Decency

Dr. Gonzo: We won't make the nut unless we have unlimited credit.
Raoul Duke: Jesus Christ, we will, man. You Samoans are all the same. You have no faith in the essential decency of the white man's culture.

We all desperately want to be “honorific” or at the very least “decent.” In fact, our desire for decency is often inseparable from our desire for life and health. And so, we emulate and consume and, occasionally, gamble.
Veblen manifests his understanding of human nature in his theoretical configuration of the “leisure class.” Long ago, man’s psychological and physiological dispositions took hold – fueled by the development of technical knowledge like tools and weapons and an existence no longer based on subsistence – and civilization made the transition from peaceable to predatory society. This transition, this largely material outgrowth was not “mechanical” (Veblen does not provide a history of pre-barbarism warring nor is the actuality of war during this time significant) -- it was “spiritual.” Veblen terms it “spiritual” because the “habit of judging facts and events from the point of view of the fight” became paramount for the first time. The “fight” became foremost in man’s thoughts. In other words, man’s consciousness had radically shifted. Worth and honor became synonymous with exploit and – utterly inebriated by war-think – unworthy drudgery became synonymous with everyday employments devoid of any real exploit, like menial and intensive-labor jobs.
Alongside the distinction of worthy and unworthy employment born of the predatory culture, the emergence of ownership galvanized the leisure class, aka the ruling class as we know it. The leisure class can be defined in opposition to the working class. Essentially, it is made up of those individuals who have been afforded “decency” through their non-labor employment and exercise their leisure status by way of conspicuous consumption and the attainment of both literal and symbolic trophies, among other things. “[T]he characteristic feature of leisure-class life is a conspicuous exemption from all useful employment . . . Abstention from labour is conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing”(41). And while wealth, rather than say war prowess, has become the contemporary standard of worth, so exists capitalism today, a culturally colored version of primitive barbarism!
What I find most interesting about Veblem’s argument is not how this not-so-random system came into being, but his almost self-evident explanation for why it has prevailed. “The habit of distinguishing and classifying the various purposes and directions of activity prevails of necessity . . . for it is indispensible in reaching a working theory or scheme of life.” The [wealthy] leisure class provides an implicitly codified system of conventional decency that people can follow, which is “indispensible” to life. It is natural to envy and emulate the class above, but, more fundamentally, the leisure class reacts to material stimuli, as a nature of habit, to determine a community scheme of decent and honorific and a standard of living. Veblen, though certainly condemning this social structure, seems to suggest that man cannot escape his need to have his needs defined. In the same breath, he deems the all-powerful “leisure” class unable to radically change.
If man cannot live without definitions, standards, cues . . . And Veblem’s leisure class are the sole articulators of this “working theory or scheme of life” . . . What are we to do if this leisure class cannot live and define “decency” in a way that rejects inherent exploitation?