. He was an intimate member of Nietzsche’s “magic circle” and when Nietzsche began to show signs of madness, his sister Elizabeth called Steiner to sort out the last writing her brother wrote when sane. Then there is the debate over whether or not Steiner was a mason. All this is very different from a “Marxist-like” vision of the world and almost the opposite of it.

Some of the principles of Steiner’s philosophy, Anthroposophy, and those of bio-dynamism that derive from it, can be shared by many and harm no one. For sure the results, even in regard to the quantity produced and the cost of production, give the impression that this is something for those who can afford to follow these methods and is not what it may seem. And this has nothing to do with the quality of the products – for me in regard to wine – produced following this philosophy and practices. It should be pointed out that many of these products are magnificent. Some are very expensive and, in fact, the world’s most expensive wine, Romanée Conti, is produced following biodynamic methods. The same is true for other products around the world. These are extreme cases and the fact is that these practices and visions are not possible with large scale economic production.

The question now is what should be done, in a concrete way, and not just based on natural chic principles and neo-pagan ideologies that appeal to New Age visions and the Cult of Gaia. These are pseudo religions based on blind faith and that view scientific research with a suspicious eye and have a rationalist view of the world. The risk is, as someone once wrote, that only those who can, can eat and drink well. And “those who can” are often members of the natural chic who preach from the pulpit of the couches in their exclusive salons.

E allora? Allora bisogna decidere cosa fare, nel concreto, e non solo sulla base di principi natural chic, e di ideologie neopagane che strizzano l’occhio alla New Age e al culto di Gaia. E che sono sostanzialmente delle religioni, basate sul fideismo, e che vedono con malcelato sospetto la ricerca scientifica e una visione razionalistica del mondo. Il rischio, come scrisse qualcuno in passato, è che mangi e beva bene solo chi può. E quelli “che possono” sono spesso proprio questi natural chic che pontificano quasi sempre dal pulpito dei divani dei loro esclusivi salotti.