If morals and values jump off the bridge will you follow? I thought you had more class, class. Can't any word stand on principle any more?
Maybe you don't receive the attention you once did, but neglect is no reason to cave in to peer pressure. Think of it this way. Few people deserve you these days. Appreciate being special, reserved for the best. Don't stoop to their level and sell fake versions of you.
Dress limburger cheese in French bread and it will still stink. Cover wool shorts in silk and they will still itch. Put a redneck in a castle and he'll still fart on the sofa and a fool is still a fool even if you type his name on a mail-order degree. Call a man classy because he drives his kids to school in a Mercedes instead of a Ford and you have the same stinky, itchy, fool. The only ones impressed are other people who have squandered their fortunes on trappings. There's a word standing on principle. Trapped is a perfect description of where these people end up. Trapped in an endless game of deception.
I appeal to you to hold out. Demand payment in character, not dollars. Class can't be bought.
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Comments: 23
In reading the "Autobiography of B. F." there was one thing that jumped out at me. Whenever he introduced a new individual, he always spent a paragraph describing his research into that person's "character." And he clearly rated "good character" above any other measure of success.
the only place that word was ever used in reference to me was in a year book........Class of '63
Nice....I'm sort of a word lover myself....
Love it!
I love John's addition: so that would place the phrase "class act" in the oxymoric file.... I believe it would! (sorta like compassionate conservative - try reversing those words and see how that boggles the mind). Joyce, I'm making up for what others might be losing - to the point I sometimes wonder about my sanity. I can amuse myself for hours - with words.
Class lies in the ability to be different because one simply does not give a damn what other people are thinking. Some of the classiest people I've known have been penniless, but they had dignity, manners and self - esteem.
This is a good one Sandy, I love the line about the Redneck farting on the sofa, I can just picture the scene.
Nicely put essay. Thanks.
You've got class!
In other words, I think "class" is prejudiced by its original meaning, which is "social class". The extension to "having better intrinsic qualities" is a result of the same process that turned words like "noble" and "gentleman" into descriptors of desirable character traits: a mostly subconscious conflation of prestige and social status with morality that seems deeply wired in our species.
(I mean that if a theistic god exists, he is the ruler of the world, by definition, before any conflation with morality could take place.)
But you can also think of little girls wanting to be princesses and little boys dreaming of pulling special swords out of rocks, and the descendants of involuntary immigrants telling themselves that their ancestors on the old continent were kings and queens.