{"id":73385,"date":"2024-04-16T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=73385"},"modified":"2024-04-12T22:13:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T02:13:26","slug":"beliefs-as-status-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/04\/beliefs-as-status-symbols\/","title":{"rendered":"Beliefs as Status Symbols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in 1934, the pioneering sociologist Thorsten Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class<\/a>, which gave us the term \u201cconspicuous consumption,\u201d the notion that people proclaim their wealth and thus their social status to the world by means of the luxury products they buy and show off.\u00a0 (For example, Porsches, Gucci, and Rolex.)\u00a0 Furthermore, people who aren\u2019t all that wealthy but who want to be perceived as having a higher social status are often even more obsessed with conspicuous consumption, as in the ever-changing must-have brands of teenage fashion.)<\/p>\n

Veblen also wrote about \u201cconspicuous leisure,\u201d by which people advertise their social status by displaying their luxurious hobbies and vacations.\u00a0 (Again, not-so-wealthy people play the same game.\u00a0 Just read people\u2019s T-shirts.)<\/p>\n

\n

To that list of status accessories we can now add \u201cluxury beliefs.\u201d\u00a0 That term comes from Rob Henderson, whose bestselling book\u00a0Troubled:\u00a0 A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class<\/a>\u00a0 tells of his growing up in poverty and a highly dysfunctional family, how the military helped him get his act together, and how he got accepted into Yale, ushering him into a completely different social scene.<\/p>\n

Henderson says that today, people signal their social status and the elites recognize who truly belongs by means of \u201cluxury beliefs.\u201d\u00a0 (See my post<\/a> on his concept from a few years ago.)\u00a0 Part of his cognitive dissonance was that his new elite friends held to ideas that they themselves did not put into practice, beliefs whose consequences he did experience firsthand in his lower-class misery. Samuel Negus<\/a> explains in a review of Henderson\u2019s book (my bolds):<\/p>\n

Henderson\u00a0has coined<\/a>\u00a0the term \u201cluxury beliefs\u201d for the nexus of elite opinions he encountered at these institutions. The concept is transposed from sociologist Thorstein Veblen\u2019s theory that elite classes advertise their status by conspicuous displays of luxury goods. Henderson found that his instructors and fellow students professed adherence to many destructively contradictory ideas. Either his peers did not follow these professions in practice, or, if they did, the consequences fell principally on those of a lower class. Examples included drug legalization, defunding the police, and eschewing marriage. In Henderson\u2019s impoverished, high-crime, drug-ravaged community, all his friends\u2019 parents were divorced (if they had ever married at all). His Yale classmates came from intact households in expensive, low-crime zip codes.<\/strong> As he pointedly notes, \u201cGraduate students at top universities say \u2018marriage is just a piece of paper\u2019 [but] I never heard them ridicule a college degree\u201d in the same terms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Holding high-minded ideals, though, is a status symbol, with the elite seemingly oblivious to the consequences.\u00a0 \u201cHenderson\u2019s comments on race-conscious admissions are particularly poignant,\u201d says Negus:<\/p>\n

Elite colleges\u2019 commitment to \u201cdiversity\u201d in their student bodies represents what Henderson terms \u201ctrickle-down meritocracy.\u201d Selective institutions \u201cstrip-mine talented people,\u201d assuming that \u201csomehow the advantages they accrue will\u201d benefit their old neighborhoods. Instead, most \u201crelocate to a handful of cities where they live alongside their highly educated peers, eroding their bonds of solidarity with those they left behind.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now connect this elite class consciousness to the book White Rural Rage<\/em><\/a> that we blogged about and to the way the Democratic party has abandoned its working class roots<\/a> for upper class progress.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that the progressive beliefs of this social class and those who aspire to it are not sincerely held.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that there is considerable peer pressure to hold to them.\u00a0 See, for example, yesterday\u2019s post about women who are privately conservative often hiding their convictions for social reasons.<\/p>\n

I admit that this can go the other way also.\u00a0\u00a0There is peer pressure in the working class to be politically conservative, though such beliefs might interfere with upward mobility.\u00a0 And, of course, there are some conservatives by conviction in the upper crust, just as there are still some leftists among the proletariat.\u00a0 (Notice the irony of that sentence and the role reversal of the social classes since Marxism came apart.)\u00a0 The point is, our beliefs have a social component, which is one of the many reasons why Christians need the community of the church.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo by Steve.fami.ly \u2013 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=95583843<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Conspicuous consumption” is the use of luxury possessions to signal to one and all your high social status. 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