\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nbeen thinking about aristo/bohemian/lumpenprole as a coherent axis defined around common cultural traits (decadence, cults of action?) against a rivalling stability-oriented gentry/bourgeois/prole line
I think the concept you need to tie this together is \u201cbelief that the formal rules make sense and that you will be rewarded for following them.\u201d\u00a0
\nI once wrote much of a very long essay about (approximately) this, but lost momentum before it finished.\u00a0 Short-short version: aristos and proles are both keenly aware that in fact life is a political jungle where success is defined by allies and resources and risks-that-pay-off, the spiritual essence of the bourgeoisie is \u201cthinking that the world is basically an extension of school.\u201d
\nhow about working class in the military
\nYeah, how about it.\u00a0 \u201cI would specifically like to join an institution that, unlike the rest of the benighted world, runs on reliable and formalistic rules enforced by a clear chain of command.\u201d\u00a0
\nit\u2019s a compelling framework, but one can just as easily imagine counter examples: people born into a life of privilege who simply assume that this will be maintained without any particular attention or effort on their part, people engaging in scheming Machiavellian political machinations to build their power base at some mid-level corporate accounting job,\u00a0
\nThe first thing isn\u2019t really a counterexample at all.\u00a0 Yes, there are quite a lot of privileged aristos who are very happy to sit around and enjoy their privilege without any kind of scheming or intrigue at all.\u00a0 Theory and experience both suggest that they\u2019re mostly just willing to believe that they can do this, because they already have the necessary resources and the necessary support and no one is going to stop them, and they\u2019re not afraid of losing everything because they\u2019ve broken some rule about what they\u2019re supposed to do.\u00a0
\nThe second thing is\u2026actually pretty rare, as far as I can tell.\u00a0 Like, not \u201cyou\u2019ll never see it\u201d rare by any means, but rare enough to raise eyebrows when it happens.\u00a0 Accountants don\u2019t want to build power bases or play office politics, they want to do their jobs with a minimum of complication and then go home.\u00a0 (I can say with a lot of confidence that this is generally true of federal bureaucrats, despite the stereotypes.)\u00a0 If office politics actually happen to an extent that there is some kind of noticeable outcome, most of the people in the office will be kind of shocked and upset.\u00a0
\nAnd even then, the office politics are likely to be Lawful Evil \u201ctattling to the boss that Phil isn\u2019t following regulations\u201d sorts of schemes rather than Chaotic Evil \u201cI will go outside the system to ruin you\u201d schemes.
\nintroducing the nature of a System makes it clearer: if you\u2019re sufficiently rich you\u2019re largely beyond the awareness of police, if you\u2019re sufficiently poor you\u2019re crushed beneath the boot of police, if you\u2019re in the middle you might occasionally have normal interactions with police and wonder what all the fuss is about, etc.
\nAll true, but misleadingly specific.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just police (not that I think you\u2019re saying that it is, but\u2026clarity).\u00a0
\nIf you\u2019re sufficiently rich, you don\u2019t think that your success in life will ever really hinge on whether the particular authority figure standing over you is impressed; if you\u2019re sufficiently poor, you don\u2019t think that the authority figure is ever going to be impressed enough to matter; if you\u2019re in the middle, the authority figure\u2019s opinion could be the difference between \u201cyou are a Top Performer with stellar prospects\u201d and \u201cyour career will go nowhere.\u201d\u00a0
\nIf you\u2019re sufficiently rich, your friends and family can pull you out of basically any scrape, so long as they like you enough; if you\u2019re sufficiently poor, your friends and family can be the difference between survival and not, so long as they like you enough; if you\u2019re in the middle, you get all your resources from your job and all your opportunities from your education, and your friends and family likely don\u2019t have much to offer in a practical sense.\u00a0 [That last is a gross exaggeration, but\u2026you get the point.]
\nEtc.
\nThe second paragraph is true; that is why office politics is in fact rampant in bullshit mid-ass-level corporate. Maybe accountants, specifically, are an exception. I have the impression that @argumate was just reaching for any random non-tech corporate role there. It\u2019s a different story wrt account execs, account managers and account directors, tl;dr stay the fuck out of the cutthroat global thermonuclear war that is office politics in the low to middling pay, high ambition, strata.
\nand of course, academia itself! where being \u201cgood at school\u201d means knifing any challenger who might thwart your attempt at gaining tenure.
\n
One of my grandfathers was a Seabee-turned-construction contractor. He’s the guy who joined in WWII to storm beaches in the Pacific, got assigned to build golf courses in Hawaii and was kind of steamed about it until he saw haunted men rotating back from like, Guadalcanal and was like “fine”.
He held on to his military identity, had his mail addressed “Lt. Cdr” (which is just O-3, like a Captain in other services), had a vanity plate even.
In between he was a Pennsylvania legislator for like one term when the local machine wanted a young veteran face. When I graduated college and was going to Hollywood to try to be a screenwriter, he sent me a handwritten letter, my takes from which were one, when this guy tries to be deep you notice he’s not that deep, and two, wow this guy dictated letters to secretaries his whole life and never learned how to spell.
At least he wasn’t the kind of guy to put a flagpole in front of his 1959 split-level or 1986 golf course-adjacent ranch. But growing up he was someone to define myself against, which is why I never even considered the Navy. Also I chuckled at how my old granddad always ordered Old Granddad whiskey on ice.
But with age comes wisdom, looking back at what he was and what he made his children into I get it. Dude was a socially untalented engineer, and by joining the military \u2013 by living in a postwar world where so many people had been similarly shaped \u2013 he made that work.
Like, that man lived in a world where he was regularly assigned challenges that he was given the resources to overcome, so long as he brought his own cleverness. And then he was evaluated on how well his solutions met desired objective metrics, and if he did good he would reliably be given better challenges, more resources, and more social standing and quality of life in every way.
(My mom grew up as a Navy brat, this was the Pacific, where that meant servants, but even stateside among whites.)
And I see the appeal there.
I mean god knows I’m not saying “there’s no politics in military officership”, the chain is ability<tactics<strategy<logistics<politics, and by the top levels (especially procurement, where it shades <corruption) its all politics
But now I see the appeal there.
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