Chapter 25: The Psychology of Status Symbols, Dress Codes and Formality - the Enforcement of Stratification

The dominant modern economic feudalism creates stratification and disparity by its very nature. In these societies, where our place on the economic pyramid defines our options, degree of freedom and respect that we’re afforded, quality of life and access to resources. There is strong reinforcement for people to display and enforce their rank upon those below them in the hierarchy, right on up to the modern feudal lords at the top, who go to great lengths to assert, display and enforce their power and status above all others. Doors usually open or shut based on our perceived economic status. Enter the existence of status symbols, formal and cultural dress codes, and the cultural attitudes to enforce them. Status symbols are easily affordable only to the wealthy. To most of us they are out of reach. This generates parasitic industries, both legal and illegal, that produce and sell these items. Often status symbols are in no way superior to ordinary products; their only purpose, is to display, or appear to display, one’s socio-economic rank. Feudal lords display their status ostentatiously. Peasants and serfs try to afford knock-offs in order to increase their chances of being treated with respect. Getting and keeping a job can be seriously impacted. The socio-economic hierarchy imposes dress codes and status symbols upon the rest of us, reinforced by advertising (propaganda) that reinforces the sense of “need” for such items. The culture indoctrinates us with beliefs such as the need to “dress for success” and belief that “the clothes make the man.” In practice, “better dressed” applicants are much more likely to get a job or promotion than a less “better dressed” person, often regardless of their relative abilities, knowledge, skill, and attitude. Keep in mind that in this socio-economic paradigm, the employer is in a privileged position relative to the applicant or employee. To the wealthy and ultra-wealthy feudal lords, we are as disposable as paper clips or laser printer cartridges. To us, our jobs are often the only thing that stands between us and homelessness. “Business-acceptable” attire is generally a lot more expensive (and less comfortable) than “casual” clothes. Employers usually require it, forcing underpaid serfs and peasants working for them to spend critically more of their sub-living wages on the arbitrarily-dictated wardrobe. The same goes for many public venues such as courthouses, many entertainment venues and clubs, and even some schools. Buying such attire is effortless for the wealthy, but a huge stretch, if possible at all, for most of us. Perhaps we are expected to be grateful that we aren’t branded like cattle? Such clothing is usually uncomfortable, useless and impractical, such as men’s ties and women’s high heels. What constitutes status symbols varies from culture to culture; but they all have these things in common. Such requirements often fly in the face of common sense, such as requiring employees to wear suits and ties in hot summer weather, and requiring women to wear high heels which are harmful for their feet, legs and spines. Such dynamics also serve to constantly remind employees of their serf-like status in which the employer, and ultimately the CEO of the company, reserves the right to tell us how to dress, when we can go to the bathroom, and more. Yet many CEO’s reserve the right to wear comfortable, informal clothing that others would be fired for wearing. The rules don’t apply to the modern feudal lords. Functionally no different from Medieval feudalism. In such societies, “nothing is free,” and yet employers in effect are allowed to demand that employees model for no extra pay, even though modeling is a well-paid profession. Here again we see the intensely feudalistic truth of this paradigm: the employer is allowed to do demand more of the employee than what they actually pay them for; yet the employee given little flexibility or leeway, and even for serious medical, dental, or familial issues, employees must get permission from their boss to take time off, which often will be unpaid. Remember that these societies, by default, deny our right to access what we need in order to pursue our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We must keep coming up with currency in order to ransom ourselves from that denial. Losing a job is usually a big deal. We don’t dare offend our employers or fail to meet their demands and expectations. Keep in mind the recent scandal in which Wells Fargo bank placed such unrealistic sales expectations on employees, with so little tolerance of failure to meet metrics, that thousands of employees found it necessary to open fraudulent accounts, just to keep their jobs. In the current socio-economic climate in much of the world, we can lose our jobs due to a personality conflict, misunderstanding, rumor, quota, or even a disagreement with our employer over politics, religion, or lifestyle. As a result of all of the above, most of us live under an unrelenting burden of arbitrary stress, which we “accept” as “normal” because we don’t know anything else. To make things worse, the fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, luxury car, exclusive club and other industries systematically pray upon our stress and insecurities, skillfully manipulating a predictable percent of the population into feeling the “need” to frequently buy more fashion items. Fashions are deliberately changed at an ever-accelerating pace, feeding this vicious cycle. This is considered acceptable in modern feudalistic societies. While it’s natural for us to wear clothes and shoes and adorn ourselves, this natural side of our nature is shackled and exploited to support and engorge these parasitic industries and the modern feudal lords at the top of the pyramid. Our spontaneous, authentic adornment behaviors are overridden and manipulated into programmed, dysfunctional consumerism. While clothes, shoes, purses, wallets and the like serve actual functions, many status symbols serve no real purpose whatsoever, other than as badges of status, like rank markings on a military uniform. Different cultures have different status symbols and socio-economically obligatory objects, but the dynamics are the same. Often these items are socially mandatory and culturally enforced. Venues can also be status symbols. The more “exclusive” a club or other venue, the more of us are excluded. Here again, socio-economic stratification is thus enforced, glorified, and prominently emphasized for all to see and never forget. Both primary (“genuine article”) and secondary (knock-off) parasitic industries arise to supply status symbols to the wealthy who can afford the former and to the rest of us in the less-expensive form of the latter. The goal is to display, or display the illusion of, wealth. As in most industries under this paradigm, the people employed to actually make such useless, high-priced items are themselves paid sub-living wages and often work in sweatshops. In the United States, every year at Christmas season, a few items are marketed and advertised in a way that activates a conditioned response in a large percentage of consumers, triggering an urgent sense of “need” for these items. Usually these are toys, where marketing skillfully targets children who obligingly pressure their parents to buy this year’s hot item. A predictable percentage of parents will comply. Who doesn’t want their child to be happy? To intensify the pressure, these items are deliberately kept in short supply with prices inflated as high as manufacturer strategists think they can inflate them for maximum profits. Media dramatize the “shortage,” and people go to heroic lengths to get this hears “gotta have” items. People even come to blows in store aisles over the last few in stock. We must keep in mind, however, that this behavior is exactly what the paradigm reinforces. The perpetrators of these manipulations are merely playing the “game” the way it’s designed to be played, and excelling at it. We have collectively enabled such destructive behaviors, by ourselves continuing to play the same game in our own way, thus perpetuating the paradigm and allowing it to continue disempowering us. We must not attack the perpetrators, but rather forcibly and compassionately change the paradigm, change the game from the ground up. Cultural attitudes deepen, exacerbate and intensify the stratification. Those who have the status symbols of wealth and power are lionized, emulated, and held up as success stories and role models. Those who don’t have them are despised, mocked, shunned, and judged as “losers” and inferior, regardless of their actual impact on those around them for better or worse. The very existence of status symbols is symptomatic of a severely diseased, unhealthy, dysfunctional society. In the truly free, democratic and empowering society after the Transition to the new paradigm, status symbols will cease to serve any function in the absence of any status or rank to display. Bereft of any cultural function or reinforcement, today’s status symbols will become pieces of tomorrow’s miscellany. We will return to our own spontaneous, authentic expressions of adornment and aesthetics, as mutually-respecting peers and partners in our communities, free of hierarchy, rank, caste and status. Our aesthetics will unite, rather than divide us at long last. In the new paradigm, there will be no self-devouring cycle of forced overproduction and overconsumption of goods and services stratified into low-end, mid-range and high-end versions. All goods and services will be of the best quality that the state of the art allows and freely available to all. Enough will be produced to supply real rather than artificially programmed needs. In the coming win-win-win-win paradigm, there will be winners but no losers. Most of the current modern feudal lords will feel like they’re losing out, being treated unfairly, just as any addict (which they are) feels when deprived of the object of their addiction. They will lose their power, privilege, and status; but they will not lose their homes, cars, clothes or quality of life. They will lose any properties and resources that they aren’t directly using, such as investment properties. They will be treated with respect and compassion by all of us, with firmness and compassion: unable to lord it over others but discovering that in exchange for losing the obedience of subordinates and lionized status, they will receive true human respect for who they are as individuals, not for any position, power or status. If they find the adjustment hard, they will have the same therapeutic support systems as the rest of us. We wouldn’t encourage and enable a loved-one to indulge a destructive addiction. If all else failed, we’d stage in intervention to get them treatment. The time has come to do the same for the modern feudal oligarchs and their addiction to their status and all that comes with it. Continuing to play the game as we’ve been playing it, hurts both us modern serfs and peasants, and the addicts at the top of the economic pyramid.