Reality Somms: How to Cultivate A Discipline of Knowing What’s Real

How to Serve Propriety as a Business

Preface:

In a series of essays in partnership with Squarespace, we’ll make sense of our relationship with reality and how culture is constructed.

Making it real is now an act of rebellion, a middle finger to the paralysis brought on by consensus collapse. The line between fact and fantasy continues to blur, but when reality is this negotiable, the soil for preferred futures is fertile. You can just do things. What’s the future you want to see? Making reclaims agency amidst lost meaning. So, don’t escape this reality — design the one you want. We desperately need your alternatives.

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The following piece is a collaboration between Matt Klein + Brian Lange.

Brian Lange is the co-founder of Future Commerce, an independent research and media organization focused on commerce, technology, and culture, where he writes about commerce as a cultural and media system. His work examines how markets blur boundaries between business and culture, media and retail, and lived experience and abstraction.

Hors d’oeuvre

As organizations, it’s not easy to navigate a disintegration of reality, a prioritization of visibility over depth, and a media environment which is fueled by polarization and utter distrust toward institutions’ messaging.

So it feels like all you can do is just jump on the trend train – activate upon the loudest, widely accepted signal of the moment – and then just jump again at the next, right moment. Squeeze your brand inside a palatable vessel of any meme or moment.

Sustaining this game of trend train jumping requires scale (i.e. an abundance of talent, money, infrastructure, etc.) and extreme commitment. You have to be “always on.” But, as many know, this has psychic consequences, and few can maintain this pace without becoming damaged. Companies which build out this capability can theoretically overcome this challenge, but when it comes to responding, those resources get in the way.

As an alternative, many are inclined to uphold “radical authenticity” as their strategy for resonance. Rather than chasing, stay the course. Never posture. Tell it as it is. But this approach is also problematic. If you adamantly believe in “radical authenticity,” you’ve likely built a business on a mimetic cycle – your business took off when people assumed each other’s desires as a collective and toward a viewpoint an organization already held. Perhaps you may have even inspired this cycle. Or maybe you just got lucky. But if we know anything about memetic cycles, desires flip eventually.

And so, if you’re going to take this posture of “authenticity,” then you must have the appetite to refuse growth when growth makes itself available. This requires a stiff backbone, and most, if not all of businesses that take this route stay small or crash hard.

So what’s an organization to do? Either chase what’s hot indefinitely until burnout, or nobly reject growth and sustained relevance on a doomed quest for authenticity?

There’s a secret third posture:

Propriety.

Our society has shunned “propriety” – a word often infused with morality. But it means “the condition of being right, appropriate, or fitting.”

To quote writer Wendell Berry,

“[Propriety’s] value is in its reference to the fact that we are not alone.

The idea of propriety makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our place or circumstances, even to our hopes. It acknowledges the always-pressing realities of context and of influence; we cannot speak or act or live out of context.

Our life inescapably affects other lives, which inescapably affects our life. We are being measured, in other words, by a standard that we did not make and cannot destroy.”

For business leaders, it’s imperative one understands how things fit together in this world – our contextual relation to objective truths. This takes work.

The perfect persona of an arbiter of propriety is the sommelier, the obsessive steward of wine.

If you’re going to do anything to prepare yourself for the future, become a sommelier.

Some wines are nearly unpalatable if they’re not paired with the correct food, but delicious if they are. Some wines should never be consumed. Some wines should be saved for special occasions. Many people think they don’t like a certain varietal or wine outright because they’ve been handed the wrong glass in the wrong context. A tragedy.

But there’s wine for every context and situation.

And sommeliers are professional guardians of this propriety.

To lead an organization in this cultural moment, you should become a sommelier in your context.

The discipline of reality-recognition is the discipline of propriety, and sommeliers have perfected this discipline.

If you want to create value and sustain value in a world of consensus collapse, there are three strategies toward cultivating propriety: 1. build a discipline around knowing what’s real by blending your senses, 2. give matters their proper time, and 3. create spaces for others to do the same.

01. Cultivate Synesthesia

Visual and auditory data are abundant, but draft us an incomplete story. If reality is so difficult to gauge, then the first logical step would be to use all the tools we have in order to discern truth. We need to unite all of our senses.

Sommeliers are required to engage with source material – wine’s essence – and grapple with “percepts” or a viewpoint formed during direct encounters. They must identify a wine’s qualities, effects, relations, and when, where and how it was made. And at their best, name the winemaker, specific vineyard, environmental conditions and precise vintage year.

These percepts lead to phantasms or mental projections of the wine in their imagination. Spurred by just a single whiff, somms can recall these mental projections. Language is then created around this discipline, not just as a way to convey information to others, but as a way to help build and maintain the phantasm, a robust fantasy.

Percept: the impression created by the external senses upon encountering reality

Phantasm: the mental image created by the internal sense (the imagination)

Concept: the abstraction created by the intellect through recognition of the essence

Source: The Trivium by Sister Miriam Joseph, C.S.C., Ph.D.

Creative business leaders must develop a discipline around forming phantasms out of percepts, rather than just relying upon existing concepts that are passed around via word or image.

This combination of senses is something Eric McLuhan (media theorist, Marshall McLuhan’s son) explores in his book The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul:

“Technology extends one or another sense or faculty, according it a sort of hyperesthesia, which has then the effect of numbing the bodily sense extended and rearranging the interplay between the other senses.”

When we use technology to extend our reach, we often don’t encounter the “essence” of anything.

Percepts are practicably unattainable when senses are artificially extended.

Now with images and videos as primary technology, the phantasm is thrusted upon us. Artificial phantasms. We form a mental projection of a thing before we ever encounter its essence. We judge before we ever encounter it.

Digitally focused brands have collectively spent billions of dollars to provide us with pre-baked phantasms of their products. Hollywood, social media platforms, AI companies, etc. have done the same for just about everything. But...

We’re tired, un-entertained and skeptical. We’re overloaded with pre-baked mental projections of a reality we have no real experience with. We can no longer trust our eyes and our ears — our most relied upon sensory organs.

The remedy? Scents, tastes, and touches also communicate. Dive deep into them. Become curious about what they each mean and how they function. Play with them, and allow others to do so as well.

If you don’t know the difference between the scent of violets and ethanol, you’re in trouble. If you don’t know what wet basement tastes like or means, you’re in trouble. Not just because you might serve someone a corked bottle of wine, but because if you don’t understand key data points of the human experience, how are you ever going to resonate?

This is engagement with the real. If you’re lost in spreadsheets and algos and never engage with reality, you’re bound to miss the metaphorical “wet basement” taste of your market, audience, or world you wish to embody.

“If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, but doesn’t smell like a duck, it’s not a duck.”

You need to know the smell of a duck so that you can “see” the duck through your nose better than through your eyes. And if you’re dealing with digital-only, you’re separated from the source. People assume they already understand something just because they’ve seen an image of the thing.

Becoming a sommelier provides you discipline to become fully intimate with reality. Encounter the real, observe it, build language or something that relates to it, and then give people opportunities to encounter it themselves. If they make their own observations and understanding as a result, you’re creating value. If you’ve built something real, then you can give up control of the narrative and let reality do the work.

Make things that are connected to reality and then push people to encounter reality themselves. They’ll buy that.

02. Slow Things Down

Propriety is about timing.

And one of the reasons why we’ve lost a sense of propriety is because we have a tendency to only speed things up. “The faster the better,” so we say. Sure there’s value in speed, but if you don’t understand timing, speed for speed’s sake will result in a total loss of value. How may we slow things down so we can get a better sense of when strategies, words and participation is most appropriate?

A sommelier would never chug Domaine Romanee-Conti (DRC), a legendary French producer. For every wine, there’s a whole process of observation, smelling and swirling before the first sip. While the effects of alcohol are certainly part of the enjoyment, the true benefits come from understanding, savoring, and timing the consumption.

With most things now, we mostly measure “efficiency” or the speed at which we become drunk. But if everything is about speed, now is the time to slow things down.

In Culture is our Business, Marshall McLuhan observed:

“Art is new perception. New art opens new worlds for our recognition and nourishment. Psychically, art is valuable only when new. Commercially, new art is kooky and worthless. The gap between the kooky and the commercially valuable is closing fast.”

Paradoxically, the illegible is where value is created.

Value emerges when we have to strive to understand meaning and truth. But now, the speed of conversion to commercial value is instantaneous. The metaphorical DRC is in our mouths immediately, without any processing, appreciating, learning, or pairing. The “new” is absorbed and digested in a thumb-swipe, while the new language forming around it (i.e. memes, commentary, and content), is remixed and consumed just as fast. Novelty is digitally digested, digitally judged, and its value is consumed through our digitally extended senses.

But this speed is incomplete.

If you create something new, and you know it’s valuable, slow down. This could be as simple as a new feature, product line, variation, or collab. It could be a new article or a film. It could even be a new campaign to an old thing. But if you’re going to ship, consider releasing it in bits. People need to feel like they’re missing something... because they are.

A digital perspective is an incomplete perspective.

People haven’t actually grappled with “the thing” itself, they’ve encountered a mere phantasm, which they accept as the “real thing.” Therefore, to assess the (real) value, they’ll need to spend (real) time with the thing. And so, the slower you go, the longer the value cycle is.

This might feel frustrating because, ughh time... but if you try to speed up the cycle of capitalization, you risk incurring a false sense of having absorbed value when you or the consumer hasn’t. Friction is invaluable and why we hear it discussed so frequently today.

Find a way to slow down absorption and increase the savoring. In our increasingly digitized and seamless world, this is hard. But less is more. Make mysteries to be solved. Scatter breadcrumbs. Keep secrets. The “fidelity” of information needs to be so low that people spend more time making sense of things by filling in the gaps on their own, or by hunting down the missing pieces themselves. They will. Consider our infatuation with true crime, conspiracy and fan theories, easter eggs, and fanfic. “Gritty over pretty” to quote Marshall McLuhan’s grandson Andrew.

Consider: the digital channel should do the exact opposite of what we have all been optimizing it to do. Rather than optimize for digital engagement (more injected phantasms and the fastest way to burn through the value of something), the whole point of a digital engagement should be to tease and tingle the extended senses. Provoke, inspire and invite people to grapple with the real themselves. Allow a piece of digital content to exist as an ember, inflaming a larger conversation or experience.

Cute kitten videos shouldn’t inspire watching more cute kitten videos, they should inspire people to experience kittens and enjoy them away from a keyboard.

We consume content like toilet paper. And if you continue to play only with content as your material to make your worth known, you’ll be flushed the moment someone finds something more interesting. Most of you want them to never stop wiping. Stop that. Slow your roll. The point isn’t how much of your toilet paper one uses – it’s to get people off the toilet.

The best experience with a wine is when it is aged to its “drinking window.” This requires patience. When you understand the reality of a situation, you’ll know that time itself will do the work for you.

03. Build Enclaves

A somm’s whole job is to educate, assist with appreciation, and pair perfectly to enhance your dining experience. But larger, they create an environment for all to deepen their appreciation and sense of wonder. They give people the space to explore, to try things they would have never tried, to appreciate nuance and craft, and to receive the maximum enjoyment (i.e. value) out of an experience.

Like a somm’s table or tasting room, we need to create “spaces” for people to engage with the real. These enclaves should strive to include an embodied component.

Enclaves that encourage curiosity open people up for personal engagement. Within enclaves, people witness others doing the same. Consider offering people the infrastructure, attention, and encouragement to relate and document their own personal experiences with reality.

We’ve already touched upon a few ways to build enclaves: spark curiosity through mystery, and play with secrets. Bring back je ne sais quoi (“I don’t know what”), not for the purpose of self-glorification, but to show people there’s something more you’ve encountered that they have not yet. Consider poetry, which requires more involvement and work to understand. Invite participation. Make it social.

Posting a “good” piece of content online and then seeing the likes or comments roll in gives zero indication if anyone actually interacted with reality. The opposite is likely the case. It’s more likely they interacted with a phantasm. Most people would rather be handed phantasms than attempt to create their own. Instead, find ways to spark their curiosity.

The co-curious always find each other, and especially if you set the table for them to interact (meet-ups, events, websites, forums, social media, physical spaces, stores, pop-ups, etc.).

Encourage them to experiment, to push beyond what they’ve attempted before. Don’t over explain. Let work speak for itself. Sometimes you’ll have to provide the “scaffolding” (in an educational sense, prompts, queues, and tools), but don’t construct the whole thing. The goal is to help people progress to the point of having agency around the thing. This is McLuhan’s “coolness” or lack of fidelity. Let people fill in the gaps with their own takes.

We’re aiming for curiosity over certainty. Exploration over achievement. Questions encourage more questions.

Reality is hard to engage with alone. Enclaves make the work sustainable and enjoyable. Curiosity compounds in groups. Ensure you’re creating spaces where that compounding can happen, then show up with new questions, provocations and teases. The community will do the rest.

The Best Somms are The Best Storytellers

The best sommelier is the one who can tell you the most compelling narrative about juice.

A somm can tell a story by simply pairing a sip with a bite, and leaving their guests to enjoy their own conversation. But the best somms seed a conversation and are able to gauge how much to tell the table about the wine. Some somms will spew a few facts or tasting notes, but the best will weave them into a narrative. Timing, jokes, unique facts, mystery and mystique – all the ingredients required to guide people toward enjoying the reality of what they’re consuming. Telling this story properly requires getting to know who is at the table. To feel them out in real time. This is all part of propriety. It requires knowing both the who and the what – the objective and the subjective united.

Save yourself; dismiss false phantasms.

Microwaving a meal is not becoming a cook.

Scrolling Instagram is not friendship.

Sorting a spreadsheet is not getting to know your customers.

Yes, touch grass, but touch it all.

An imagination isn’t just for conceiving what could be – potential realities – it’s for holding onto what’s already real. If you can do that – hold on to reality – you’ll know what is possible.

And then, whatever you do, don’t just hand over your formed viewpoint to others to digest as their own; don’t perpetuate artificial phantasms. Instead, assess the situation and ask yourself - “what is the proper amount of time and attention?”

Let that propriety guide your strategy for helping others find truth. You can rest assured that those who are ready will join you. Let reality do its work.