Religion and Inequality - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...s-religion-and-inequality.html
inequality religion cultural values commercial meritocracy success
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This inverse hierarchy took secular form. Proletarian novels and movies made the working class the moral bedrock of the nation. In Frank Capra movies like “Meet John Doe,” the common man is the salt of the earth, while the rich are suspect. It wasn’t as if Americans renounced worldly success (this is America!), but there were rival status hierarchies: the biblical hierarchy, the working man’s hierarchy, the artist’s hierarchy, the intellectual’s hierarchy, all of which questioned success and denounced those who climbed and sold out.
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Over the years, religion has played a less dominant role in public culture. Meanwhile, the rival status hierarchies have fallen away. The meritocratic hierarchy of professional success is pretty much the only one left standing.
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As a result, people are less ambivalent about commerce. We use economic categories, like “human capital” and “opportunity costs,” in a wide range of spheres. People are less worried about what William James called the “moral flabbiness” of the “bitch-goddess success,” and are more likely to use professional standing as a measure of life performance.
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Not long ago, many people covered their affluence with a bohemian patina, but that patina has grown increasingly thin.
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Words like character, which once suggested traits like renunciation that held back success, now denote traits like self-discipline, which enhance it.
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The culture was probably more dynamic when there were competing status hierarchies. When there is one hegemonic hierarchy, as there is today, the successful are less haunted by their own status and the less successful have nowhere to hide.