The Folly of Status

I own a Timex Ironman watch. I have lost count of the number of these watches I have owned, but I have been getting this particular model for between $30 and $40 at Walmart for the last 20 years. It tells time, has an alarm function, a stop watch, and stores split times if you like to run. It is a great watch. It is so great that if I were to win the lottery, invest in the next Google, sign a lucrative publishing deal, and inherit the fortune of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, and George Soros combined, I would still buy and wear those Timex watches. I will never buy and wear a Rolex. Why? Because it is a dumb watch. Most of them don't have the same functionality nor precision of the Timex. Plus, the shit costs more than I take home in a year currently. The only reason shitheads buy Rolex watches is to impress people. I find this incredibly stupid.

People spend a lot of money on status. They buy fancy shit to impress people they don't like. This is wasteful but no big deal to me. I would never buy a Rolex, but I would never hesitate to sell one either. The customer is always right. It is their money, and they can do as they please with it. But the material waste pales in comparison to the psychological waste of the purchase. It is the mental aspect as opposed to the material aspect that I want to focus on.

Materially, we live in wonderful times. Today, the poor in the USA and much of the Western world enjoy a lifestyle and luxuries that royalty could only dream about a century ago. Cellphones were once considered a toy of the rich, and they really sucked back when they first come out. Now, you can go to a third world shithole and see a guy shitting on a bucket while yammering on his cellphone. Even the difference between a working class person and a CEO is purely quantitative today. The working class guy works fewer hours and goes home to enjoy many of the same activities the rich CEO does--watching TV, drinking a beer, or playing golf on the weekends. Hell, the CEO probably has less time to enjoy these things and spends most of his free time tapping on his Blackberry. No matter how you slice it, material comparisons in today's world of affluence and abundance are ludicrous. In order to show off one's material worth, you have to go out and buy ridiculous shit like the Rolex watch.

Status in these times is almost purely a mental game. People pay extra for lifestyle brands which are little more than the same consumer item that the masses enjoy but with a different nameplate. Expensive cosmetics are nothing more than generic cosmetics with better marketing. These products often come from the same exact factory. Luxury automobiles like the Lexus are really just fancy Toyotas. Often, the brand name products are inferior to the products the masses wear. I've never seen a designer jean that was better than a pair of Levi's. I've never seen many that were worse. And if you pay for jeans that already have the holes in them, this is just fucking stupid. How can anyone live solely to affect the impressions in other people's minds?

As Alain de Botton put it, "We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us." So many people expend vast amounts of labor, money, and time to acquire things that aren't that great purely for the sake of impressing other people. This obsession is a sickness. This status consciousness drives people to do things that are fundamentally irrational. This is the reason so many college students rack up student loan debts they can't pay off. They want the status that piece of paper affords. Leftards lament the inequality in today's society, but it isn't a material inequality as I've already shown. It is purely a social inequality. It isn't about elevating the poor so much as punishing the rich. On all sides whether it is snobbery or envy, the whole affair is one colossal fucking joke. You have people flaunting their status. You have others slaving to get status. Then, you have others who hate the status holders because they have the status they covet.

I have the remedies for this status sickness. Here they are:

1. There is always someone better than you.

I was having a convo with my brother, and I asked him what the best school in the state was. He said his own alma mater which made me laugh. I don't think either of us went to the best school. For the sake of argument, I chose Clemson since I think it is better than any school in the state for left brain stuff like engineering and comp sci. Imagine a valedictorian high school graduate with a perfect SAT score who gets a full scholarship to Clemson. He graduates with a 4.0 in a field like electrical engineering. The Clemson grad feels pretty proud of himself and gets a great job somewhere. Then, he runs into a guy at a cocktail party making twice what he makes who attended MIT. Hearing that he attended Clemson, the MIT grad sneers at the Clemson grad for not going to a "real school." Now, I think this kind of snobbery is ridiculous. But I would also think it is ridiculous if our Clemson grad looked back on his life and considered himself a failure because he chose to attend Clemson. But the fact is that we encounter these scenarios all the time. Our MIT grad probably gets blasted because he graduated fifth in his class instead of first. The fact is that there is always someone out there better than you. Even then, this is relative to your area of expertise and genetic gifts. Our MIT grad probably has a small penis and can't do a single push up.

2. Nobody else really gives a shit.

The other thing you will find is that when you gain supremacy in a particular area, everyone else immediately quits caring. If you beat a rival, he or she might care a bit. But no one else gives it another thought. I can tell you that I never lie awake at night lamenting that I never got a Super Bowl ring. I might feel differently if I played football, but I didn't. Most of the time, status is between peers. This could be between siblings, coworkers, fathers and sons, friends, classmates, and the like. People measure themselves against others they consider in the same category. Beyond that, none of us cares. The easiest way to overcome feelings of envy or inferiority is to stop having friends. When you stop caring about other people, you also stop caring what other people think about you. Of course, being a hermit sucks, so the next best alternative is to be an iconoclastic renegade. This way you can be your own person but also have people in your life.



3. You can never go wrong with being humble.

Walmart founder Sam Walton was the richest man in the world before he died. Yet, he continued to drive his 1979 Ford F-150 pick up truck. Now, some yuppie driving a beamer might have sneered at Walton thinking he was just some old redneck at the wheel of that truck. But what Walton drove didn't matter. He was who he was. Being humble did not detract from who he was. When you are humble, people are pleasantly surprised to find out the things about you. Contrast this with people who spend lavishly on luxury brands they can't afford. The fact is that great people become greater because of their humility. Not-so-great people are seen as vain and foolish for trying to bullshit people. Humble people are not into status. They don't care. They do neither snobbery nor envy.



The ultimate antidote to the status sickness is individualism. I have a lot of heroes who I write about on my blog. Some are rich like Gene Simmons. Others are dirt poor like Anton Krupicka. But they all have one thing in common. All my heroes are individualists. They do not stand above or below. They stand apart. They go down their own path. They do their own thing. They feel neither superior nor inferior to anyone else. They do what makes them happy. A true individualist revels in his or her experiences and personal achievements without looking down on others or feeling envious of those who do well. Status is the disease of the collective. It is wanting to be the alpha of the herd. I'm sorry, but I think we are better than cattle.

I am someone who has had an interesting relationship with status. Being a loner and a outcast in high school made me think differently and see things from an outsider viewpoint. I think I was the only kid in my school who took both college prep courses and industrial welding. I had money to spend, but it came from helping my old man clean out septic tanks. I remember being at a classmate's house who lived in a better neighborhood than me and listening to his parents bicker about making the house payment that month. They ended up borrowing money from their kids to do it. My old man may have been a septic tank cleaner, but he never hit me up for a loan. I learned that these people were what my dad called "dollar millionaires." They struggled to maintain a status they could not afford.

I consider that high school experience to be a blessing to me. I wouldn't change it for anything. Because of that time, I learned the real value of status which was zero. I learned to think and to live for myself. I have found living a frugal lifestyle very easy to bear since I don't care about status. I tend to admire people for their skills and their work ethic than for their brand of jeans or their address. And I am a very poor ass kisser. I don't care about titles, degrees, or any of that shit. I also toss out certificates of achievement and never accept compliments or gratitude. The only time I feel pride is when I set a goal for myself and achieve it. This lasts about five minutes. I am the only critic that counts to me. The only other criticism I value is the negative comments I get from others. If they sting, it spurs me to do better. If I know I've done my best, I am off the hook. We all have our limitations. In the end, I am a nobody and a loser. This acceptance brings me freedom and strength. A good guy can strive and hold high his trophy. A great man strives, earns the trophy, and promptly tosses it in the garbage. The reward is in the striving.

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NOTES

1. Rolex Versus Timex

2. Status Anxiety

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