Scott Locklin discusses the moral codpiece as status marker:
In 21st-century America, life is soft enough that our over-educated upper-middle classes are able to do away with moral codes that serve a purpose, and adopt more byzantine ones which demonstrate their freedom from concern. I see this as a form of conspicuous consumption, a status marker for viewing themselves above the lower orders. A hundred years ago, wealthy men who were above the concerns of the peasantry would sprout preposterous top hats and hire a servant. Fifty years ago, if you had a job among the gentle people, you’d wear a nice suit. Nowadays, that sort of “I have arrived” directness is seen as gauche; membership in “polite” society is reserved for people who display the proper contempt for reality in manner and folkway. After all, if “you have arrived,” you need not believe in those outdated things the lower orders believe in by necessity. Flouting ancient moral codes is the postmodern version of the proverbial rich guy lighting cigars with $20 bills.But this also means it’s not quite clear to arrivistes what the correct morals and folkways to believe in are exactly.
The moral codpiece as status marker certainly was confusing for me. I am, after all, a mere bumpkin from a suburb of a military base. The morality of my hometown taught me that personal bravery is a moral virtue and pacifism or cowardice is foolishness. My hometown taught me that sexual morality was better than personal decadence, that thrift, self-reliance, honesty, patriotism, and industry were better than debt, sponging off others, ideology, political correctness, and consumerism. And in my day, we didn’t have Christian Lander’s webpage to tell us how to behave. The main status marker I was able to discern about the higher social class was they feel entitled to cross the street into moving traffic, like important people do in college towns. This proved to be a helpful sort of Rosetta Stone for me. Looking both ways before you cross the street is a sort of basic moral teaching about the laws of physics — thanks mom! Denial of these laws proves you are an important person above concern. While crossing the street into moving traffic is a violation of moral law with potentially immediate consequences, the same principle can be applied to moral law that operates on a longer time scale. The most fashionable ways of doing things consists of denying basic strategies for survival. Armed with this basic piece of information, one is able to derive all the other moral laws the gentle classes use to distinguish themselves from pipe fitters.
When human beings decided to build complex societies in the agricultural age, priesthoods arose to codify and pass on moral culture to the populace at large. In modern America, that priesthood consists of what you learn in graduate school and the New York Times editorial page. Higher education is the ultimate status marker with a certain class of people these days. The idea that “brains” will make a better world is deeply ingrained. The problem, of course, with higher education is that it is a world removed from consequence. You can believe any fool thing you like if you’re an academic. In modern Academia, you’re more likely to be rewarded if you say something completely silly. This sort of status climbing by moral absurdity probably originated in the status insecurity of post WW-II academia. How do you distinguish yourself from the older, more cultured guy in the cube next to you once you have tenure? You most likely can’t compete with him on an intellectual level, so it’s best to count coup on his moral enlightenment — and the more removed your belief system is from reality, common sense, and tradition, the better. Mencken meant something a little different when he referred to the “booboisie.” But his term fits the status-seeking moral codpiece class better than any other large group of people in America today. What else can you call someone who distinguishes himself from the Lumpenproletariat by crossing the road into traffic?
The modern booboisie belief system is presently self-reinforcing, in that it creates social problems that booboisie experts will claim to have solutions for. Once the booboisie did away with traditional sexual morality and gender roles, for example, it created a need for an entire class of jobs and expertise. Legions of social workers, professional feminists, jailers, policemen, doctors, and psychologists are now needed to deal with the consequences of the sensible, ancient moral imprecations against passing yourself around like a tray of tea biscuits. People who espouse such things gain status with their moral codpiece people, and they gain status in training legions of lesser experts needed to deal with this sort of idiocy. Once the booboisie did away with the sensible puritan values of thrift and self-control, thus cementing their place among the anointed cool ones, legions of financial engineers, social workers, debt counselors, lawyers, and other professionals become necessary to deal with the national consequences of acting foolishly. Once the ancient god of “Terminus” is slain, vast multitudes of “diversity instructors,” policemen, court translators, and other such professional trouble-making trouble-fixers become necessary. Training such people is probably pleasant work, much like being a revival tent preacher. Once you establish yourself as an extremely moral person who doesn’t believe in patriotism, borders, or nationality, you’re a lot more likely to find work in this line. What boggles my mind is that nobody notices that these industries were not necessary back in the dark ages when people believed in common sense ideas like borders and nationality.
The problem with all this, of course, is the Broken Window Fallacy of economics. You can’t run a nation whose economy is based on breaking windows then repairing them — not for long anyway. We’ve done fairly well in supporting large numbers of harmful and useless people via vast increases in the productivity of a small group of people. Ultimately though, the moral codpiece of the booboisie is a bubble. Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.