I Just Dumped Whos.amung.us and Chartbeat for Woopra

I recently read perhaps the best book ever written on the American class
system, and it set me to thinking quite a bit about the subject.

First, I put
this
together as a capture location for what I learned.

Then I began to process it. The concepts listed there are appealing to me
for a very basic reason: I am obsessed with growing my ability to predict
unseen behavior based on observed behavior. It’s modeling. Class models us,
and to the extent that it does that accurately I am interested in it.

So that’s one piece.

Another angle to this, however, is what I ultimately find to be respectable
in life, and this question doesn’t really have much to do with class.
Namely, I value more than anything the exploration of our world, a pursuit
of understanding, a respect for logic and reason, compassion for our fellow
humans and creatures on this planet, and overall a sense of appreciation for
the world and the fact that we’ve been given the privilege of living in it
for a spell.

Many people at the bottom layers of “class” excel at this, and many at the
top are fairly horrible individuals. In my mind, this class structure (how
much you care about compassion and knowledge) is without question superior
to the material class discussed in the book. It is true that the book does
touch on some of these behaviors, but that’s not its main focus.

I suppose what I’m saying is that material class as discussed in the book is
a means of anticipating additional behaviors, be they positive or negative,
and I find that fascinating. Furthermore, those types of behaviors that are
correlated with success or failure should be evangelized or looked down upon
based on how they tend to manifest.

This is quite in line with The Moral Landscape, which promotes using science
to help increase happiness and reduce suffering.

I’d like to come up with some sort of visual way of describing these various
behaviors and traits in terms of their ultimate worth (in my view). Perhaps
mapping the presence of books in the home to one thing, or the belief that
the poor deserve to be poor as another. Or mapping the willingness to try
exotic foods to education level, or the preference for sugary foods to
salary.

Actually, that’s not quite it. That’s all within the realm of material (the
book). I want to map those to the real class designations, i.e.
caring for others, producing art or literature, producing tools for doing
the above, etc.

This is all very interesting to me. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

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