An important general point we need to make, if this hasn't become clear already. Although affects and emotions are related to our biological processes as human beings, their mapping onto specific elements of culture can vary. The horsemeat example from the previous lecture demonstrates this fact. The fact is interest is shaped by culture. Strong affective responses, and therefore the forces of interest, frequently appear when two different inertial patterns come into contact. When something is habit, one doesn't necessarily have any strong feelings about it. Hence the force of interest does not seem to be operative. When I was in Brazil it was common to eat beans and rice at least once, sometimes twice a day. Every day of the week. People were in the habit of doing so, and they didn't think much about it, or have any strong feelings. But when they traveled to other parts of the world for prolonged periods, and little or nothing was available in the way of Brazilian style rice and beans, they would develop a longing for the food. That longing or even craving was a powerful force of interest in inducing them to seek it out. Some of the examples we discussed earlier In earlier lectures that is illustrate this point as well. Take the spacial distance people find comfortable when talking to someone. The inertial pattern is the one to which they are accustom. Comfort in these cases really refers to the absence of interest as a motivating factor. If an interlocutor is too far away, the desire to get closer to the person develops. Or, if the person feels the other to be too close, something I myself often experience, I desire to move away. The desire, in each case, is the result of a pattern different from the inertial one, with which I am already familiar. I become positively interested in the inertial cultural pattern of which I, myself have been deprive. The interest acts is a force to impel me towards that inertial cultural pattern. No doubt this is part of the resistance to the change of habitual inertial pattern, patterning we have been discussing. From this perspective habitual inertial Seems to be really interest neutral. The same kind of elastic effect was no doubt operative in the reaction to Ron Johnson's efforts to change JC Penny culture, as well as in Akhenaten's attempt to transform the ancient Egyptian culture. The affect or the emotion in these cases resulted from the movement away from the inertial state. But it would be wrong to assume that interest is only a conservative force working to reestablish a prior inertial pattern. It can be a positive driving force for culture change as well. Indeed, it's at the heart of the secret of successful culture change we just discussed. Once you full understand this you'll find example for yourself basically everywhere, and we can, we need only really look to cars, automobiles. We talked about the fact that automakers proclaim the newness of models each year even, though the similarities between the models are palpable, yet there is a force of unidirectional change at work. If you line up vehicle models over the decades, you begin to see the changes very clearly. There is little in the of reversion to the prior in natural states although we do find sometimes interesting ritual styles. Indeed, the automobile industry was a key site for developing an appeal to newness as a driving force behind product change. Earlier we discussed Henry Ford's idea of standardization during the second unit of this class. By making the same cars but making them more and more cheaply and Selling them more and more cheaply, he dominated the market, became fabulously wealthy. The cars he produced were called the Model T, manufactured by Ford Motor Company from 1908 to 1927. Ford's success almost drove General Motors out of business, but then GM came back, and it came back with a different idea. Unlike Ford, GM would produce a new model car each year and they would taunt it's newness. Amazingly within a year, GM had regained it's share of the market. And Ford was actually forced to give up it's reliance on a single unchanging model that follow GM's lead. Introducing new models on a regular basis. In the automobile case the new model prove to be attractive to consumers. Rather than desiring the same, they sought the different albeit only the slightly different. Interest as a positive attractive force appears to be operative in these cases. As it is for some of us also in the area of computers and other digital technology. Nor is the quest for the new even if only slightly new confined to commodities. It is probably a factor in language shift as well. Way back in the very last lecture in unit one, for example, we discussed the idea of culture as scarce commodity. We looked in particular at the postvocalic R phenomenon. If you remember floor, fourth floor, versus fourth floor. Fourth floor didn't have the postvocalic R in it. Interests undoubtedly also drove the spread of the, Dialects from England to the U.S. in the 19th century and in the U.S. from upper status to lower status. In these instances, interest in the novel patterns growing out of the inertial culture does not exercise an elastic effect. Returning the culture to its inertial state rather, interest appears as a driving force, moving the culture forward in a pattern reminiscent of evolution.
