What does it mean to be elite? It surely has something to do with rising to the top of a hierarchy. If one can rise to the top of multiple at the same time then that is an elite among elites. There is an added prestige in holding the top position for a long time, and to that end, a fragile victory won by dishonest or dishonorable means will always have glaring weaknesses. Then there is the meta hierarchy that ranks by importance all the other hierarchies.
I believe that in discussing social phenomena the usual grassroots approach is perfectly legitimate and useful. But in the interest of looking at the full picture, let’s hold our noses for a bit about the unpleasant stink that hierarchies have nowadays and actually look at them for once. Every tier in a hierarchy, by definition, must aim at the tier above. Clearly every person is looking to step up their income, wealth, status etc. So one has to wonder, what is the top tier of a hierarchy aiming at? What about the top tier of the meta hierarchy? Knowing the Pareto principle, the disproportionate influence and tendency to stagnate at the top of hierarchies, this question absolutely requires a clear answer.
It is obvious to anyone paying attention that many of the problems in America today, especially related to social dynamics, are fast exported and translated to the rest of the world in the form of its cultural influence. In a real sense, they are also in part caused by outsiders like me in America. As some of you may already know, I come from a Hindu Brahmin family and elitism, good and bad, has been a pertinent subject of discussion for me since childhood. On the other hand, I have spent most of my adult life in America and been lucky enough to have some candid discussions with a few elite people here. So I am about to discuss this subject, in such terms, for my own sake as much as my American counterparts and friends.
In America currently, the elite seem to want to become truly and completely independent and free of all attachments. Perhaps America has become Buddhist in character more than it is Christian, but that is a subject for another time. I have joked before that the American dream, as of now, looks like a gold flaked pile of shit, and I stand by that sentiment until someone can point me to prominent examples of successful people in America that aren’t perpetually miserable and apologetic for existing, if not stuck in a constant drug-fueled haze. However, what my crude analogy does not capture, is the overwhelming desire in Americans to become a real “sovereign” in themselves, not answerable to any person or idea beyond their own free “will”. A will that must never be contradicted in all it’s vagaries and internal inconsistencies. I will address why this is a deeply misguided end goal in a future post. But the ideal that has captured everyone’s imagination right now is essentially to have “fuck you” money, or fame, or status, or increasingly as it becomes harder for us young people to achieve either of those, just a “fuck you” attitude. It is a perfectly convoluted, and highly effective status symbol to not have to care about anything so that you may then virtue signal by caring about only the trendy things.
For the most successful people, and men specifically, the entire goal in life seems to have become to escape the chains of having to care about other people, especially the unproductive, lazy, incompetent and stupid yucky people that just drag you down and ruin your delicious dreams of grandeur and plenty. I obviously enjoy mocking this attitude but at the same time I entirely sympathize with it. It sounds like an ugly impulse to those among you that are particularly agreeable, or just dishonest, until you realize that the “yucky” person that is the most readily hate-able of all is the unproductive, lazy, incompetent and stupid version of your own self; that the successful people are constantly and actively desperately trying to escape that version of themselves first and foremost. There is a revolting, yucky person in all of us that like to LARP as the “elites” and unsurprisingly, we project it onto the supposed average person whenever there is a need to justify our position or status.
As a woman, of course, the disgust and bile comes quite naturally when faced with the dreaded creature currently known as an “incel”. That reek of failure is very difficult to wash off, even after one becomes quite successful. In that, the female “ick” is often much more powerful than the male “yuck”, but they both make you stink of the dreaded failure nonetheless. The “ick” is also another form of projection- it is, in my observation, women projecting their own feelings of sexual inadequacy and insecurity onto men. You will notice that just like the “yuck”, it is entirely instinct based and visceral. But if one takes a moment to actually think about it, people that really have the stink of failure, the “ick” and the “yuck”, to them are always successful in at least some domain- they get noticed and ridiculed specifically because they tried to make the climb up some hierarchy. Otherwise, the usual miseries of life that we are all born in are just too boring to evoke any hate.
While this describes a significant chunk of the population, it is not by far the majority. The actual majority of people have no stink to them, whether they fail or not, they simply go unnoticed. For such people, it is quite easy to get stuck at zero- a lack of drive fueling a lack of opportunity and vice versa. Their successes are never quite so spectacular either but it doesn’t seem to bother them. These are the people that actually run most of the day-to-day functions of a society and happily go unacknowledged for their efforts for the most part. It doesn’t quite matter what tier of any hierarchy such people are at, because they are never a real threat to the rest of us status-seeking imbeciles. And yet we still constantly project our insecurities on them- there is a simple virtue in living a fulfilling life without constant striving that we all seem to have forgotten in the modern world. Even these stink-less people are now subject to all the harsh constraints and rules set by the explicit hierarchies.
Now I am criticizing these attitudes but, to reiterate, I am myself quite guilty of many of the things I have mentioned here. Some of it is my own failing, but I am sure most of you will agree that these are attitudes inherent to the current system that exists in America, as well as all the “Americanized” cultures across the world. It is, therefore, perfectly understandable and relatable to me when people in positions of power and influence would look down on and despise the ones who fail or when they consider any amount of satisfaction in life as failure. I can see that these attitudes are what actually justify the victories and successes nowadays, and I am certainly the kind of person to play to win. So is that it? Perfectly understandable, relatable and justifiable, and therefore justified?
Stepping back and looking at the whole picture again, a few things are quite clear. Without any force, without coercion or any deliberate incentivizing, the values and motivations of the people at the top are translated down through all the tiers of various hierarchies. Perhaps it evokes wildly different reactions in different people but the overall outline of what is, in every sense, is decided by the disproportionate influence of the elites. The actual veracity of it does not matter much within the context of even the meta-hierarchy. It sounds almost evil to articulate but for those who are part of the game, the rules are in a real sense set by the winner.
If you found yourself agreeing with my observations above, you will appreciate the supreme irony in a game that seemingly has the one and only one consistent rule to it- win and don’t lose. A game in which any rules and strategies that help you win are justified by your victory and every rule, but the one about winning, is fungible. Bring checkers pieces to a chess match, bring a baseball bat to play golf with, run your way to the finish in a swimming competition, it doesn’t matter as long as you win and declare your methods legitimate. That is the game we are attempting to play here. It’s no wonder anyone who manages to win is as miserable in the end as the ones who lose- even a child will tell you that the real fun is in actually playing the game, not in winning on any odd terms.
Imagine, for a moment, if the richest person only wants to be even richer, the smartest person only wants to affirm his smartness somehow, and the most competent people among us only want to keep on competing indefinitely. In short, if every hierarchy only exists to justify itself and nothing external or higher than that. All of these hierarchies are then entirely defined by the dynamics between the different tiers of the hierarchy and not by any meta-principle- you can only get ahead as much as others fall behind. The top tier, already highly disproportionately endowed, has every incentive to cheat in such a situation, with the only deterrent being some antiquated and outdated moral code they might adhere to. But even then, it is inherently a zero-sum game, where the only way for anyone to achieve success is to make sure that everyone else fails. The supposed elites in such circumstances would have no reason to wrestle with the primal chaotic forces of the universe to carve out a bigger playground for the rest of us. In fact, in the absence of legitimately earned authority, the positions of power and influence would then fall to the selfish, greedy and corrupt people that, not only refuse any higher principles but are wholly incapable of even conceiving of them. In that lack of higher principles, you would then see every natural hierarchy starting to collapse in on itself, inverting all the values and virtues it contains. Could anyone, however woefully ignorant, not be affected by such a catastrophe? There would then be a general distrust and hatred of any hierarchies at all. If there is no higher aim after all, then down with it! Who even wants to compete, knowing that you are bound to fail and add fuel to the cheaters’ victories?
Does all that sound familiar yet? Or have we conveniently misplaced all of our spines again?
What I am trying to highlight here is that the role and indeed the responsibility of the elite in a society is to properly define the collective higher principles through their actions. That a true and justified elite position is earned precisely by doing so. That it necessarily requires the endorsement and support of majority of the rest of the people. And that, in the end, the role of an elite “class” in a society does not directly concern with wealth, influence, status or power as ultimately all of these are still part of the zero-sum domain. It requires having transcendent values at its core and a long term, adaptable and realistic worldview instead of the memefied one that we are stuck with right now.
I would argue that true elitism necessarily means that you aren’t governed by your instinctual impulses. It is when you have a properly actualized will that is free by its virtue and not by outwardly applied force. It means that you have the capacity and the resources to think things through before you act. And that you are able to resist a stacked pile of positive and negative incentives to adhere to your principles, whatever flavor they may ultimately be. Even Skinner had to starve his animal subjects to train them in operant conditioning. What are our so-called elites so staved of that they must act within their incentive structures, pretending away their agency? The point bears repeating: what should it mean to be truly elite and high status? What are all the trappings of wealth and status worth when there is just an empty husk of a person underneath it all? What is the use of all the posturing when it has no integrity to it? What is all the money, power, status and even the attitude really worth to an invertebrate? What is really elite and high status about someone who, clearly, can easily be cowed into submission with the most simple threat of, even the smallest of defeats? Isn’t it time some of these questions were actually answered?
We don't need to imagine getting pulled off in every which way and not giving a fuck about each other - we live it.
In order to get ahead, we sacrifice our lives to what we do. We become perfectly adapted to it, and nothing else.
Without doubt, Americans have divided themselves into a hierarchy of social status. We have created a caste system. That wasn't supposed to happen (although at least the Southern colonies certainly were organized in such a hierarchy). And it seems that our governmental system has also become a hierarchy, of control.
"Isn’t it time some of these questions were actually answered?" IMHO it's way past time. It might even be too late.