Elite

It’s an American tendency, or perhaps unrequitable ideal, to forgo class distinctions. Even if the oligarchy blackmailing majority of the political faces never would.

There was a study done to illustrate — despite the shine of many Individuals everywhere — that your destination most likely comes from your starting point. The amount of “social laddering” one could imagine is the minute exception, never the rule.

Of course one could argue a rise in quality of living, living like kings, fruits of any season, hot showers twice an evening: there’s a “tide” to rise. But in terms of individual leaping, very rare. Very rare.

Societies everywhere else understand this perhaps through simple observation. The farmer’s son becomes the farmer’s heir, and the farming legacy continues. Same for the banker, baker. News columnist, perhaps. Lines of journalists passing their media empires. Through consistent and honest observation, one uses this convenient heuristic the same as one’s Amazon reviews: Good background, good future. You are where you come from. You are your blood.

Note: though this is the heuristic I’m not at all implying one still can’t move up. It’s just not that common as one may think.

You are, most often than not, your social bracket. Do you know yours?

And though I may be graced with the hospitality of those in far higher brackets than me, so sometimes even I forget this distinction and, as the conversation continues and holes start to pop — between international travels or boarding schools, connections for a night — it always leaves a shock. These people live in different worlds. I wonder how their neuroticism shows. I wonder why I never hear anything from them, I wonder why they hide in these shadows when they have the education and intelligence otherwise to carve out something.

On these rare chances where I am reminded of these distinctions, so three questions could arise. First, am I doomed? Second, who else is doomed? Finally, how can I escape, or do I even want to, or do I even have a choice?

Following the above study, it may be unlikely. Even if one gets the modern lucrative white collar job so coveted, it doesn’t come with the 關係 to flourish your part of the social strata, whether through marriages or gatherings to attend, more business deals, well, maybe not, being a worker is alright, maybe. Maybe it comes with something.

And following the above study, most of the people I interact with are also likely sentenced to their beginnings. For those who will rise higher, why would they let themselves be dragged down by their prior equals yet no longer? If we can’t hear what the best and brightest of America have to say, isn’t that already the damning reality: there is nothing to say. You can only figure it out yourself.

I’m not sure if escape makes sense. To escape one’s fate, to attempt “climbing up”. Though as one gains, so one may also lose in soul. Maybe it does depending on your disposition. I’m often reminded of Eyes Wide Shut. Once you get past a certain bracket, you have long since shedded what motivates a majority of people and the only thing you understand is power. In some ways, it is preferable to chug along without dealing with the pressures and heartlessness, constant reminders of hierarchies.

I guess I wrote all of this because it stabs at the heart of our American ideal: you are your ideas and values, and you can rise, we’re all equal under God. Join your fellow man and figure it out. But are we just misleading one another bathing in mud with a pinkie held high?