A Touch of Class

Reading Vance Packard’s The Status Seekers piqued my growing fascination with the human propensity to discriminate by labeling and categorizing almost everything. This process is extremely vulnerable to prejudice, the kind that I probably displayed in yesterday’s post. The whole issue of classism is as relevant in today’s world as it has ever been. The critical need to address its deleterious effects has been sublimely covered-up in our society by the unending propaganda of what a free and democratic country we live in. To be sure, this is true up to a point, but just try telling the CEO of your company that he needs to start driving the same sort of car his employees do, parking in the same area as everybody else…I think you get the idea. Status and prestige are the means by which our culture rewards conformity, even if going along with the crowd lifts up those who “excel” at setting themselves above and apart. I can think of no institution—education, business, religion—that does not separate into classes the not-so-worthy, the worthy, and the more-than-worthy. While it is almost unfathomable to grasp, a classless world is worthy of dreaming about.