“Do not attract attention to yourself in public. This is one of the fundamental rules of good breeding. Shun conspicuous manners, conspicuous clothes, a loud voice, staring at people, knocking into them, talking across anyone – in a word do not attract attention to yourself. Do not expose your private affairs, feelings or innermost thoughts in public. You are knocking down the walls of your house when you do.” - Emily Post
For the most part, I blame the media and it’s sidekicks – advertising and entertainment news – on influencing an insatiable love and lust of largesse, or mass consumerism driven by celebrity culture that we Americans have become infamous for. As Chris Hedges, reports in his book, Empire of Illusion, “Functional illiteracy in North America is epidemic … Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate – a figure that is growing by more than 2 million a year … Television, a medium built around the skillful manipulation of images, ones that can overpower reality, is our primary form of mass communication.”
The less educated and benighted are most easily manipulated, as are their ideas of social class, and what it means to be a person of prestige in our society. Hedges also writes, “We flock hungrily to the glamorous crumbs that fall to us from glossy magazines, talk and entertainment shows, and reality television. We fashion our lives as closely to these lives of gratuitous consumption as we can. Only a life of status, physical attributes, and affluence is worth pursuing ... Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts. It is, as Christopher Lasch diagnosed, a culture of narcissism. Faith in ourselves, in a world of make-believe, is more important than reality.”The most unfortunate part about the business of celebrity worship, again which lends itself to mass consumerism, is that the upper echelons of true high society, the once “top out of sights” who have always shunned the Hollywood spotlight, and have instead lived as privately as possible, are trickling into the domain of the vulgar more than ever.
Definitions of vulgar: Lacking sophistication or good taste. Crude, coarse, unrefined. Indecent; obscene; lewd.
These patrons of art and literature, who
head foundations and charities, educated at the most revered institutions, well
traveled, highly connected, and disciplined in conduct and manner
by generation after generation of family, are turning on the tube, flipping a
magazine, and being pulled into the same fantasies as the mass illiterate. The
issue with Old Money today is that their money may be substantial, but they are
being toppled by newer and bigger money, and losing their once revered status. In order to stay
socially relevant, to stay connected to "the good life" they have been accustom, they must rub shoulders with the newly affluent (the polite way of saying the nouveaux-riches). Of course, new money adores the
spotlight and lots of bling.
"People of uncultivated taste are apt to fancy distortions; to exaggerate rather than modify the prevailing fashions ... The woman of uncultivated taste has no more sense of moderation than the Queen of the Cannibals ... She despises sensible clothing; she also despises plain fabrics and untrimmed models. She also cares little (apparently) for staying at home, since she is perpetually seen at restaurants and at every public entertainment. The food she orders is rich, the appearance she makes is rich; in fact, to see her often is like nothing so much as being forced to eat a large amount of butter-plain." -Emily Post
The society matrons of long ago, got a tickle from reading about their parties in the press, maybe seeing an illustration and/or photo of themselves here and there. Anything more than that would have been considered indecent. Now, with technology being what it is, and the desire for visibility being what it is (thanks to sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), a beast has been fed and the hunger has only increased for those that can afford to pay for the publicity. Vulgarity is simply the new style and many from Old Money families have fallen into the snare, without having the collective capacity to educate the next generation on the merits of living more cultivated lives.
"I fear that I took it all for granted. I assumed that there would always be quiet people with easy manners, living unpretentiously amid wonderful things. Oh, I was so wrong." -John Hazard Forbes, Old Money America, Aristocracy in the Age of Obama
