Gemma Tipton: Pretentious? Moi? And your problem is?

Here’s a question to go with your morning cup of coffee: how ordinary are you? Most of us are caught in an odd limbo between wanting to be part of the group, whichever group we’ve happened to settle on, and having stirring feelings of exceptionalism.

Sometimes we aim for the best of both worlds by deciding that we’re on a par (ie ordinary) within our group, and that it’s our group that’s exceptional.

Your morning cup of coffee can help pinpoint things. Is it a friendly mug, slightly stained, that you’ve had for years, a present from one of your children – a fact you explain to anyone who sees you using it, as you deliberately eschew consumerism? Or is it a porcelain demitasse made by an artisan who lives in a bothy in West Cork, but who makes frequent trips to Limoges? Either option may seem pretentious to someone who has made a different set of choices. Pretentious? Moi? Never.

But Pretentiousness: Why it Matters, by Dan Fox, might change your mind. Fox has all the ingredients to be dismissed as pretentious – he's a writer and a musician, lives in New York and co-edits Frieze art magazine. But it's that dismissive attitude that Fox wants to get rid of.

Pretentiousness is a form of acting, and acting shields us from the realities of the world, at the same time as it puts up a false face so that no one can know us well.

How can our neighbours judge us for falling behind with the mortgage when we’ve got the latest SUV, and we’re still hiring bouncy castles? So far, so bad. But think again. That’s just one facet of acting.

Philosophy

Fox quotes the 18th century French philosopher and writer

Denis Diderot

– and you have to be either incredibly culturally secure or insecure to quote Diderot – “Everyone in society, without exception, acts a part, takes a ‘position’, does his dance, even the King himself, ‘who takes a position before his mistress and God: he dances his pantomime steps’.” We all play act all the time, and when I get advised, just be yourself, I always pause to wonder: which me would it be most appropriate to be?

Everything we do or buy includes a choice, even if it’s as basic as a “do” or “not do”. These choices can come through in how we dress, how we speak and the objects we buy for our homes. Casualties of the boom know to their literal cost that aspiration can be deadly. But what’s worse? Aiming up or aiming down?

While we're right to despise those who use long words to fudge the fact they've nothing to say, think about the anti-intellectualism that feeds the beast of Donald Trump and his ilk.

Hipsters

The new can frequently seem pretentious, until it becomes the norm. And the outliers that amplify new trends – those in the vanguard of hipsterism, for example, and whatever is to come next, are often vilified before being copied. Later, when the movement has reached its peak, the mass adopters are also mocked. But there’s a point, somewhere in the middle, where you can experience the joy of self-expression through revelling in a designated pattern of taste. Mocking those who drive change is actually about policing the boundaries of taste and class.

Fox has something to say about this, of course, as he introduces 20th-century ideas of individualism and capitalism, with a handy reminder that they, too, were once new. "Pretentiousness is interesting," said Buzzcocks' former frontman Howard Devoto. "At least you're making an effort. Your ambition has to outstrip your ability at some point." In this, he was echoing the poet, Robert Browning, over 100 years before, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?"

This speaks immediately to those creative professions: music, art, writing and design. Pretentiousness, that aspirational aiming that shuns the safe comfort of what has been designated “normal” gives us both enormous brilliance and utter failure – the anxious homes of all imaginative thinkers.

So maybe that coffee-cup maker likes her bothy, and maybe she also loves her holidays in France. And maybe some of that rubs off on the cup, and we get a little frisson of it when we sip. Who are we to judge? After all, we all act all the time. The question is, do we like the play we’re in, and is it a tragedy, comedy or farce?

And if you really want to know about the world through coffee, look up the very brilliant Physics and Caffeine online. The short video by Physics Reimagined takes you through the mysteries of the universe via a single cup. Oh, and it's in French – with subtitles. Naturellement.