• Turturtley
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    21 hours ago

    It’s a stupid reason. Historically, if you were a peasant and had been granted access to land, you grew food or herbs. If however you were a lord, you got your food from your peasants. You had no need to grow your own food. So they could afford to grow lawns as a sign of wealth.

    This has transferred across into the modern psyche. Lawns are a way of saying “i’m so rich, i don’t have to worry about sustenance. In fact i’ll throw money at it to maintain this slab of green rather than have it provide food, or shade.”

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/202002/the-strange-psychology-the-american-lawn

    • xye@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      It’s funny how this has come full circle - many people garden (in their back yards) to show they have the free time to do so.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      17 hours ago

      This is the correct answer. So many US’isms are bourgeois / aristocratic imitation.

      Cars / wasteful transportation, lawns, sprawled out cities, high amounts of meat consumption, vacation homes / timeshares / exotic vacations, having servants, etc. These are things that are only possible for countries with huge amounts of land and resources, and not sustainable or doable for most of the world.

      • turnip@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        It could also be seen as rising standards of living, and aristocrats were optimizing their advantage before the standards rose for everyone due to cheap energy availability.

        Saying people consume meat to mimic the rich is a little silly.