The status of our symbols.

I think it has a lot to do with ... e.g. in what culture/society/country you live.

Having more than two credit cards, for instance, is more than just snobbish here - a 'must', I blieve in the USA.

Status is shown by a person, not what she/he .... shows.
But I admit, books show a lot.


Generally spoken ... CJ has taken the word already out of my mouth.

Status
Status, i believe is confered on one, just like respect is earned.

Well then Terazan, it is given much too freely; but then again, so is respect if you look at the people some of us respect.

When a room (or a house) has been designed to impress rather than to be lived in, I refuse to be impressed.

I am pleased by refrigerator art, fresh flowers, books, bird feeders--and all other oddiments that echo my personal preferences.

The older I get, the less likely I am to distain alien decor--after all, I'm a tourist in strange lands and I'm learning to appreciate diversity.

yitwail, I would never presume to speak for soz but I think that she would say that your choice exhibits perhaps not much recklessness. That it is a safe choice. I think maybe she expected something a bit more reckless from the person whose house she was visiting.

I'm a little bizarre with the things I hang on my wall but the biggest thing is a $20 dollar print (in a frikken $300 dollar frame) that I love despite its commercial appeal.

The Library Hotel! What a hoot. I love librarys but I'm afraid the Dewey decimil system has always baffled me. How would I reserve the photography room?

Gus, your story reminds me of visiting the home of one of my very best work friends. I really liked this girl at work. When I went to her home they had a "library" stocked with books that she said they'd bought at garage sales just to fill up the damn shelves that were built into the house. Uniformity seemed to be the theme - Reader's Digest condensed books, volumes of outdated encyclopedias, law books -- things that provided symetry and unified color.

I never looked at her the same way again.

That is very interesting Letty. Maybe I should read that book!

My brother in law spent several years of his adolecense living in India and I have often heard him talk about the caste system. In a way, the author of your book almost seems to support that type of society (judging, of course, by that few paragraphs). Of course, the caste system does not leave room for people of real talent to be discovered so he's working towards some idea .... one that I am not familiar with... but I'm interested in reading more.

boomer, I will have to tell you this. In Virginia there was a woman who was a product of the nouveau riche. She and her husband built a new home and ordered tons of books to fill the built in bookcases. One of my dear friends, a marvelous coloratura soprano, was hired to help her decipher the books and give her daughter voice lessons.(my friend referred to this as "instant culture".) I don't think the woman ever read one of those books. Difficult to describe my absolute awe at such a blatant attempt at seeking status.

The credit card thing is very interesting, Walter!

I can remember my family having Charge-A-Plates issued by stores before the advent of credit cards. Those were status symbols in themselves!

Then came Master-Charge....

I get, no exaggeration, probably 25 pieces of mail trying to get me to subscribe to another credit card EVERY WEEK. If I had every card I was "pre-approved" for I could wallpaper my house with them. (Which, when I think about it, sounds like a kind of cool installation....)

terazan and eryemil, that strikes something in me that I have to think about some more..... thinking........ thinking.....

<snork> Noddy! Oh where to even start!?

I grew up poor and I remember when my family finally made some money. Rooms that were wrecked suddenly were redecorated and off limits. I thought this was horrid until I visited a friends house whose living room was actually (I am not making this up) roped off for admiring.

I have lived my adult live under the banner of having nothing that I care more about than comfort.

Re: The status of our symbols.


I think that status and sophistication are, at least in the present time, unrelated notions, and i'm not sure if they have ever been related. I say that because i think status is a trait recognized and respected by society and sophistication is a trait recognized and respected only by some individuals. I'm not sure if there have been moments in history when sophistication was considered a status symbol and was respected by the general population.
From my point of view money has been something that the general public has allways respected, and that's what society is, the general population. There may have been times when sophistication got you in a position where you could make money and get the social status, the recognition of the general public. I'm not sure if this is still the case because other things sell nowadays.
Money will always be considered a status symbol as long as we live in a society that has it as a base. Money allows you to live what we consider to be a good life. Now, if you want to go out in the desert and eat bugs, you'll never need any money. But as long as you want things, you need money to be able to have them, and that goes for the simplest things like a good book. It doesn't cost much but if you don't have the money to buy it i doubt you'll easily find someone to give it to you for free. Money in itself is not a true value, but since, like i said, we live in a world that is based on currency transactions, they provide the freedom you need to be able to live your life. And that's what people want, freedom to live their lives the way they want with all the things that make them happy, because i am convinced things bring their contribution to making you happy (example : a good book, a computer, internet connection, a domain on which to host a cool forum like this one).



I can't think of any new answers because you already spoke my mind, but i tend to take the word literally so that's what in my mind would be a sign of sophistication : a sign of a complex person. A person that knows how to carry himself, knows how to have an interesting conversation, that has personal and argument based beliefs that he is able to stand by, that has multiple interests in multiple areas of our existence.