A philosophy where there are a fixed set of rules which clearly demarcate right and wrong, and those who either disobey any of these rules or are from a background sufficiently different (which makes them possibly have different values from the society in question) irrespective of whether they try to fit in to the society are shunned or considered inferior, depending on how different they are. Right and wrong are decided by the society at large and individual opinions are not entertained (unless the individual is very rich, and in that case people will at least act like they listen to him). Well, Nazism was at least more forthright when it came to what it preached. Maybe middle-class morality is just a milder version of Nazism.
Before I start out, I want to clarify - Do I hate middle-class morality? Yes. Why? Because it stands in the way of truth. Why do I care about truth more? Because the material gains from middle-class morality- the money, the friends, the security are all aimed at satisfying the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy- a part which is already more or less satisfied in me.
All of us have read about middle-class morality. It's what the rich and poor do not have. It's this set of values which exist due to some reason, which have to be followed in society. But why? It's possible that the only purpose of middle-class morality is to make the middle-class people richer than they are. But the thing about MCM (abbreviation for middle-class morality henceforth) is that it never lets you be happy. It doesn't let you be content with what you have. And that's because any hint of satisfaction or intrinsic happiness will prevent you from earning more and spoiling your children with gifts. And once indoctrinated completely, its difficult to break free of MCM and consider personal values or morals. Coming back to the purpose of MCM- the summary of how MCM works is this : (the first para kind of outlined the effects of this working) People live by rules set by the society. That doesn't sound too bad right? And the set of rules are more or less consistent across the world at an elemental level. For instance, you have to be polite to everyone you meet, or you have to study hard get good marks and marry an have children. Of course in some countries people are more individualistic or just have enough money to not care about these things and thus in the US or Europe you may not find as many people following MCM as in India. Now, these rules are aimed at letting you reliably access the wealth of the rich, with minimal risk. Study (education is good, but when it's purely aimed at getting reliable employment- MCM is responsible for that) -> Get a good paying job (pretty much the most important part of MCM's objectives) -> have a large number of acquaintances and a just a handful to zero friends (large number of acquaintances with whom you never really speak honestly even if you hate them - MCM wants to utilise these people when you are in need and allow limited utilisation vice versa as well. Having good manners, being smart and talkative etc. let you achieve this goal) -> Have children (this is again very important- since you lived your entire life according to MCM and basically did very little for yourself, mostly choosing arbitrary things such as the food you like and the movies u want to see and the like. Having children let's you focus your efforts away from yourself again. You now have to work towards making your children happy. Or else, the society will shun you and kick you out - without telling you of course; MCM does everything discreetly. ) -> Die.
My suggested alternative is : Live - > Do whatever you want -> Die. It's admittedly not as elaborate as MCM's plan - I devised it in 10 seconds (as opposed to the millenia which very slowly shaped MCM, while keeping the underlying principles same). Also, my alternative doesn't guarantee anything- you might end up being very poor and find no meaning in life. But it might lead to something very special. You might fall in love with life and everyone in it. It's kind of like setting your adolescent child free and letting him do what he wants. He might get fucked up but then he might do something fantastic as well. The same with MCM - if you set a person free from it.
Let's look at each phase- The studying and getting a good job part is pretty straightforward. In the sense that, there's nothing too middle-classy about it. And it's difficult to question the morality of it was well. Of course, the rich may let their kids do what the want and this might result in them starting their own ventures (where the middle class eventually get employed. But in a place like India, even entrepreneurship requires you to graduate from an IIT (it's not mandatory but it helps immensely in getting attention and funding) and so you can't really question this part. Unless you're a gifted footballer or musician or something. Or you want to waste away your life. Maybe it's the middle class moralist inside me taking over. Let me come back to the point- Next thing in line after getting a job is to have excellent social standing. Now, ideally your parents would've set you on track to be a social butterfly from a young age- else it's a little hard work after becoming an adult but hardly difficult. You need to now do basically what everyone does. Watch movies in the local language, eat what they eat, (When in Rome, do what the Romans do if you want to be part of their middle class- goes the wise old saying) and make yourself a review and opinion aggregator. You shouldn't really have any strong opinion on anything since it might hurt others.
Perhaps a second objective of MCM, now that I think of it, especially in India - is to have an old age where your children take care of you. In another country, this objective might be slightly differently defined as a happy old age where you have enough resources- and this might be a subset of being sufficiently rich in the first place, and thus may not warrant a definition separate from the first objective. And in a country where it is difficult to do business, the rich tend to get richer and the poor, poorer. Similarly, money tends to remain with the older people quite a bit as compared to more entrepreneurial economies where the young can start ventures and make money out of the merit of the ventures. Having an economy where the older people are more powerful has a definite impact on morality in a society- it is a relatively pessimistic point of view which gives more importance to money, fame and being 'settled', without taking much risk.
Let me digress a bit and talk about robots. So, Microsoft launched its 'teen girl' robot on Twitter called Tay, who can learn language and understand ideas based on what people tweet to it. Soon after, Microsoft had to take it down since she was turned into a Nazi-loving, racist and highly sexual creature with no regard for humanity. The whole episode reminds me of how people are more or less what society makes them to be. And the only difference between the average person in the society and you, is your personal values. If you don't have any personal values that stand out- you can be turned into things as evil as the Nazis or ISIS supporters and you wouldn't even know it.
Coming back to MCM to make one last point- people put a huge amount of importance on how the society perceives them. They have essentially no opinion of theirs which is truly their own, regarding anything. People pitch ideas to each other and reach a consensus on what is popularly liked. Things like MCM and general stupidity on this planet cause movies like Batman vs Superman to have a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 7.7 on IMDB. "The previous Batman movie- I think it was called the Dark Night, that was so cool. This one's not that great you know but not so bad either". I digress.
So what's wrong with a society filled with average people, some more average than others and the different ones living in shame at not being average enough? A lot of things, and as I'd pointed out earlier, anything above the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which are not representative of the absolute truth of course, but fairly accurate in my opinion) is beyond the reach of MCM. But for me personally there are two very specific issues I have with MCM- One is that I cannot deal with fake shit. Fake manners, lies, talking behind people's back etc. The second and far more important thing is how MCM prevents people from truly falling in love. MCM imposes a set of expectations on your partner which are centred around what the society expects from an average person. It makes you and your partner average, alas but love is when you find the best person in the world. There is no love in loving a person more average than most- a shallow being with no individuality. And a person who is completely independent of idiotic societies for her self-esteem, and having original ideas; the confidence to stand up for herself and her people when it counts without worrying about 'what others would say' is the only kind of person I can even think of falling in love with. And for movie lovers, the trade-off between the comforts of middle-class life and it's reliability as opposed to wild and unhibited love is best portrayed in Vicky Cristina Barcelona- where Vicky falls in love with the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, over the her well-paid and well-settled American fiance, and in Before Sunset where Jesse falls in love with the French girl Celine, over his well-settled and well-paid American wife.
Before I start out, I want to clarify - Do I hate middle-class morality? Yes. Why? Because it stands in the way of truth. Why do I care about truth more? Because the material gains from middle-class morality- the money, the friends, the security are all aimed at satisfying the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy- a part which is already more or less satisfied in me.
All of us have read about middle-class morality. It's what the rich and poor do not have. It's this set of values which exist due to some reason, which have to be followed in society. But why? It's possible that the only purpose of middle-class morality is to make the middle-class people richer than they are. But the thing about MCM (abbreviation for middle-class morality henceforth) is that it never lets you be happy. It doesn't let you be content with what you have. And that's because any hint of satisfaction or intrinsic happiness will prevent you from earning more and spoiling your children with gifts. And once indoctrinated completely, its difficult to break free of MCM and consider personal values or morals. Coming back to the purpose of MCM- the summary of how MCM works is this : (the first para kind of outlined the effects of this working) People live by rules set by the society. That doesn't sound too bad right? And the set of rules are more or less consistent across the world at an elemental level. For instance, you have to be polite to everyone you meet, or you have to study hard get good marks and marry an have children. Of course in some countries people are more individualistic or just have enough money to not care about these things and thus in the US or Europe you may not find as many people following MCM as in India. Now, these rules are aimed at letting you reliably access the wealth of the rich, with minimal risk. Study (education is good, but when it's purely aimed at getting reliable employment- MCM is responsible for that) -> Get a good paying job (pretty much the most important part of MCM's objectives) -> have a large number of acquaintances and a just a handful to zero friends (large number of acquaintances with whom you never really speak honestly even if you hate them - MCM wants to utilise these people when you are in need and allow limited utilisation vice versa as well. Having good manners, being smart and talkative etc. let you achieve this goal) -> Have children (this is again very important- since you lived your entire life according to MCM and basically did very little for yourself, mostly choosing arbitrary things such as the food you like and the movies u want to see and the like. Having children let's you focus your efforts away from yourself again. You now have to work towards making your children happy. Or else, the society will shun you and kick you out - without telling you of course; MCM does everything discreetly. ) -> Die.
My suggested alternative is : Live - > Do whatever you want -> Die. It's admittedly not as elaborate as MCM's plan - I devised it in 10 seconds (as opposed to the millenia which very slowly shaped MCM, while keeping the underlying principles same). Also, my alternative doesn't guarantee anything- you might end up being very poor and find no meaning in life. But it might lead to something very special. You might fall in love with life and everyone in it. It's kind of like setting your adolescent child free and letting him do what he wants. He might get fucked up but then he might do something fantastic as well. The same with MCM - if you set a person free from it.
Let's look at each phase- The studying and getting a good job part is pretty straightforward. In the sense that, there's nothing too middle-classy about it. And it's difficult to question the morality of it was well. Of course, the rich may let their kids do what the want and this might result in them starting their own ventures (where the middle class eventually get employed. But in a place like India, even entrepreneurship requires you to graduate from an IIT (it's not mandatory but it helps immensely in getting attention and funding) and so you can't really question this part. Unless you're a gifted footballer or musician or something. Or you want to waste away your life. Maybe it's the middle class moralist inside me taking over. Let me come back to the point- Next thing in line after getting a job is to have excellent social standing. Now, ideally your parents would've set you on track to be a social butterfly from a young age- else it's a little hard work after becoming an adult but hardly difficult. You need to now do basically what everyone does. Watch movies in the local language, eat what they eat, (When in Rome, do what the Romans do if you want to be part of their middle class- goes the wise old saying) and make yourself a review and opinion aggregator. You shouldn't really have any strong opinion on anything since it might hurt others.
Perhaps a second objective of MCM, now that I think of it, especially in India - is to have an old age where your children take care of you. In another country, this objective might be slightly differently defined as a happy old age where you have enough resources- and this might be a subset of being sufficiently rich in the first place, and thus may not warrant a definition separate from the first objective. And in a country where it is difficult to do business, the rich tend to get richer and the poor, poorer. Similarly, money tends to remain with the older people quite a bit as compared to more entrepreneurial economies where the young can start ventures and make money out of the merit of the ventures. Having an economy where the older people are more powerful has a definite impact on morality in a society- it is a relatively pessimistic point of view which gives more importance to money, fame and being 'settled', without taking much risk.
Let me digress a bit and talk about robots. So, Microsoft launched its 'teen girl' robot on Twitter called Tay, who can learn language and understand ideas based on what people tweet to it. Soon after, Microsoft had to take it down since she was turned into a Nazi-loving, racist and highly sexual creature with no regard for humanity. The whole episode reminds me of how people are more or less what society makes them to be. And the only difference between the average person in the society and you, is your personal values. If you don't have any personal values that stand out- you can be turned into things as evil as the Nazis or ISIS supporters and you wouldn't even know it.
Coming back to MCM to make one last point- people put a huge amount of importance on how the society perceives them. They have essentially no opinion of theirs which is truly their own, regarding anything. People pitch ideas to each other and reach a consensus on what is popularly liked. Things like MCM and general stupidity on this planet cause movies like Batman vs Superman to have a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 7.7 on IMDB. "The previous Batman movie- I think it was called the Dark Night, that was so cool. This one's not that great you know but not so bad either". I digress.
So what's wrong with a society filled with average people, some more average than others and the different ones living in shame at not being average enough? A lot of things, and as I'd pointed out earlier, anything above the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which are not representative of the absolute truth of course, but fairly accurate in my opinion) is beyond the reach of MCM. But for me personally there are two very specific issues I have with MCM- One is that I cannot deal with fake shit. Fake manners, lies, talking behind people's back etc. The second and far more important thing is how MCM prevents people from truly falling in love. MCM imposes a set of expectations on your partner which are centred around what the society expects from an average person. It makes you and your partner average, alas but love is when you find the best person in the world. There is no love in loving a person more average than most- a shallow being with no individuality. And a person who is completely independent of idiotic societies for her self-esteem, and having original ideas; the confidence to stand up for herself and her people when it counts without worrying about 'what others would say' is the only kind of person I can even think of falling in love with. And for movie lovers, the trade-off between the comforts of middle-class life and it's reliability as opposed to wild and unhibited love is best portrayed in Vicky Cristina Barcelona- where Vicky falls in love with the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, over the her well-paid and well-settled American fiance, and in Before Sunset where Jesse falls in love with the French girl Celine, over his well-settled and well-paid American wife.
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