Refinement as a Way of Life
Because how can we have a high-quality life without refinement?
👋🏼 Hey, I’m Joanna! I’m a communications consultant sharing insights and ideas relating to democracy, wellbeing, AI, culture, spiritualism and the human condition…read on if this has piqued your interest.
Whilst scrolling through news coverage about the sleek suits, streaks of romanticism and pop-art dresses recently showcased on the catwalks at Paris Fashion Week, one word was desperately missing: refined. There’s been an interest, thanks to Tik Tok, in being “very demure, very mindful”. But what about being “very refined, very mindful”?
If we seek to have high-quality experiences, being refined – and refining what we give our time and attention to – will help us get there. This isn’t about money or social standing. It’s about crafting a way of life by proactively discerning what will increase the quality of every experience – from choosing to place a vase of flowers on your desk to inspire you as you work to lighting a candle before bed at night – each of these small but sensory details are high-quality experiences and gestures because of the care, attention and thought that have gone into them. Not the cost.
Low-grade junk food and activities have a time and a place (hellllllo train time Cadbury Twirl). But this standard of convenience and lower quality has become increasingly normalised across vital areas of our lives such as how we think, write and create thanks to generative AI and ChatGPT. Even the material of the clothing we wear is something many people don’t bat an eyelid to, even though it’s well publicised that synthetic clothing can damage our health.
If people aren’t informed about refinement – whether through refined thinking, acting, speaking or being - as a standard and way of life, then they will inevitably not question the low hum of coarseness, crudeness and dullness as their normal frequency and energy. In contrast, refinement brings a level of zest, brightness and energy that enriches our senses through its fineness, precision, distinction and polish. Even if we don’t directly say the word refinement, that feeling of higher quality is something we all identify when we see it, hear it and feel it.
This is why the word refinement needs to be brought back into greater use, especially considering how bombarded we are of excessive information, options and general Stuff – not all of which is designed to care for our wellbeing or intellectual or spiritual growth. Cookie cutter eye candy may catch our attention. But it’s soul food – carefully refined to our personal taste and palate – that awakens our human senses and nourishes and improves our lives over the long-term.
When I think of refinement, I imagine a block of marble attentively being chipped away at to reveal a finely sculptured statue, a process which takes time, craft and care to come into existence and which deepens our experience and relationship with it. A refined person, object, idea or environment is a thing of awe; nothing speaks of a high-quality human existence than one which has been thoughtfully and diligently refined at all angles. Just think of the enriching effect of a public intellectual versus a person or robot which masquerades as one but who hasn’t put the hard graft into cultivating the same knowledge or experience.
When we skip the process of refining basic things – especially in the attention age – such as what we consume online, how we spent our minutes and hours, what topics become our point of focus – then we become a hot mess of everything. Our brains fry. This is why it’s strange that more attention isn’t being placed on the art of refinement. If generative AI expands its role by replicating and mimicking a human, whether that be a chatbot mimicking a dead loved one to AI tutors which children will never feel as valuable as a human’s time, we will pick up on the energy of that. Interacting with an engaged human is an aesthetic experience, one that has been refined for us individually, for a specific moment and place. It’s also a refined experience. A fellow human can pick up on our mood and emotional temperament and then act accordingly.
This is why refinement is so important, and will become more important in the future, just as the Victorians sought to distinguish themselves with finer goods, culture and etiquette in the years after the surge of cheap, mass-produced goods arising from the Industrial Revolution. The Victorian era was an age of refinement where people leaned into feeling and discerning what would give them a higher quality life; something which we have an interest in today based on our use of smart watches, blood glucose sensors, self-help and wellbeing, but less is said about how we conduct and carry ourselves. In the Age of AI, data, statistics and economics, so much is experienced as a quantifiable measure. But what about the aesthetic experience of engaging with beauty, art and nature – something which neuroaesthetics suggest is essential?
When things are refined, they become more sacred and special; they capture and hold meaning in a world which attempts to prioritise low-grade distraction. It’s about finding and feeling into the richness of the experience and being leisurely about savouring it and gaining momentum from the energy it offers. What could be more enjoyable than that?
Optimizing and productivity have become helpful corporate buzzwords in recent years. They’re words which nod to things getting done; that every part of a lemon has to be squeezed to a pulp with no juice remaining for the reason that “we can therefore we should”. Helpful as they are, these words inherently lack human soul. Only corporate service.
This is why I intentionally chose refinement as a core word and value when I started my communications business. I want my business to incorporate soul, care, precision, attentiveness and high-quality. And I want my clients to feel this too. To me, refinement is a word and expression which helps humans work towards and experience a high-quality life; the ultimate ideal which most of us consciously or subconsciously strive for.
Refinement also points to the height of human civility and the characteristics associated with it – being polite, gracious, sophisticated, dignified, graceful, authoritative, respectful and intelligent – as well as the values we historically admire.
It’s a word which carries expectations, something intrinsic to the human spirit and experience. It takes work to be refined and for something to become refined. It’s a continuous work in progress. It asks us to be a better version of ourselves. It’s a word with an underlying mantra: that if something is worth doing it’s worth doing well. That effort is worth pursing as through this effort we become more refined – from our intelligence and confidence to how we carry and conduct ourselves – in the process. This is why being refined and the process of refinement ought to be more appreciated, or at the very least, voiced more. So why do people not use it as much as they used to?
Convenience is a strong answer. But I think it goes much deeper than that. Our own spatial awareness and perception of things has greatly altered (in part) because of the internet and travel. We are so aware, and are made to feel so aware, of the vast volume of Stuff that we can buy and consume in various quantities that our human instinct of seeking a refined experience or object is lessened or outright blotted out.
Refined, refinement or being refined is also calming and gentle. Perhaps recent times, with its pandemics, extreme economic divides, rushed politics and panic of the next crisis hasn’t helped. People have been so concerned with what they don’t want, they haven’t prioritised and placed their energy on what they do want. Saying that, regardless of what’s going on in the outside world, cultivating refinement and thinking about how it can impact us individually and in wider culture is something worth pondering if we wish to sharpen our senses and experience the world anew.
So I think taste is very important (and you only get good taste by tasting lots of things).
But let’s explore refinement.
For me (as someone from a non-elite background moving in elite spaces), refinement is used to exclude people. “Oh, you’re not really sure what all the different cutlery is for, maybe you don’t belong here”.
And highly refined foods are generally not good for us. Refinement is a process of removal. And the rough stuff can be good for us.
Refinement requires standards and these, generally, are in decline. While some just don't care about quality, others that do are slightly misguided, improving without refining. Without standards, or with loosened standards, arts, conduct, behavior, etc. long cherished are disappearing and the young, born in this era, don't have a reference point as to what things and conduct used to be when refinement was a key aspiration.