I think the spectrum of "status security" from low to high is a key defining factor between old money and new money and UMCs and down.
True old money aristocrats(perhaps 'aristocrats' in general) at least perceive themselves to be completely secure in their superior status, more or less on a spiritual level. A significant effect of this, is that it leads many of them to engage in activities, customs, dress, behavior etc without regard to how it is coded, or even in spite of its status-coding.
I had in mind an interview I saw with Yarvin where he said that he took up Bass fishing and that most people of his class, if they took up fishing, would fish for Trout, which is seen as higher-status(think resort level fly-fishing excursions in Montana) but that he took up Bass fishing particularly because it was seen as low status(think working-class people fishing from a Bass boat) by those people. Frankly, that smells like its born out of a kind of slave morality but I understand what he's saying.
All this hand-wringing about status and focus on "knowing where you stand" is extremely lame to me. You can transcend all of this feminine status jockying by "becoming who you are" and following your tastes wherever they may take you without a care about what it says about you, this is in my opinion, the true aristocratic disposition.
Yeah this is just classic cope and in of itself a textbook example of middle class luxury belief. That is to say, the idea that one is too good for the status game and all that matters is ones own inflated sense of intelligence.
It's not that you feel too good for the status game but that you shouldn't let status prescribe so rigidly what you do or don't do. Perhaps that is a middle class cope. 🤷♂️
Hm. Maybe. Or maybe it's being satisfied enough with your life that you don't need to obsess about where you stand. I have zero ambition left, and being in the dregs of the UMC doesn't upset me because the UMC is still pretty darn cushy.
I took up bass fishing because I'm actually from the rural south, unlike some elites who speak for us without ever having been among us. It's my pattern of life because I inherited it.
I think the picture is more complete if you include that people from somewhat lower rungs can be at least co-trend setters. The final approval that something is high status, has to come from the high status people but they themselves rarely make it up, they pick it out from below them. Just like the rich Roman didn't have to be a good gladiator himself, today he doesn't have to be a belief-crafter himself either. They need and rely on the input from people with more contact with base reality. But their taste in picking among the multiple possible paths ahead is what is relied on by his broader class circle.
But generally, the quintessential elite activity is the thumbs-up/thumbs-down gesture in relation to some kind of proposal or idea, almost like the decision in the amphitheater. The more concrete your work, the less high status it is. The highest are effortless taste and opinion, then deep effortful intellectual work (think philosophy, pure math, composing music, study of history and art) where there are no hard criteria and the output is only judged through nebulous aesthetic judment and taste (math is borderline, it has objectivity, but the point is more beauty and elegance), then more mundane intellectual work (mechanical/electrical/software engineering, accounting, management etc.), where outcomes are somewhat more tangible, though not fully measurable and involve some taste. Law and medicine "should" belong to the mundane intellectual category by the nature of the job, but by historic prestige they have higher status, even though they are more measurable (it's no coincidence that doctors are super averse to having their performance measured, push against checklists and even dislike evidence-based medicine - they want to be more taste based and have an ineffable aura). Certain other things are also kinda high for sentimental reasons, like airline pilots. Trades are next. They can be very respectable, like a good tailor, or good cook. It's not like the high class person looks down on their tailor. Or their accountant or driver or pilot or nanny. They do appreciate the skill and look up to the effort etc. It's just a different class. These are mostly physical jobs.
It's interesting that nowadays as more and more work is office work, the lines get shifted and you can be in this "trades" category even if your job is on a computer. Certain types of software developers fall in this, e.g. basic web and app development. So the status anxiety of programmers is often dealt with by attaching themselves more to the prestige and elegance of computer science.
But all in all, status is when people truly listen to you, imitate you, your words can sway the way people act etc. And all this without explicitly telling them. That's why simply being great in some skilled work is not seen as high-status in this sense. Influencing or deciding what other people do is the key to that.
It's also important to keep in mind that elite taste is not equal to the concept of "good". It's important to distinguish between them. Elites can be boneheaded and get caught up in stupid stuff. It's fine to ignore that. Maybe they didn't believe in some world changing inventions around the industrial revolution. But reality didn't care, and the elite had to adapt to how the landscape shifted. With more or less success. Whether they yawn at Gauss' math works at the Opera ball, or the Mozart concert, it doesn't matter much. It can impact their world through other means. They are not omnipotent nor omniscient.
The revolutionary seething ground in all this is the huge numbers of young white men who have the intelligence to be UMC and so refuse to be prole. Instead they are increasingly simmering in the lumpenprole.
Intentionally being stonewalled for the rites of passage (college) into the UMC for sins of “privilege” while being forced to economically compete with “high-skill” immigrants will do that.
Always great to see my home town of Mildura mentioned!
Expanding on your point about elites concentrating in city’s vs country. Depending on where elites concentrate, it has a large influence on their cultural ideas, particularly left vs conservative. Elites centred in city’s predominantly hold leftist views, even historically, so Jacobins. While elites centred in the country, so landed aristocracy, would hold much more conservative views.
The UKs politics during the 18th & 19th century was predominantly conservative and only enacted changes steadily when pressured due to the elites being landed aristocracy concentrated in the country. When the aristocracy was decimated in the world wars and then pushed out by rich bourgeois, British politics moved to the left as the new elites were centred in cities.
I think this has a large influence on the attitudes of UMC as conservative views are still popular outside of city’s, as well as Rob Hendersons theory of luxury beliefs.
Is there any good work you would recommend on cities generating progressive thought? Collapse of the right in Australia correlates with, among other things, urbanisation. Feels like we are a nation of hicklibs now.
There are different kinds of status that are conflated here. You have status hierarchies within acquaintance circles, friend groups, even families, based on skill, talent, personality, looks, achievements, seniority, experience etc. Its caricature is basically the popularity totem pole as known from high school sitcoms.
This is quite different from the social class hierarchy that is the majority of this post. Above a certain level of poverty, rising above is not simply and straightforwardly a "better" life. It's not exactly easy to even grok from the level below. Many things that impress you about how the people on the level above live, are simply taken for granted by them. The game is different but even if you step one up on the ladder, overall the game is still a game. Now you have something else one level above you, things to worry about that you didn't even imagine existed from the level below.
Also, once you are born into a certain class and grow up among similar people, you soak it up and don't have to act it out like a compulsion. Based on the post, it seems quite tiring, a sort of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the latest fashionable ideas or something. But if you are in those circles, it's just the latest gossip basically. You went to some fun parties, talked with other personable people about issues, and this left an imprint on you, so from the next day, you talk slightly differently maybe. Or you start to use a turn of phrase more. It's like slang for normal people. Normal people don't spend tons of time taking notes and studying the latest slang and sighing, being tired trying to keep up. It just sticks on you by spending time with people. When they play tennis or ride horses, it's not necessarily done with some smug hind-thought that they are now sticking it to the class lower to them. They just do a fun activity they learned as a kid, and that their friends do.
What I mean is that much of this is automatic, not always conscious. Of course trying to climb often involves conscious strategizing. But there is a lot of inertia too.
And the groups do rely on cross-communication and some mobility too. It was always the case.
The upper classes can often grow to become passive and rigid. They are not under pressure to be super creative, their status is inherited. All they have to be good at is not to squander their wealth.
For most of the innovation, they outsource it via patronage. In the modern world it looks like inviting someone from a lower class who nevertheless has interesting ideas or skills to your parties. Artists, business founders, generally smart people etc. It can get pretty stale and boring if you were forced to just interact with all these other inherited-status people. The fun comes from peppering that with interesting people who are able to behave just well enough to blend in okay, but can say or do something entertaining or interesting.
The key is not to try to pretend to belong to a too much higher class than you are. It's much better to just make peace with it, and be able to talk to people born to a higher class without either groveling or envy. Again, above a certain level of income, these classes are not so much about "better" as "different". They are directing the flow of more money and influence, but it's not exactly the same jump as going from poverty to a regular comfy salaried life in a Western country.
It's very possible to make friendships across class lines, and indeed, because you are operating in different circles, there is less of a status threat in such connections. Just like celebrities have a hard time making genuine friendships, it is the case that upper class people also hunger for something interesting from outside their bubble.
You just have to accept that your class is set based on childhood. But education and skills acquired later can still make you one of the more interesting ones in your class that are fun to hang out with for even higher class people. Just don't try to pretend. If you mingle there enough, your kids will have a chance to get closer, and your grandkids a much stronger one, to do the rise, and integrate to that class. But hurrying it looks fake. It's fine to be who you are. It's possible, and in fact easier, to obtain a sort of respect from influential people by acknowledging where you come from, instead of hiding your background.
If you look through a list of inventors and scientists and literary authors and artists, theologians and philosophers, generals etc, they rarely came from the upper upper generational inherited wealth class. They weren't typically from peasants either, but educated burghers, smaller nobility, traders etc. who found patronage, and the higher classes found them interesting. Or not. Some only got recognized after they died.
The point is, there is not super much to be gained by lamenting one's position and trying to rise on the ladder, as if something was robbed from you by having to be on a certain rung. You may think it's cope, but it is in practice very well possible to live a complete life without being status anxious all the time. And it doesn't mean denying that status exists at all. The more you are trying to copy the behaviors that come via natural osmosis to the higher class, the less your experience resembles theirs. It not just looks like tryhard but it really is.
This article made something I’ve been spinning on for a long time make sense. For most of my life, I’ve had this distinct impression that my extended family was past its prime, that my grandparents’ generation is much more impressive than my parents. I think I understand what happened: my grandparents’ generation was thoroughly UMC. My parents’? Middle, without a doubt. I’d listen to recordings of my great uncle arguing in front of the Supreme Court, hear stories of my grandfather being friends with a university president. Then, I look at my family downgrading from a higher-end local grocery store to Jewel, because my dad likes being an office drone at one company more than another. So, yeah, being in a downwardly mobile former UMC family sucks.
My grandfather lived in a house without running water. My father worked his was up to plant manager. I'm a software developer. Somehow some of us white males were able to self start somehow, we don't need handouts to correct fur supposed victim hood. My grandfather also lived under Jim Crow, jeez how was it that a man who lived under a white supremacist regime had no running water and I live in the city.
Funnily enough, I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, but you've put it together far more nicely than I could. Great article.
One area I've been considering is luxury beliefs, or the relationship between status and professed belief more broadly. Mention something mildly critical of immigration to a middle class or upper-middle class person and they look at you like you've just said something between "I spat in my grandma's face" and "I just spent all of my savings on a jetski". There's a sense not just of moral transgression but also transgressing the bounds of civility or politeness in a status-coded way.
The idea that immigration is an unquestionable moral good is a sort of luxury belief, but they don't experience it as such because of where they live. If you live in the inner suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney then not only are you completely insulated from the effects of high migration rates, but the immigrants you do talk to are typically highly-educated, Western-oriented, have little cultural or social friction with you and your community, etc. To even experience immigration as something that can have negative impacts on your life is prole-coded, both as a belief and in terms of the status-code of where you live.
Why are you the first speaker? Doesn't anyone else ever get to be the first speaker and have their beliefs accepted without question? Or is that just you?
I think this is a big part of why anti-immigration sentiment has taken off like a rocket here in America even more than historically normal: Immigration policies, which generally only affected Proles and Lumpenproles, are now hurting Mids and even edging in on UMCs. H1B is the prime example of this. Importing Indians to do the work of Mids (IT work is extremely mid-coded) and UMCs (Professors, Doctors) has made the luxury belief of “immigration = good” much harder to swallow as layoffs continue, wages stagnate and you increasingly see foreigners taking jobs you once thought were comfortably—and exclusively—yours. Add in the bitter experience of these two classes even having to compete with “international students” for a spot at a good university, all while having to take courses taught by H1B professors with barely intelligible English, while tuition and student loans soar… no wonder indeed.
Well since DEI has been eliminated nowadays, it really benefits organizations to do blind resume reviews without any personal identification. Although I’m not sure who the blame will be put on when the best candidates are all candidates that were previously incorrectly perceived to be DEI hires.
The most troubling aspect of all this is that there seems to be no awareness amongst the anti-immigrant sector of America just how far behind they are. So on one hand you immigrants, on the other you have elites and the perception is that liberal elites cater to immigrants. The reality is that there’s some confusion amongst those “left behind” folks as to what makes an attractive hire.
These are literally the people that think somebody owes them a job and a living and that all the rules need to be changed to help them because they live a “simple” life where they live laugh and love all day. Which is totally fine. But might I suggest socialism as a way to achieve that, rather than perpetuating a capitalist system hell bent on competition, strategic hiring, academy-to-industry pipelines, etc. that tends to overlook people crying on their porch about woke agendas and trans people rather than do literally anything that would improve their own station.
I mean, I would prefer some fucking security myself, but I suppose the high cost of “freedom” is that you have to improve yourself daily to be marketable in this environment. So I guess the message is, you can’t spend Friday night with a cold beer and chicken fried, jeans that fit just right, and the radio up or have your toes in the water and ass in the sand or be chilling on a dirt road all weekend. They’re called “sacrifices” and you must make them.
Your first paragraph is a strange response. I never mentioned DEI, at all, yet you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I must have something against foreigners because I perceive them to be “DEI hires”. That is not at all my argument. I am making the simple observation that flooding the employment market with immigrants who will do the work for far less just to have the chance to escape their shitty country. So you’re already tilting at windmills.
Second paragraph: I am speaking specifically about mids and UMCs, who until *very recently* had clear paths from school to college to employment. Paths that frankly made sense—you want professors to have PhDs, you want doctors to had MDs, etc. And it’s a known fact that, with a few notable exceptions (usually, countries that aren’t inundating America with immigrants), foreign universities are simply not that good. India is of course most notorious for their “degree mills”, but there are poor academic standards in many countries that hand out credentials to professionals who then get jobs in America, again diluting the labor supply by working for less. This isn’t about auto workers who can’t understand why GM is never coming back to their decaying town.
Third paragraph: you people really need to chill out with the proselytizing. Seeing problems and immediately saying “You know what you need? The biggest joke of the 20th century that killed tens of millions and objectively failed every single time it was tried.” Sorry, but nobody is flocking to Venezuela and Cuba to live in their worker’s paradise. And frankly, I have literally no clue whatsoever what you meant by “crying on their porch about woke agendas and trans people”. Well, no, I actually do. You meant to display your *overt contempt* for the working-class people you claim to be a champion of. You caricature them, spit on their social values, and apply those caricatures to anyone you see disagreeing with your project. It’s intellectually lazy, arrogant, and makes people generally dislike you and your ideology.
Fourth paragraph: Anyone who puts “freedom” in quotes is immediately suspect to me, because without fail, it always ends up being someone who genuinely hates individual liberties and would, without hesitation, put his enemies to the wall or ship them to the GULAG for refusing a vaccine or hoarding grain or whatever. And the rest is just more thinly-disguised contempt for the working-class through referencing their cultural signifiers.
In other words: You’re a contemptible commie, and your ideas suck shit.
I don’t know though. Communism seems to have worked in China. Pretty hard to ignore what they’ve got going on over there.
Also, I think being intellectually lazy is why people are anti immigrant. There are plenty of working class Americans that are gainfully employed. Theyre typically get called elites. What’s the average salary of someone with a bachelors degree? It could be a caricature but also, the best way to find a job is to gain a marketable skill. I don’t know why everyone is supposed to feel bad for people that are looking for a hand out and blaming immigrants for their own lack of individual motivation. Again, the economic system that does guarantee employment is socialism or communism. So I don’t know that I’m proselytizing, more so stating a generally accepted fact. The only other option is to shut the fuck up and get in line for the academic advisor, bud.
But I think you’re getting my point: labor is a cost for businesses. Businesses will always pursue cheaper labor. It’s a number on a ledger that must be lowered. Given that there’s explicit support for capitalism in general, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that there would be more immigrants if their labor is cheaper. Even if you look at the introduction of women in the workplace, I’m sure it was very empowering for women, but it also was much cheaper labor initially for businesses everywhere.
As far as DEI hires and foreigners - my point is even in a scenario where the labor costs are equivalent for “mid” jobs or whatever, blaming DEI or affirmative action was a crutch people could use in an argument against immigrants hires. The perception that an immigrant could not be the best hire is a tell on a lack of awareness at how far behind some Americans are. Anecdotally, there are plenty of hirings I’ve been part of where an American born candidate is not even in the top 3. Again, my attitude here is, there’s a gap between the perception and reality of how qualified Americans are in comparison. Basically if youre not raising your kids in a highly competitive public school district in the top few districts in your state and supplementing that with private tutoring on Saturdays and throughout the summer, your kids are going to be incels.
It may be contemptible but unfortunately the dreamworld utopia that the anti-immigrant right clamor for would be more indicative of government economic intervention, not less. In a capitalist society, you have to come ready to go each day or you’ll get the sack.
And yeah “freedom” is in quotes because there only seems to be one, flat conception of freedom heavily tied to a very specific Christian morality. But generally I’m agreeable that freedom includes freedom even for communists.
Love the piece, love the comments, especially the emotional reactions: Status games? So above it! And: Nice class analysis, but watch your language (prole)!
This is a terrific and edifying essay. But it focuses a lot on money and possessions. I have what what's sometimes called "wealth-status disequilibrium." I'm a tenured professor with an Ivy League PhD and I've written two successful books. But public university professors don't get paid well, and I won't inherit any wealth. Then again, I'm also very fit in middle age, which I think is increasingly a status marker of sorts. But in my personal style, I'm always a bit intentionally disheveled (jeans and t-shirts whenever possible), and can be prone to louche behavior. That could enhance my status in among some, and diminish it among others. It's situation-specific. (Not that I care too much.) Anyhow, it's a complicated subject -- and fun to think about!
Your status then relies on who invites you for talks, are you networked and hang out with influential people? Do you get invitations to parties where wealthy people discuss politics and current affairs, visions about the future, etc.? Do they ask you for your expertise? Do political decision makers cite your papers?
Are your ideas liked by elite taste setters?
That's status. (To be clear, that's distinct from being correct/honorable/ethical/etc.)
I think it takes a long time to truly make peace with this and just see it as simply the way things are. Upon reading it, it may feel like reading "you are now breathing in manual mode", or if you read about how walking works and then you can't stop paying attention to how you plant your feet one after the other on the sidewalk. But then you let it fade out of your consciousness and things are good again.
Despite how it may seem from this article, people in higher classes aren't 24/7 worrying about these things and how to keep up. It's simply natural behavior and "osmosis" for them. Just like it's normal for you to take a shower in the morning and brush your teeth and it's not some conscious effort for status markers, or that you watch certain films and series or listen to certain music. You simply pick from stuff (habits and likes) that's generally floating around in your social circles.
I distinctly remember the first time I ate pasta with a bit fancier group, and they used a spoon with the fork. Never seen that before, never done that in our family. To me it came across as a status marker and it made me a bit self-conscious and not belonging. But to them it was not a signal, they just did the conventient technique that they always used, from childhood on.
That's just one example, but a lot of it truly is effortless (and another lot is pretend-effortless, but actually effortful).
That's fine, but for people who try to trace intellectual trends or to understand where some idea came from I think it's useful to think along the lines of this blog post. Not necessarily in order to worry about one's own place. But it's a reality that influential people exist and what ideas they find likable impacts us all gravely.
I think the spectrum of "status security" from low to high is a key defining factor between old money and new money and UMCs and down.
True old money aristocrats(perhaps 'aristocrats' in general) at least perceive themselves to be completely secure in their superior status, more or less on a spiritual level. A significant effect of this, is that it leads many of them to engage in activities, customs, dress, behavior etc without regard to how it is coded, or even in spite of its status-coding.
Yes, if you’re the highest status person, you’re a taste maker rather than a taste imitator, so you can do whatever you like
Perhaps.
I had in mind an interview I saw with Yarvin where he said that he took up Bass fishing and that most people of his class, if they took up fishing, would fish for Trout, which is seen as higher-status(think resort level fly-fishing excursions in Montana) but that he took up Bass fishing particularly because it was seen as low status(think working-class people fishing from a Bass boat) by those people. Frankly, that smells like its born out of a kind of slave morality but I understand what he's saying.
All this hand-wringing about status and focus on "knowing where you stand" is extremely lame to me. You can transcend all of this feminine status jockying by "becoming who you are" and following your tastes wherever they may take you without a care about what it says about you, this is in my opinion, the true aristocratic disposition.
Yeah this is just classic cope and in of itself a textbook example of middle class luxury belief. That is to say, the idea that one is too good for the status game and all that matters is ones own inflated sense of intelligence.
It's not that you feel too good for the status game but that you shouldn't let status prescribe so rigidly what you do or don't do. Perhaps that is a middle class cope. 🤷♂️
Hm. Maybe. Or maybe it's being satisfied enough with your life that you don't need to obsess about where you stand. I have zero ambition left, and being in the dregs of the UMC doesn't upset me because the UMC is still pretty darn cushy.
Very true
I took up bass fishing because I'm actually from the rural south, unlike some elites who speak for us without ever having been among us. It's my pattern of life because I inherited it.
And I would say, the difference between and a "taste maker" and a "taste imitator" is more about the intent behind the action being done.
It really isn't what you do, its how you do it that matters.
I think the picture is more complete if you include that people from somewhat lower rungs can be at least co-trend setters. The final approval that something is high status, has to come from the high status people but they themselves rarely make it up, they pick it out from below them. Just like the rich Roman didn't have to be a good gladiator himself, today he doesn't have to be a belief-crafter himself either. They need and rely on the input from people with more contact with base reality. But their taste in picking among the multiple possible paths ahead is what is relied on by his broader class circle.
But generally, the quintessential elite activity is the thumbs-up/thumbs-down gesture in relation to some kind of proposal or idea, almost like the decision in the amphitheater. The more concrete your work, the less high status it is. The highest are effortless taste and opinion, then deep effortful intellectual work (think philosophy, pure math, composing music, study of history and art) where there are no hard criteria and the output is only judged through nebulous aesthetic judment and taste (math is borderline, it has objectivity, but the point is more beauty and elegance), then more mundane intellectual work (mechanical/electrical/software engineering, accounting, management etc.), where outcomes are somewhat more tangible, though not fully measurable and involve some taste. Law and medicine "should" belong to the mundane intellectual category by the nature of the job, but by historic prestige they have higher status, even though they are more measurable (it's no coincidence that doctors are super averse to having their performance measured, push against checklists and even dislike evidence-based medicine - they want to be more taste based and have an ineffable aura). Certain other things are also kinda high for sentimental reasons, like airline pilots. Trades are next. They can be very respectable, like a good tailor, or good cook. It's not like the high class person looks down on their tailor. Or their accountant or driver or pilot or nanny. They do appreciate the skill and look up to the effort etc. It's just a different class. These are mostly physical jobs.
It's interesting that nowadays as more and more work is office work, the lines get shifted and you can be in this "trades" category even if your job is on a computer. Certain types of software developers fall in this, e.g. basic web and app development. So the status anxiety of programmers is often dealt with by attaching themselves more to the prestige and elegance of computer science.
But all in all, status is when people truly listen to you, imitate you, your words can sway the way people act etc. And all this without explicitly telling them. That's why simply being great in some skilled work is not seen as high-status in this sense. Influencing or deciding what other people do is the key to that.
It's also important to keep in mind that elite taste is not equal to the concept of "good". It's important to distinguish between them. Elites can be boneheaded and get caught up in stupid stuff. It's fine to ignore that. Maybe they didn't believe in some world changing inventions around the industrial revolution. But reality didn't care, and the elite had to adapt to how the landscape shifted. With more or less success. Whether they yawn at Gauss' math works at the Opera ball, or the Mozart concert, it doesn't matter much. It can impact their world through other means. They are not omnipotent nor omniscient.
I feel click-baited.
The revolutionary seething ground in all this is the huge numbers of young white men who have the intelligence to be UMC and so refuse to be prole. Instead they are increasingly simmering in the lumpenprole.
Intentionally being stonewalled for the rites of passage (college) into the UMC for sins of “privilege” while being forced to economically compete with “high-skill” immigrants will do that.
I'm sorry you lack self sufficiency and need to beg for handouts from others. Others are capable of supporting themselves but not you.
Curse Vishnu right now to prove you’re not Indian
I'm sorry I'm not the screenshot you saw on X
I'm so sorry that you don't have the status you think you deserve. Perhaps you should not have so much envy for that which God didn't assign you?
Always great to see my home town of Mildura mentioned!
Expanding on your point about elites concentrating in city’s vs country. Depending on where elites concentrate, it has a large influence on their cultural ideas, particularly left vs conservative. Elites centred in city’s predominantly hold leftist views, even historically, so Jacobins. While elites centred in the country, so landed aristocracy, would hold much more conservative views.
The UKs politics during the 18th & 19th century was predominantly conservative and only enacted changes steadily when pressured due to the elites being landed aristocracy concentrated in the country. When the aristocracy was decimated in the world wars and then pushed out by rich bourgeois, British politics moved to the left as the new elites were centred in cities.
I think this has a large influence on the attitudes of UMC as conservative views are still popular outside of city’s, as well as Rob Hendersons theory of luxury beliefs.
Is there any good work you would recommend on cities generating progressive thought? Collapse of the right in Australia correlates with, among other things, urbanisation. Feels like we are a nation of hicklibs now.
I can’t think of any sources, mostly articles on Substack and reading about the decline of the aristocracy in England.
Another problem that’s led to the collapse of the right in Australia is the lack of institutions that produce conservative thinkers/elites.
The military is the last institute that would generate conservative individuals but it doesn’t confer the status it used to.
I haven’t read anything on it, but definitely a phenomenon ive observed.
Enjoyed all the Aussie turns of phrase in this, ya sick cunt. Good article.
There are different kinds of status that are conflated here. You have status hierarchies within acquaintance circles, friend groups, even families, based on skill, talent, personality, looks, achievements, seniority, experience etc. Its caricature is basically the popularity totem pole as known from high school sitcoms.
This is quite different from the social class hierarchy that is the majority of this post. Above a certain level of poverty, rising above is not simply and straightforwardly a "better" life. It's not exactly easy to even grok from the level below. Many things that impress you about how the people on the level above live, are simply taken for granted by them. The game is different but even if you step one up on the ladder, overall the game is still a game. Now you have something else one level above you, things to worry about that you didn't even imagine existed from the level below.
Also, once you are born into a certain class and grow up among similar people, you soak it up and don't have to act it out like a compulsion. Based on the post, it seems quite tiring, a sort of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the latest fashionable ideas or something. But if you are in those circles, it's just the latest gossip basically. You went to some fun parties, talked with other personable people about issues, and this left an imprint on you, so from the next day, you talk slightly differently maybe. Or you start to use a turn of phrase more. It's like slang for normal people. Normal people don't spend tons of time taking notes and studying the latest slang and sighing, being tired trying to keep up. It just sticks on you by spending time with people. When they play tennis or ride horses, it's not necessarily done with some smug hind-thought that they are now sticking it to the class lower to them. They just do a fun activity they learned as a kid, and that their friends do.
What I mean is that much of this is automatic, not always conscious. Of course trying to climb often involves conscious strategizing. But there is a lot of inertia too.
And the groups do rely on cross-communication and some mobility too. It was always the case.
The upper classes can often grow to become passive and rigid. They are not under pressure to be super creative, their status is inherited. All they have to be good at is not to squander their wealth.
For most of the innovation, they outsource it via patronage. In the modern world it looks like inviting someone from a lower class who nevertheless has interesting ideas or skills to your parties. Artists, business founders, generally smart people etc. It can get pretty stale and boring if you were forced to just interact with all these other inherited-status people. The fun comes from peppering that with interesting people who are able to behave just well enough to blend in okay, but can say or do something entertaining or interesting.
The key is not to try to pretend to belong to a too much higher class than you are. It's much better to just make peace with it, and be able to talk to people born to a higher class without either groveling or envy. Again, above a certain level of income, these classes are not so much about "better" as "different". They are directing the flow of more money and influence, but it's not exactly the same jump as going from poverty to a regular comfy salaried life in a Western country.
It's very possible to make friendships across class lines, and indeed, because you are operating in different circles, there is less of a status threat in such connections. Just like celebrities have a hard time making genuine friendships, it is the case that upper class people also hunger for something interesting from outside their bubble.
You just have to accept that your class is set based on childhood. But education and skills acquired later can still make you one of the more interesting ones in your class that are fun to hang out with for even higher class people. Just don't try to pretend. If you mingle there enough, your kids will have a chance to get closer, and your grandkids a much stronger one, to do the rise, and integrate to that class. But hurrying it looks fake. It's fine to be who you are. It's possible, and in fact easier, to obtain a sort of respect from influential people by acknowledging where you come from, instead of hiding your background.
If you look through a list of inventors and scientists and literary authors and artists, theologians and philosophers, generals etc, they rarely came from the upper upper generational inherited wealth class. They weren't typically from peasants either, but educated burghers, smaller nobility, traders etc. who found patronage, and the higher classes found them interesting. Or not. Some only got recognized after they died.
The point is, there is not super much to be gained by lamenting one's position and trying to rise on the ladder, as if something was robbed from you by having to be on a certain rung. You may think it's cope, but it is in practice very well possible to live a complete life without being status anxious all the time. And it doesn't mean denying that status exists at all. The more you are trying to copy the behaviors that come via natural osmosis to the higher class, the less your experience resembles theirs. It not just looks like tryhard but it really is.
Brilliant, your prose had me laughing and reflecting the whole way through. Well done
Quite good, and even better when compared to the articles the algo feeds me.
Pumped for this “series” on the most interesting/most neglected topic.
Love DFW but 90% hate reading him.
This article made something I’ve been spinning on for a long time make sense. For most of my life, I’ve had this distinct impression that my extended family was past its prime, that my grandparents’ generation is much more impressive than my parents. I think I understand what happened: my grandparents’ generation was thoroughly UMC. My parents’? Middle, without a doubt. I’d listen to recordings of my great uncle arguing in front of the Supreme Court, hear stories of my grandfather being friends with a university president. Then, I look at my family downgrading from a higher-end local grocery store to Jewel, because my dad likes being an office drone at one company more than another. So, yeah, being in a downwardly mobile former UMC family sucks.
My grandfather lived in a house without running water. My father worked his was up to plant manager. I'm a software developer. Somehow some of us white males were able to self start somehow, we don't need handouts to correct fur supposed victim hood. My grandfather also lived under Jim Crow, jeez how was it that a man who lived under a white supremacist regime had no running water and I live in the city.
> My grandfather lived in a house without running water
Depending on region, that may be an okay percentile. Absolute comparisons like this matter less for status, than relative measures.
Funnily enough, I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, but you've put it together far more nicely than I could. Great article.
One area I've been considering is luxury beliefs, or the relationship between status and professed belief more broadly. Mention something mildly critical of immigration to a middle class or upper-middle class person and they look at you like you've just said something between "I spat in my grandma's face" and "I just spent all of my savings on a jetski". There's a sense not just of moral transgression but also transgressing the bounds of civility or politeness in a status-coded way.
The idea that immigration is an unquestionable moral good is a sort of luxury belief, but they don't experience it as such because of where they live. If you live in the inner suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney then not only are you completely insulated from the effects of high migration rates, but the immigrants you do talk to are typically highly-educated, Western-oriented, have little cultural or social friction with you and your community, etc. To even experience immigration as something that can have negative impacts on your life is prole-coded, both as a belief and in terms of the status-code of where you live.
Absolutely, as soon as you say something critical you’re identified as a prole, and treated with class contempt.
Why are you the first speaker? Doesn't anyone else ever get to be the first speaker and have their beliefs accepted without question? Or is that just you?
I think this is a big part of why anti-immigration sentiment has taken off like a rocket here in America even more than historically normal: Immigration policies, which generally only affected Proles and Lumpenproles, are now hurting Mids and even edging in on UMCs. H1B is the prime example of this. Importing Indians to do the work of Mids (IT work is extremely mid-coded) and UMCs (Professors, Doctors) has made the luxury belief of “immigration = good” much harder to swallow as layoffs continue, wages stagnate and you increasingly see foreigners taking jobs you once thought were comfortably—and exclusively—yours. Add in the bitter experience of these two classes even having to compete with “international students” for a spot at a good university, all while having to take courses taught by H1B professors with barely intelligible English, while tuition and student loans soar… no wonder indeed.
Well since DEI has been eliminated nowadays, it really benefits organizations to do blind resume reviews without any personal identification. Although I’m not sure who the blame will be put on when the best candidates are all candidates that were previously incorrectly perceived to be DEI hires.
The most troubling aspect of all this is that there seems to be no awareness amongst the anti-immigrant sector of America just how far behind they are. So on one hand you immigrants, on the other you have elites and the perception is that liberal elites cater to immigrants. The reality is that there’s some confusion amongst those “left behind” folks as to what makes an attractive hire.
These are literally the people that think somebody owes them a job and a living and that all the rules need to be changed to help them because they live a “simple” life where they live laugh and love all day. Which is totally fine. But might I suggest socialism as a way to achieve that, rather than perpetuating a capitalist system hell bent on competition, strategic hiring, academy-to-industry pipelines, etc. that tends to overlook people crying on their porch about woke agendas and trans people rather than do literally anything that would improve their own station.
I mean, I would prefer some fucking security myself, but I suppose the high cost of “freedom” is that you have to improve yourself daily to be marketable in this environment. So I guess the message is, you can’t spend Friday night with a cold beer and chicken fried, jeans that fit just right, and the radio up or have your toes in the water and ass in the sand or be chilling on a dirt road all weekend. They’re called “sacrifices” and you must make them.
Your first paragraph is a strange response. I never mentioned DEI, at all, yet you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I must have something against foreigners because I perceive them to be “DEI hires”. That is not at all my argument. I am making the simple observation that flooding the employment market with immigrants who will do the work for far less just to have the chance to escape their shitty country. So you’re already tilting at windmills.
Second paragraph: I am speaking specifically about mids and UMCs, who until *very recently* had clear paths from school to college to employment. Paths that frankly made sense—you want professors to have PhDs, you want doctors to had MDs, etc. And it’s a known fact that, with a few notable exceptions (usually, countries that aren’t inundating America with immigrants), foreign universities are simply not that good. India is of course most notorious for their “degree mills”, but there are poor academic standards in many countries that hand out credentials to professionals who then get jobs in America, again diluting the labor supply by working for less. This isn’t about auto workers who can’t understand why GM is never coming back to their decaying town.
Third paragraph: you people really need to chill out with the proselytizing. Seeing problems and immediately saying “You know what you need? The biggest joke of the 20th century that killed tens of millions and objectively failed every single time it was tried.” Sorry, but nobody is flocking to Venezuela and Cuba to live in their worker’s paradise. And frankly, I have literally no clue whatsoever what you meant by “crying on their porch about woke agendas and trans people”. Well, no, I actually do. You meant to display your *overt contempt* for the working-class people you claim to be a champion of. You caricature them, spit on their social values, and apply those caricatures to anyone you see disagreeing with your project. It’s intellectually lazy, arrogant, and makes people generally dislike you and your ideology.
Fourth paragraph: Anyone who puts “freedom” in quotes is immediately suspect to me, because without fail, it always ends up being someone who genuinely hates individual liberties and would, without hesitation, put his enemies to the wall or ship them to the GULAG for refusing a vaccine or hoarding grain or whatever. And the rest is just more thinly-disguised contempt for the working-class through referencing their cultural signifiers.
In other words: You’re a contemptible commie, and your ideas suck shit.
I don’t know though. Communism seems to have worked in China. Pretty hard to ignore what they’ve got going on over there.
Also, I think being intellectually lazy is why people are anti immigrant. There are plenty of working class Americans that are gainfully employed. Theyre typically get called elites. What’s the average salary of someone with a bachelors degree? It could be a caricature but also, the best way to find a job is to gain a marketable skill. I don’t know why everyone is supposed to feel bad for people that are looking for a hand out and blaming immigrants for their own lack of individual motivation. Again, the economic system that does guarantee employment is socialism or communism. So I don’t know that I’m proselytizing, more so stating a generally accepted fact. The only other option is to shut the fuck up and get in line for the academic advisor, bud.
But I think you’re getting my point: labor is a cost for businesses. Businesses will always pursue cheaper labor. It’s a number on a ledger that must be lowered. Given that there’s explicit support for capitalism in general, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that there would be more immigrants if their labor is cheaper. Even if you look at the introduction of women in the workplace, I’m sure it was very empowering for women, but it also was much cheaper labor initially for businesses everywhere.
As far as DEI hires and foreigners - my point is even in a scenario where the labor costs are equivalent for “mid” jobs or whatever, blaming DEI or affirmative action was a crutch people could use in an argument against immigrants hires. The perception that an immigrant could not be the best hire is a tell on a lack of awareness at how far behind some Americans are. Anecdotally, there are plenty of hirings I’ve been part of where an American born candidate is not even in the top 3. Again, my attitude here is, there’s a gap between the perception and reality of how qualified Americans are in comparison. Basically if youre not raising your kids in a highly competitive public school district in the top few districts in your state and supplementing that with private tutoring on Saturdays and throughout the summer, your kids are going to be incels.
It may be contemptible but unfortunately the dreamworld utopia that the anti-immigrant right clamor for would be more indicative of government economic intervention, not less. In a capitalist society, you have to come ready to go each day or you’ll get the sack.
And yeah “freedom” is in quotes because there only seems to be one, flat conception of freedom heavily tied to a very specific Christian morality. But generally I’m agreeable that freedom includes freedom even for communists.
To react to you I would first have had to think of you at all, which I don't.
Love the piece, love the comments, especially the emotional reactions: Status games? So above it! And: Nice class analysis, but watch your language (prole)!
That was fun: bravo author.
This is a terrific and edifying essay. But it focuses a lot on money and possessions. I have what what's sometimes called "wealth-status disequilibrium." I'm a tenured professor with an Ivy League PhD and I've written two successful books. But public university professors don't get paid well, and I won't inherit any wealth. Then again, I'm also very fit in middle age, which I think is increasingly a status marker of sorts. But in my personal style, I'm always a bit intentionally disheveled (jeans and t-shirts whenever possible), and can be prone to louche behavior. That could enhance my status in among some, and diminish it among others. It's situation-specific. (Not that I care too much.) Anyhow, it's a complicated subject -- and fun to think about!
Your status then relies on who invites you for talks, are you networked and hang out with influential people? Do you get invitations to parties where wealthy people discuss politics and current affairs, visions about the future, etc.? Do they ask you for your expertise? Do political decision makers cite your papers?
Are your ideas liked by elite taste setters?
That's status. (To be clear, that's distinct from being correct/honorable/ethical/etc.)
I really got alot out of this
I have never enjoyed living in the world, and I think this article is a good indicator as to why.
The longer I live the more I realize how dull and repulsive the world is. 🤣 But oh well, what can we do besides trying to be good people?
I think it takes a long time to truly make peace with this and just see it as simply the way things are. Upon reading it, it may feel like reading "you are now breathing in manual mode", or if you read about how walking works and then you can't stop paying attention to how you plant your feet one after the other on the sidewalk. But then you let it fade out of your consciousness and things are good again.
Despite how it may seem from this article, people in higher classes aren't 24/7 worrying about these things and how to keep up. It's simply natural behavior and "osmosis" for them. Just like it's normal for you to take a shower in the morning and brush your teeth and it's not some conscious effort for status markers, or that you watch certain films and series or listen to certain music. You simply pick from stuff (habits and likes) that's generally floating around in your social circles.
I distinctly remember the first time I ate pasta with a bit fancier group, and they used a spoon with the fork. Never seen that before, never done that in our family. To me it came across as a status marker and it made me a bit self-conscious and not belonging. But to them it was not a signal, they just did the conventient technique that they always used, from childhood on.
That's just one example, but a lot of it truly is effortless (and another lot is pretend-effortless, but actually effortful).
The larger point is that none of it matters in the end. And an even larger point is that I do not care.
That's fine, but for people who try to trace intellectual trends or to understand where some idea came from I think it's useful to think along the lines of this blog post. Not necessarily in order to worry about one's own place. But it's a reality that influential people exist and what ideas they find likable impacts us all gravely.
This was a fun read. Reminded me of Theodore Dalrymple. Thanks!