It’s an intriguing thought, well worth our
consideration. If you have ever wondered
why people with gobs of money, who have ascended the economic
status hierarchy are so prone to mouth incoherent radical leftist tripe, Rob Henderson offers one response.
They wear their beliefs like status symbols. Henderson calls
them luxury beliefs because they believe that being being politically correct, however much it damages
the nation, is a way to assert higher social status.
I would add that in an age where the national media and its
attendant mob shuns anyone who expresses a discordant non-radical belief,
spouting luxury beliefs is good public
relations. It protects you from being branded a bigot and being expelled
from public society.
Were I to speculate I would add that people who have
conquered the marketplace and who have amassed great fortunes seem to have the
unfortunate tendency to think that they must now become philosophers. They
look for new words to conquer and they set their sights on the marketplace of
ideas. Thus, they turn to those professorial and media intellectuals who seem
to have status within the world of ideas. And they allow said intellectuals to
manipulate their minds, to persuade them to think politically correct thoughts.
They resemble the dupes in the Socratic dialogues, the rubes who easily allow
the great philosopher to make them think what he wants them to think... and to persuade them that they are independent thinkers.
Luxury beliefs have taken the place of fancy clothes, large
yachts, mega mansions and trust funds. They now signal membership in the upper
class:
In the
past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material
accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more affordable than before. And
people are less likely to receive validation for the material items they
display. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their
high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The
affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to
beliefs.
Henderson suggests that those who
collect luxury beliefs also believe that they are possessed of superior
righteousness, as though holding the right beliefs made them moral paragons:
Not only do top university graduates want to
be millionaires-in-the-making; they also want the image of moral righteousness.
Peterson underlines that elite graduates desire high status not only
financially, but morally as well. For these affluent social strivers, luxury
beliefs offer them a new way to gain status.
Thus, high status in material terms becomes conjoined with
high moral status. In material terms people show their status by wasting money.
It might be by buying overpriced goods. It might be by spending money on
leisure activities, like gambling. The goal is to designate oneself as a high
status individual:
Veblen,
an economist and sociologist, made his observations about social class in the
late nineteenth century. He compiled his observations in his classic
work, The Theory of the Leisure Class.
A key idea is that because we can’t be certain of the financial standing of
other people, a good way to size up their means is to see whether they can
afford to waste money on goods and leisure. This explains why status symbols
are so often difficult to obtain and costly to purchase….
Veblen
proposed that the wealthy flaunt these symbols not because they are useful, but
because they are so pricey or wasteful that only the wealthy can afford them,
which is why they’re high-status indicators. And this still goes on. A couple
of winters ago it was common to see students at Yale and Harvard wearing Canada
Goose jackets. Is it necessary to spend $900 to stay warm in New England? No.
But kids weren’t spending their parents’ money just for the warmth. They were
spending the equivalent of the typical American’s weekly income ($865) for the
logo.
College students advertise their high moral status by
mouthing the platitudes of political correctness. Thereby, they also protect
themselves of any status lowering accusations of bigotry:
Your
typical middle-class American could not tell you what “heteronormative” or
“cisgender” means. But if you visit Harvard, you’ll find plenty of rich
19-year-olds who will eagerly explain them to you. When someone uses the phrase
“cultural appropriation,” what they are really saying is “I was educated at a
top college.” Consider the Veblen quote, “Refined tastes, manners, habits of
life are a useful evidence of gentility, because good breeding requires time,
application and expense, and can therefore not be compassed by those whose time
and energy are taken up with work.” Only the affluent can afford to learn
strange vocabulary because ordinary people have real problems to worry about.
Henderson is suggesting that no sensible and intelligent
person could really believe this rot. Ergo, the wealthy students who do so are
showing off their superior status, meaning their having been educated at
America’s leading indoctrination mills:
Only
academics educated at elite institutions could have conjured up a coherent and
reasonable-sounding argument for why parents should not be allowed to raise
their kids, and should hold baby lotteries instead. When an affluent person
advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders,
or loose sexual norms, or uses the term “white privilege,” they are engaging in
a status display. They are trying to tell you, “I am a member of the upper
class.”
And, of course, Henderson adds, the policies espoused by
these high intellectual status individuals, cost them nothing. Poorer classes
pay the price for this intellectual aberration:
Affluent
people promote open borders or the decriminalization of drugs because it
advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption
of those policies will cost them less than others….
Advocating
for open borders and drug experimentation are good ways of advertising your
membership of the elite because, thanks to your wealth and social connections,
they will cost you less than me.
Naturally, sexual license is high on the list of luxury
beliefs. Nowadays, polyamory is all the rage. As it happened, upper class
individuals who mouth this drool tend to maintain stable marriages. Lower class
people who emulate them have far more broken marriages.
Polyamory
is the latest expression of sexual freedom championed by the affluent. They are
in a better position to manage the complications of novel relationship
arrangements. And if these relationships don’t work out, they can recover
thanks to their financial capability and social capital. The less fortunate
suffer by adopting the beliefs of the upper class.
Henderson continues:
The
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam at a Senate hearing said, “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate
Americas…Growing up with two parents is now unusual in the working class, while
two-parent families are normal and becoming more common among the upper middle
class.” Upper-class people, particularly in the 1960s, championed sexual
freedom. Loose sexual norms spread throughout the rest of society. The upper
class, though, still have intact families. They experiment in college and then
settle down later. The families of the lower class fell apart. Today, the
affluent are among the most likely to display the luxury belief that sexual
freedom is great, though they are the most likely to get married and least
likely to get divorced.
Upper class individuals cling to
these beliefs until the same beliefs become too pervasive. Until, that is,
lower class individuals, aka deplorables, adopt them. After all, being high
status means that people of lower status will be likely to emulate you. An to
act on your stated beliefs. At that point, those of higher status will feel
obliged to change their luxury beliefs:
Over
time, luxury beliefs are embraced down the social ladder—at which point, the
upper class abandons its old luxury beliefs and embraces new ones. Which
explains why the beliefs of the upper class are constantly changing. It’s easy
to see how this works if we look at actual fashion. The author Quentin Bell,
in On Human Finery, wrote “Try to
look like the people above you; if you’re at the top, try to look different
from the people below you.” The elite’s conspicuous display of their luxury
beliefs falls into this pattern. Their beliefs are emulated by others, sending
them off in search of new beliefs to display. The affluent can’t risk looking
like hoi polloi, after
all.
Moral
fashions change over time for the same reason. Moral fashions can quickly
spiral as more and more members of the chattering classes adopt a certain view.
Once the view becomes passé,
the upper class, aiming to separate themselves, then update their moral
inventories.
8 comments:
These people promote open borders and open marriages but end up living like the KKK and Christian conservatives
Whitney is right. White leftists are the most bourgeoise people in the nation. They live exactly like Amy Wax advises successful people to live, but they are fanatic crusaders for the self-destruction of other people, especially poor people. They peddle poison to the people who have the lowest immunity. Crusaders used to be like this:
https://binged.it/3343vu0
Now they are this:
https://youtu.be/T2I5YH8sJQU
Great article. Status beliefs have always been with us; Mencken mocked Veblen as a darling of the intellectual status-seekers at the time. And Marxism has always had a big allure for the very rich and privileged. It was a way for the pampered sons and daughters to play at revolution, pretending to be allied with the proles--until their respective trials came, and the rich kids skated free while the poor did hard time.
Hip-hop is a perfect venue for rich white kids to fake that they are down with the lumpenproletariat--and get beat up in the parking lot.
Also, the girl in the lavender cannot be for real. Feminists do not have 9's. I smell a plant. The girl in orange is for real, too real.
Luxury Beliefs = Status Symbols = "I'm BETTER than you proles, and you'd better suck up to me."
Why do people do what they do?
Because they can.
This is what’s behind the elites’ national push for drug legalization (aside from the guilt and need to normalize their own youthful indiscretions).
The more people smoking pot, the better.
I believe this marijuana fad will end in social disaster. No employer wants to hire a pothead.
And the longer these potheads live in their parents’ basement — playing video games — the more they stay out of the workforce. This will be the first question they face from a potential employer: “Where the hell have you been?”
Productive people don’t like unproductive people. Believing that they do is a “luxury belief.”
Only allergic to assholes Sam I am, as status symbols aren't really the problem and only become problematic once the majority begins to worship their accumulation. It gives people different varieties of garbage to pursue.
Those who pompously 'stand up' for 'marginalized' groups are profoundly arrogant. They wish to project themselves as a 'white knight champion' because obviously 'these people cannot stand up for themselves'
Racism at its worst.
The Engine is Eternal!
Post a Comment