Chapter 25: The Psychology of Status Symbols, Dress Codes and Formality - the Enforcement of Stratification
The stratification of the human community is an inevitable result of the Capitalist paradigm.
In a society where all aspects of one’s life are dependent upon one's wealth and socio-economic status, strong reinforcement exists for those high on the economic pyramid to emphasize, display and enforce their "superior" position upon those below them. Beyond that, the same reinforcers motivate all members of the society including those at the bottom to possess and display symbols that to appear to elevate them .
Remember that in such a society doors open or close, respect and access are given or withheld based on both one's perceived and actual wealth and elevation on the pyramid. If you walk into a bank, a store, or even many social settings wearing expensive clothing and jewelry, arrive in an expensive car, and look wealthy, you will be treated much differently than if you walk in wearing cheap clothes, no jewelry and driving an older or less expensive car.
This, of course, gives rise to a host of both legal and illegal parasitical industries manufacturing status-symbol items and a constant barrage of propaganda intended to instill and strengthen the sense of necessity for having them. The fashion industries capitalize on this to ensure that socio-economically mandated items bring in the highest possible price. People have little choice but to buy at least some of these products if they want to get a job and keep it. Often these products are in no way superior in comfort, quality or function to less expensive products; yet the fact that they have what amounts to a captive audience allows vendors to sell them at a premium.
If you peruse job search sites, blogs, books, articles and chat rooms or go to job placement agencies and outreach programs that train and assist job seekers to successfully find jobs, one of several endlessly repeated concepts that you will encounter is "dress for success."
In a socio-economic paradigm where those offering a paycheck are in a superior position to those offering their time, labor, and expertise, the job seeker is perceived and treated as a disposable item. Many a superiorly qualified and motivated applicant is turned away simply on the basis of their appearance: their dress, their car, their hairstyle, age, ethnicity, race, or even current employment status, all of which have no bearing whatsoever on their ability to perform the job in question.
Culturally mandated dress codes are mercilessly enforced in most employment contexts. The "acceptable" attire is almost always more expensive, and often less comfortable, than what many people would choose to wear if left to their own preferences. Employers know this very well, as "dress down days" are used as a reward or morale-booster to give the impression of largesse.
Dress codes are established and enforced by employers and businesses. Employees and/or patrons are economically coerced to purchase expensive clothes and other items. This meshes with, enforces, and reinforces cultural attitudes prevalent in Capitalist cultures, which hold that persons dressed in certain ways are more acceptable and respectable than persons not so dressed.
"Acceptable" attire in a business setting, restaurants and other establishments (such as golf courses, country clubs, many nightclubs, many cultural events and entertainments, and job interviews to name a few) is almost always expensive, acting as a filter to ensure that only those with at least a certain minimum economic status will gain entry.
Business and formal attire are almost always uncomfortable and impractical for any other use: ties for men and high heels for women are two common examples among many in the dominant Euro-American cultures. The definition of formal attire is arbitrary and varies from culture to culture, but the patterns are similar across cultures.
This dynamic places additional financial burdens on those in the weakest financial situations, since such clothing is necessary to gain and keep employment in order to keep eternally paying for permission to go on existing.
Dress codes also have another purpose, most likely unconscious to some degree: they act as a reminder of the dominant position of the employer over the employee. They subtly express that the employer (feudal lord) has the right to tell the employee (serf or peasant) what to wear, when they may eat or go to the bathroom and for how long, and more.
Often such practices contradict common sense: demanding suits and ties even when it is the hottest weather and the employees will not be dealing with the public. Expecting high heals to be worn even though they do long-term skeletomuscular harm to wearers and pose a constant falling risk. You will sweat, suffer and be uncomfortable for no other reason than that your employer says so, if you want to keep your livelihood.
Paradoxically, the CEO in such companies often has the option of being the exception to the rule: he or she may dress as he or she pleases. They are the feudal Lord, the King, above the rules that apply to commoners. Noblesse Oblige.
In a society where "nothing is free," the employer may demand that the employee model for free. Think about it. Modeling is a paid profession; yet a typical employer may demand that the employee dress a certain way while not paying them to do so. Failure to comply will result in termination, no matter how good a worker and employee one is.
It is obviously very important to the employer that the employee comply, yet the employee is not compensated for doing so. However if an employee wants or needs a paid day off to go to their child's wedding or graduation, they must get the employer's permission. If the employer denies the request and the employee takes the day off anyway, the employee will likely have their pay docked, get written up, and possibly be terminated. Here again we see the feudal nature of the employer-employee dynamic. It is most clearly not a mutually-respectful exchange between equals.
In a Capitalist society, all but those high up in the economic pyramid live under perpetual stress and insecurity due to the constant default denial of their right to exist. Against this denial, they must constantly struggle to come up with more money to keep paying for another month of existence.
Offending an employer, failing to meet performance metrics which may be demonstrably unrealistic (such as banking sales metrics that were so unrealistic and unattainable that thousands of Wells Fargo bank employees resorted to fraud just to keep their numbers up to maintain their livelihoods), having a personality conflict with a superior, any random fluctuation in the economy or industry, changes in company organization or leadership, mergers, acquisitions, political changes, revisions to labor laws under pressure of Corporate lobbies, speaking up against unfair or unethical practices by the employer, unionizing, standing up for one's self against abuse by a superior, one's sexual orientation or political views - any of these can put one and one's family out on the street unable to survive in an instant, at any time. Many employment contracts, which must be signed in order to gain employment, require the employee to agree that they can be terminated at any time for any reason or for no reason at all.
In such a society, most individuals experience a high degree of anxiety and insecurity which is so constant and unwavering that they come to perceive it as a normal state of affairs, much as a person with a chronic condition comes to perceive it as normal life.
To make matters more inimical to the well-being of the individual and community, Capitalism gives rise to a plethora of industries that prey upon people’s insecurities by subtly, through skillful advertising (aka propaganda), rubbing salt in their psychic wounds with messages to the effect that "Do you worry that you aren't good enough? Do you worry that you are a loser? Well you should! But if you wear/drive/have/eat/drink/use our products, frequent our establishments - then you will be somebody! Then people will respect you, doors will open and you can finally feel good about yourself, at least until we come out with the next fashion."
These parasitic industries include the fashion industry, the cosmetics, jewelry, and automotive industries, nightclubs and country clubs, restaurants and more. These parasitic industries consciously exploit the insecurities generated by the denial-of-life Capitalist paradigm and deepen them for profit. This is a function that truly harms both individuals and the society as a whole. Yet under Capitalist paradigms it is accepted, encouraged, and enforced.
It is natural for humans to wear shoes and clothing, to carry purses, bags or other portable containers to hold the things they need with them and to adorn themselves as an expression of personal aesthetics. These industries, however, actually distort these natural human activities into harmful, dysfunctional parodies, chaining natural human characteristics to their addiction to profits. Authentic and practical expressions are sublimated into programmed consumption.
Status symbols are less obvious but are still insidious and tremendously damaging to both individuals and the community. Products are conceived, produced, and marketed with great skill - products that have little or no usefulness in and of themselves, other than to project the aura of wealth and high position on the economic pyramid. These items are not damaging or harmful in and of themselves but become instruments of division and contention among segments of the population.
The details of these items vary from culture to culture and time period to time period. In the United States, it is often something as simple as having items with certain brand names on them, which may or may not be superior functionally or aesthetically (a subjective concept personally and culturally) to other brands of similar products. In Japanese culture there are an abundance of socially obligatory objects that people are expected to give to other people under specific circumstances. Failure to do so results in being ostracized.
Status symbols can also take the form of belonging to, or having access to, specific social institutions accessible only to people of certain economic status or higher. In Capitalist societies the word "exclusive" carries the connotation of "above and better than what most people have access to.” Logically and in practice, the concept implies and personifies the elevation of a few and the marginalization and denigration of everybody else.
Of course, secondary parasitical industries spring up that mimic primary parasitical industries capitalizing on people's insecurities: the manufacturers of so-called "knock-offs" - products that look just like status symbol items but are made by companies without permission of the primary manufacturers, using the primary's logos, that are sold for a more affordable price than the "genuine articles."
We must also keep in mind that in the manufacture of both primary and secondary status symbols, the persons performing the actual production are typically paid among the lowest wages on the pyramid in their respective societies and subjected to unsafe, unhealthy working conditions. The people who profit from this situation are not the ones doing the actual work but the ones who possess the paperwork that defines them as the owners of the enterprise.
A variation of the status symbol psycho-social dynamics is seen in the United States every year during the last two months before Christmas. Every year, a new toy or gadget is advertised, promoted, and publicized in a well-established manipulative format that generates an almost frantic sensation of need for this year’s “hot item” – most powerfully manifested among children and adolescents, and therefore enlisting the cooperation of their parents, but also among adults to no small degree. By the time these items reach the shelves of stores and malls, millions of people are on the edge of obsession to get them. The event is announced with fanfare akin to that usually reserved for returning heroes or food and supplies being delivered in the wake of a natural disaster. Stores open at midnight or in the wee hours of the morning. Long lines of people arrive hours before the event and camp out to maximize their chances of being one of the lucky few to actually get one. Neither rain, snow, wind, nor long drives can deter these people once the conditioned responses are set in motion. Manufacturers and retailers make sure that the supply is limited, driving the shoppers’ urgency to a fevered pitch. Prices are always dramatically higher than the same item would ever go for under any other circumstances. Once the doors open, there are often stampedes, fist fights, people trampled, and all manner of verbal nastiness as ordinarily peaceful people react as though these items were medicine in a plague epidemic. The closer it gets to Christmas, the higher the prices go. Supply stays intermittent and always insufficient to the demand, triggering people to become even more frantic. The news carries stories of people who, in desperation, bought the $300 item that’s really worth $25 on eBay for $1,600. Then the next summer, these same items can be found at garage sales for under $5. This manipulation is so well perfected that it works well year after year, even among intelligent, educated people.
Yet it is a mistake to oversimplistically identify the people who perpetrate these manipulations and "go after" them. They are simply responding to the reinforcers of the Capitalist paradigm that is functioning as designed. The problem is the game more than the players. In a game in which brutality or treachery brings success and rewards, we cannot just blame the players for how they play the game. We need to re-examine the game itself and either change it or end it and replace it with a game that does not reinforce brutality or treachery.
Status symbols also serve to reinforce the division and stratification of individuals by setting them in competition with each other to attain the appearance, if not the substance, of ascent up the economic pyramid. One who drives a new-looking Mercedes feels entitled to belittle and look down upon someone who drives a beat-up looking Kia. A person wearing gold and diamond jewelry feels entitled to belittle and look down upon someone who cannot afford such things. The person traveling with a Louis Vuitton suitcase feels entitled to look down upon and belittle someone traveling with a suitcase from Walmart. A person who lives in Beverly Hills feels entitled to look down upon and belittle someone who lives in the Bronx. It is a way of reminding everybody who has "made it" and who is "a loser."
The existence of status symbols is a symptom of a diseased, stratified, divided, conflicted and dysfunctional society. There is no place for status symbols, or for the concepts and constructs that give rise to them and give them meaning, in a truly free, democratic, symbiotic, empowered Community of free, empowered, individuals. In the post-Transition society, there will be no socio-economic or cultural framework to support the concepts of which status symbols are an expression.
In a culture where there are no haves and have-nots, no pyramid, no hierarchy, no concept of status above or below one another, there will be no such thing as status or status symbols. Clothing, shoes, adornment, transportation, social gatherings and so forth will become spontaneous authentic expressions of individual and/or shared aesthetics, tastes, interests, and preferences and will unite people rather than divide and stratify them.
In the absence of artificially-imposed pressures driving such things, people will be truly free to express, clothe and adorn themselves as individuals in a community that not only tolerates but actively appreciates the contributions and expressions of each individual. A diamond will become one among many pretty minerals to be appreciated. A car will be a car; a shirt will be a shirt; a purse will be a purse - no more, no less.
In post-Transition cultures freed of the artificially forced frenzy of overproduction/overconsumption of goods and services stratified into high quality expensive versus cheap low quality, all products and services will be the best that can be practically produced/provided and will be equally available to all who desire or need them.
There will truly be no “losers” in the new paradigm, though those who had been accustomed to being at the top of the pyramid and who suffer from the kind of deep-seated insecurity that made them feel the need to dominate and position themselves over other people will, like any addict, feel that they are losing something. Yet in the new Paradigm, these addicts (former CEO’s, billionaires, power-brokers and the like) will receive the same compassionate, non-judgmental treatment, rehabilitation and support systems available to them for free, as any alcoholic, gambling, video game, or drug addict.
Instead of being enabled in their disability and untreated, these people will be diagnosed and have treatment available to them, which will benefit them as well as all other individuals in the Community. No reasonably compassionate person would bring drink to an alcoholic or help a junkie score from their dealer; so why should we place a money-and-power addict in a position to be at the mercy of their addiction and cheer them on in their indulgence of it? Both a junkie and a billionaire will commit criminal and harmful acts as a result of their addiction, which is ultimately self-destructive. We need not to judge people suffering from these conditions and equally not to encourage them to persist in living at the mercy and control of their condition while hurting others as a result.