How Thick Is Your Bubble?

Smoking Cigars on a luxury cruise liner doesn't count as being around smokers.

Oops. That second bit was part of the test results and should have been italiziced:

In other words, even if you're part of the new upper class, you've had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.

The relevant aspect of John's comments on meritocracy is not that all members of the elite are highly intelligent, but rather that the elite tends to vacuum up pretty much all the highly intelligent and competent members of the "lower classes," incorporating them into itself.

While those "born into" the elite may not be competent and intelligent, you can pretty much guarantee those who move up into it are.

This leaves the "lower class" neighborhoods and groups progressively less leavened by intelligence and competence.

The evidence is the very topic that this article and the book it refers to are all about.

I saw this coming 25 years ago when I was still in high school. Brains and initiative tend to lead to wealth. Lack of these tends to lead to poverty. Rinse and repeat over multiple generations, with the children of the self-made and self-unmade meeting with others of their own kind and reproducing, and you soon have something almost approaching speciation at work. It is quite fascinating to watch really. Not only is the average IQ of wealthy communities higher, but so is the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and what might best be described as the attractiveness quotient.

This is not a tragedy, but is the direct result of a nation where each person is free to rise or fall by their own merits.

Because America is a nation where competence and character are rewarded, and where opportunity for those who possess these traits abounds, the best and brightest from every background tend to converge upon their natual station in life. One that is defined and determined not by the circumstances of their birth, but by the quality of their individual attributes. Few people get to be a Rockefeller or a Bill Gates, but anyone with the talent and initiative to become a mere millionaire can do so, even if their daddy was a coal miner. But this is not possible for someone who is stupid, lazy, crazy, or possessed of other flaws that result in self-sabotage and failure in life.

In other words, character is destiny.

Winners win.
Losers lose.
The mediocre muddle through.

But none of this has anything to do with where your parents came from.

Failure is the product of the person who fails, not of 3rd parties or imaginary saboteurs who somehow did them in.

On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 9 and 12.

In other words, even if you're part of the new upper class, you've had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.

"On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 13 and 16.

"In other words, you don't even have a bubble."

Well, I try not to live in things that have rapidly depleting air supplies. :P

Not to mention the hunting and smoking questions.

I would take the test again, as if I never served, but not sure that would be a fair reassessment.

I think the test reveals more about the bubble that its makers are living in than it does its takers.

It seems to be based around the idea that the only alternative to a high-rise-dwelling,cognac-sipping, peace-marching, Volvo-driving, Ivy-league, dean's list Episcopalean is a rural, Pabst Blue Ribbon-guzzling, Elks-parading, truck-driving, veteran, C-student evangelical.

How about the other 180 million of us? The suburbanites? We don't drive pickups unless we're really annoying jerks, because we don't actually need pickups. But those with familes often drive minivans, SUVs, or crossovers that real truckers would sneer at. The rest of us drive domestic sedans. We were B to A- students who graduated from a decent state school or a private school that's no Ivy or Duke. We drink mass-produced affordable wine more often than mass-produced afforable beer, but we're not snobs about it. We just like the taste. Yeah, we know who Jimmie Johnson is because NASCAR went mainstream 20 years back, but many of us admittedly wouldn't have been able to recognize Darryl Waltrip in 1987. A lot of us are Catholic or Jewish or mainstream Protestant that is neither high church Episcopal nor charismatic holy roller.

We've never watched Oprah because we have jobs. Also because she seems to be an idiot.

Set us down blindfolded in any indoor shopping mall within 25 miles and we can find our way to the men's (or ladies') restroom at the back of Macy's third floor inside of four minutes. Or alternately, the food court one next to Sbarro. Can our purely urban upsacle or purely rural counterparts say as much? I think not.

And actually, even if we accept the test as given, a 15-20 should indicate as thick a bubble as a 0-5. The 0-5's are real Americans too, and there are plenty of them, and the life of an 18 is just as insulated from those real Americans as those with a 2 are insulated from the blue collar crowd.

BTW, the quiz also ignores the 10% of real America that's black urban.

"And actually, even if we accept the test as given, a 15-20 should indicate as thick a bubble as a 0-5. The 0-5's are real Americans too, and there are plenty of them, and the life of an 18 is just as insulated from those real Americans as those with a 2 are insulated from the blue collar crowd."

I disagree. You don't have to live next door to one of the Coastal 'elites' to understand them. Television, movies, newspapers, and public radio stations have been showing us Americans in 'flyover country' the concerns of that class and the assumptions and values they have for decades. Most of the media is like a giant "Voice of America" broadcast trying to inform the 'great unwashed foreigners' in the interior about every detail of New York City or the concerns and fads of urban Californians.

Imagine if the TVs in every airport in the nation was locked on the Outdoor Channel, all the schools got their educational materials on nature from 4H, and the majority of all sitcoms or police procedurals were set in either Nashville or Wichita...