Seems to fit nicely.
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.
...And yet, he observes, this isn’t enough for them. 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.
Well worth reading.
2 comments:
This makes populist contempt fore elite behavior and mores look like a survival strategy. If the elite like polyamory, embrace monogamy if a work ethic is "whiteness", double le down and pocket the money you make.
It reminds me of a scene from the movie cold mountain. In it the female lead (played by Nicole Kidman) is lamenting how she was an upper class woman that was taught all kinds of useless information, like types of flowers in France that she has never seen except in books. But that something like being able to grow, procure, or prepare her own food is something beneath a woman of her breeding. It would be scandalous for her to know things that would be useful during, and after the civil war. I see the same mentality repeating itself now too.
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