How the left codes the culture war as low-class

Looking out on the cultural wasteland that surrounds us, it can be difficult for many to understand how we arrived at our current moment. Gender ideology is pushed on kindergarteners, sex changes are pushed on teenagers, riots receive the sanction of the government, borders are wide open to human traffickers, and homeless encampments filled with drug users have become a regular feature of major American cities.

While centrists and moderate liberals often express their amazement at what they see as the sudden and radical decline in the quality of American life, they should realize that they were warned about the inevitable consequences they are currently witnessing. For decades cultural conservatives sounded the alarm about the disastrous direction the nation would take if it abandoned its moral and cultural traditions, but those warnings fell on deaf ears. Cultural tastemakers assured the population that they were too sophisticated to be bound by the small-minded and primitive mores of their social inferiors, and now the cost is coming due.

Status signaling is a very powerful tool. People naturally want to be seen as interesting, desirable, sophisticated, and worthy of respect. No one wants to be seen as simple, foolish, or low-class. Individuals instinctually look to those at the top of the social hierarchy to understand what their society perceives as upper-class, what is worthy of emulation. Despite what our trite cultural propaganda tells you, most people are not unique and delicate snowflakes who generate their own perceptions of social value a priori. Instead, they look to those who have achieved higher social standing, assume that those individuals know something the average person does not, and adjust their behavior accordingly.

This is not to insult or belittle anyone for this behavior; it is a natural and easily observable pattern that everyone falls into, myself included. There is no virtue in denying the truth of human behavior, and by being honest about these facts we can gain a greater understand about how we arrived at our current state of cultural decline.

Traditions are the avenue through which societies transmit their collective knowledge. Lessons that were learned at great cost by our ancestors are encoded deep in our psyches through moral values, rituals, and taboos. This social continuity, this great chain of being, is one of the key things that binds a group together and makes them a cohesive people or nation. It is what grants us identity, purpose, and a sense of belonging.

If you want to fundamentally transform a society to grant you or your group more power, one of the most effective things you can do is work to alter the underlying traditions and morals of that society, but achieving this is harder than it sounds. These truths are usually deeply ingrained in the fabric of a society. They are woven at every level into the day-to-day existence of the average person. These traditions inform family formation, religious observance, workplace interactions, artistic pursuits, and even casual entertainment. The project of replacing those values must alter the moral framework that guides the lives of members of that civilization, and the best way to do that is to hijack the system of social signaling.

As we established previously, most people will look to those above them in the social hierarchy to understand what behaviors are rewarded by their culture. For much of human history, however, the common people did not regularly interact with the cultural elites of their society. Aristocrats might seek to lead by example, but there was no way for them to constantly influence the day-to-day perceptions and interactions of the average person.

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