Obsessed with status symbols? That's rich
"THE rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate / God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate."
These hymn lyrics were shown to me as a sociology student as an example of organised religion seeking to keep the poor down.
If you're poor, the implication is, God made you that way, so accept it.
In such ways does religion – Marx's 'opium of the masses' – perpetuate inequality.
As with much of what one reads as a student, experience casts this in a different light.
Now I see this Christian attitude to wealth as an attempt to soothe a universal mode of suffering – status anxiety. If God made you relatively poor, at least you don't have to beat yourself up about it. You can accept your lot and get on with living a good life.
Not being a believer, this particular avenue isn't open to me. (And Christian faith doesn't seem to have eased the status anxiety of, say, Tony and Cherie Blair). But I can see the point of it, especially in light of a new study published in Psychological Science.
This suggests that money makes us happy – only if we are richer than our friends.
And don't think winning the lottery will cheer you up. Not if you end up hanging around with other rich people.
The study's lead researcher, Dr Chris Boyce, said: "Humans are innately status-obsessed. In the early days before his windfall, the lottery winner may have envied his neighbour's new car or coveted his conservatory.
"But the odd thing is that this compulsion does not diminish even if the same man becomes as rich as Croesus. He will just hanker after even grander acquisitions."
It would be kinder of the rich to be discreet, but we like to rub people's noses in our relative wealth.
Remember the money-obsessed, Merc-driving Harry Enfield character? His catchphrase "I am considerably richer than you" is the subtext to much of what people say to each other, either verbally or through ownership of status symbols.
The middle classes might sneer at the more vulgar displays of wealth such as 'bling'. But from the yummy mummies dressing their kids in designer clothes to the property obsessive looking online to see how much his neighbours' homes cost, status anxiety thrives as well in the luscious enclaves of Lavender Lane as in the gritty sprawl of the Grimley estate.
Status anxiety also lies at the heart of two recent political scandals – expenses and lobbying.
Mixing with people who earn more than them, politicians – at least those which have lost sight of the values that led them into serving their country in the first place – will feel inadequate.
You can imagine them thinking, Why shouldn't I be as rich as my mates?
The answer (apart from 'Why should they?') is that voters don't see it that way. From where the average voter stands, politicians are well off, and can expect zero sympathy for feeling inadequate when discussing holiday homes with millionaires.
No-one should go into politics seeking to get rich. Those MPs for whom the satisfaction of serving their constituents is no longer enough should quit, and only then make themselves available to do something which, in secretly recorded words of the disgraced Geoff Hoon, "frankly makes money".
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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