Social climbing by lying upwards

From Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update by Rob Henderson. Quillette is really a remarkable and wonderful news magazine. Well-written arguments on topical issues, unconstrained by postmodernist cognitive constipation.

In this article, which is tempting to simply excerpt in toto, Henderson makes the plausible claim that the nonsense of postmodernist thinking in all its varieties, critical race theory, transgenderism, AGW, socially constructed realities, deconstructionism, intersectionality, etc. are the peacock tails of status display.

I was bewildered when I encountered a new social class at Yale four years ago: the luxury belief class. My confusion wasn’t surprising given my unusual background. When I was two years old, my mother was addicted to drugs and my father abandoned us. I grew up in multiple foster homes, was then adopted into a series of broken homes, and then experienced a series of family tragedies. Later, after a few years in the military, I went to Yale on the GI Bill. On campus, I realized that luxury beliefs have become fashionable status symbols. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.

Henderson then goes on to cite research and opinions from a hundred years of sociologists, economists, historians, linguists, etc. to support his position.

When you have such brilliant minds and versatile thinkers as Veblen, Pinker, Murray, Peterson, Sowell, Zahavi, Diamond, Putnam, etc. all making similar points, it goes from a plausible argument to something like a compelling argument.

It is a complex phenomenon and the argument might not be fully correct, but I have long made similar points and am entirely sympathetic. Many if not most of the hot-topic debates of recent years are so divorced from reality that it seems inconceivable that a sane person could be taking the positions they do. It is not an issue of Manichaean morality, or alternate views, or mistaken opinions.

It is a matter of choosing to believe something which is demonstrably untrue and which is manifestly inconsistent with your own behaviors. We have come to a sorry pass when the Mandarin Class and clerisy seek social standing primarily by the lies they knowingly choose to propagate. Lies which are in turn detrimental to those of lesser means and poorer fortune.