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We modern humans are thus faced with two competing ideals of individual distinction: the aristocratic principle of esteemed difference, and the moral ideal of authentic self-expression, esteem be damned.
Any pursuit of social approval, however, may lead to conflict with the wayward desires of our inner self. These choices and desires always feel more authentic to us because they emerge directly from our consciousness.
Our brains are always engaged in rationalization: framing raw demands from our subconscious as well-grounded, logical requests.
“Even if you deliberate over an idea, turning it over in your conscious mind, you are simply delaying the final decision that has, to all intents and purposes, already been made.”
In hoping to deny the influence of status, however, our brains rationalize the attraction to status value using palatable alibis, such as the pursuit of high quality and beauty. In doing so we interpret inauthentic external desires as authentic demands from our heart.
As everyone obscures their status desire, it results in a lack of public discussion around status seeking, which in turn further propagates the status taboo and makes us ashamed of wanting status.
Identity appears to be the outcome of status appraisal. And the self absorbs status-related desires at an unconscious level and rationalizes them as authentic personal thoughts.
Even those who drop out of society to pursue an ascetic, solitary life end up with a status. And thanks to the principle of detachment, withdrawal often becomes an effective path toward higher social position.
There is also great esteem for dedicated and disciplined individuals who devote themselves to rectitude, salvation, and harmony with the universe. Beatitude begets glory, and glory begets status.
For those at the top, the pursuit of distinctiveness is important for receiving higher status. But to foist the requirement of uniqueness on everyone is unnecessary, unnatural, and often cruel. If we allow everyone to be themselves, this should also provide the freedom to be identical to others.
We all compete for status, whether we like it or not. We can at least better explain the rules to make it a fairer fight.
In the end, individuals’ self-interested pursuit of status leads to the mysterious commonalities of behaviors we interpret as culture.
Status Strategy #1: Perform better against the status criteria—and reveal it in signals. Study hard, go to a prestigious college, get a good job, make money, hone talents, conform to high-status conventions—and signal every improvement along the way.
Also, status through achievement is useful only for an accomplished few. If all achieve the same exceptional feat, it’s no longer exceptional.
Status Strategy #2: Pretend to be high status. Mastery of the signaling process—emulating high-status taste without being a member of an elite—can fool many status appraisers and lead to high-status treatment in a particular setting or moment.
This strategy works well for those with more ambition than talent. But as Vanilla Ice and Anna Delvey learned, there is a spiked pit of low status waiting for those who get caught.
Status Strategy #3: Change the status criteria in your favor. We can gain status by persuading society to value our particular status criteria and beliefs.
Changing the status criteria is never easy, however, and this strategy tends to be most successful for those who already have standing.
Status Strategy #4: Form a new status group. Those fated to low status can leave the main status group to seek comfort in smaller splinter groups.
This strategy works well for providing local status—the main source of self-esteem—but forgoes the most desirable material benefits that come with global status. This is why alternative status groups tend to combine this approach with Status Strategy #3.
In the twentieth century, we saw this play out when individuals fled into subcultures and countercultures that ended up influencing the mainstream status criteria.
Members of socioeconomic classes possess similar status assets, which lead to similar signaling strategies. As these individuals signal the same ways, their behavior becomes conventional to the community, and over time businesses offer specific goods—i.e., cultural artifacts—that cater to their taste. In this process a taste world is formed.
Individuals born into a certain socioeconomic class share a foundational set of unconscious conventions—i.e., the same habitus. This manifests in communal beliefs, concrete lifestyle differences, and distinct taste worlds.
New Money signals through sheer wealth, which turns into an extravagant sensibility based on conspicuous consumption. Old Money signals through quieter codes that emphasize cultural capital.
New Money status symbols thus have very low symbolic complexity: they make sense as signals to everyone, including members of a parvenu’s low-status community of birth.
For the nouveau riche, the disposability of fashion is a feature, not a bug: the constant replacement of goods to obtain the newest fashionable item provides another avenue for conspicuous waste.
The ultimate flaw with conspicuous consumption is that the artifacts (such as yachts, mansions, and luxury brand goods) themselves inevitably become associated with New Money—a group lower in status than Old Money.
Many New Money tastes can often also be judged as incongruent hyperextensions of the lower-class habitus—e.g., SUV limos, cinema-sized TVs, and diamond dog collars.
In advanced economies, however, New Money status claims face serious opposition from other classes—starting with a powerful counteroffensive from the established rich.
Where New Money desires the latest, biggest, and brightest, Old Money seeks to be modest, antiquated, and muted.
This quiet shabbiness among the very richest can appear illogical to the uninitiated, especially New Money individuals. But as we’ll learn, musty Old Money aesthetics are an equally rational signaling strategy as New Money’s money-drenched boasting.
But from the perspective of status integrity, Old Money’s multigenerational wealth is a more reliable predictor of future position. New Money may be a one-generation fluke.
With assets locked up in trusts to sustain their intergenerational wealth, Old Money doesn’t have the same cash flow as newly minted millionaires and billionaires. In a world where wealth alone determines status, New Money would rise to the very top of the hierarchy. Fears of this outcome push Old Money to erect new fences based on taste.
In the place of profligacy, they pursue “Spartan wealth”—austere choices that may seem nonluxurious at first glance. In economics, this technique is called countersignaling. This is not nonsignaling, just “countering” any signals based on raw wealth.
While modesty and functionality explain product choices, their presentation as signals should also have an air of nonchalance. This links to the aristocratic belief that hard work is for inferior classes.
After devaluing conspicuous consumption, Old Money can then introduce more subtle signals based on a rival signaling cost—time. Old Money taste focuses on what the anthropologist Grant McCracken calls “patina,” visual proof of age in possessions.
Patina also encourages archaism, the preferences for antiquated styles over contemporary alternatives. Old Money disdains gadgets, from televisions to jewel-encrusted smartphones.
Until recently an appreciation for high culture was also an important part of Old Money distinction, because deep appreciation of classical music, opera, modern art, and literature was possible only after a long period of formal education and casual exposure.
The Old Money desire for patina also keeps older goods in cultural circulation: inherited artifacts are prized, and antiquated homes are renovated rather than razed.
Old Money aesthetics, then, don’t just operate at the top of society but spur imitation among a much larger audience—specifically, educated middle-class individuals who are also hungry for alternatives to New Money vulgarity.
For all its satire The Yuppie Handbook did identify a legitimate change to the American social structure. From the 1970s onward, ambitious and highly educated professionals in finance, law, medicine, and big business had begun earning much more than their parents.
They are not as rich as New Money, and their cultural capital is learned rather than embodied. But after success in education and corporate life, they have honed their critical thinking and stockpiled an impressive degree of worldly knowledge.
Their most valuable signals, then, are not based on money or time being rich, but the exclusive possession of privileged information. The resulting professional class sensibility thus focuses on intelligent, high-quality, and unusual choices—a strong belief in taste itself.
By competing on taste, they can best rivals in their own ranks, impress Old Money, and embarrass New Money.
Over the last century, once exclusive institutions such as Ivy League universities opened up to meritocratic achievers. There students learned the conventions required to appreciate “difficult” art, literature, films, and music. But they also adopted the leisure culture of elites.
With the number of college students expanding in the mid-twentieth century, this sensibility seeped into middlebrow culture.
Old Money taste also better matched professional-class salaries.
With the economic boom of the 1980s, faux preppies grew up and became worldly yuppies. And at the end of the twentieth century, this group transformed again, into what the columnist David Brooks named Bobos (bourgeois bohemian), a group with taste that merged cosmopolitan yuppie consumerism and modest hippie sensibilities.
To maintain normal status among the upper middle classes, professionals must keep up with the latest trends in music, art, fashion, design, and entertainment, all understood within the context of deep historical knowledge.
Media companies catering to this class create middlebrow entertainment: high-minded yet easily digestible content looking to reward an educated audience through winking references to their acquired knowledge. The greatest example may be The Simpsons, which mixes cartoonish ultraviolence with piquant social satire and passing allusions to Ludwig Wittgenstein.
