Why Books Are Now The Best Indicator Of Class

When dating, people look for many different things in a partner. Some look for strength, some look for beauty, some just look for fun. But most people look for a hard-to-describe quality that equates roughly to how much value a person has to society. This quality is generally known as “class” and most people in the dating game are both representing it and trying to find it in an other.

The complication? Traditional class markers have disappeared for several reasons, of which two are foremost.

The first is abundant wealth. 25 years ago, you had to be a baller to own a cellphone, now children have them. Cheap flights mean that international travel is no longer a sign of class either. Even ownership of an expensive car means little, because those are so often rented nowadays. There is so much abundant wealth today that ownership of it is no longer suggestive of class.

The second is general trashiness. Traditional markers of lower class, such as heavy substance use, sexual promiscuity, shabby dress, tattoos, swearing and intellectual ignorance are now often celebrated. Whereas lowering the standard in such a manner used to be a ticket to rapid social isolation, people now appreciate it for creating a relaxed atmosphere.

Because people who are otherwise classy so often present themselves as trash, it’s now necessary to look for inadvertent class indicators. Being slim is a good example: in the Age of Obesity, slimness has become a sign that you have impulse control.

This essay argues that the single best indicator of class today is that a person is into reading books, collects books or has a decent library.

A survey by Date Psychology showed that the number one male hobby from the point of view of women was reading. As much as cooking, foreign language mastery and playing musical instruments were considered attractive by women, reading topped them all. There are several reasons why reading in particular, and books in general, might serve as the most salient class indicators nowadays.

The first point is that a person has to have intelligence to even want to read. Dumb people are incurious about the world. Reading is a sign that a person is ambitious, but in a good way. They’re not content with sitting and stagnating in ignorance. They want to create, to build, to make the most of life. It’s a sign that a person is moving up in the world.

True intelligence is very classy. It’s one thing that money can’t buy. If a person reads because they want to, and not because they have to, it’s a sign of possessing high natural intelligence. Women can’t avoid noticing this quality and wanting their children to inherit it.

A second point is that a person has to have impulse control to sit down and read a book. Trashy, impulsive people need more powerful stimulation: television, alcohol, loud music, scrolling. Readers have to be capable of imposing order upon their own thoughts and desires to sit down and quietly read.

This ability to impose order upon one’s own thoughts is true masculinity. Someone who can put their thoughts in order can put their emotions and bodies in order too. This represents a competence that women often find even more attractive than intelligence.

This ties into a third point, which is that readers have to have their lives under control to have the free time to read. Many people have effectively been reduced to slavery today. They spend almost all of their time on the commute-work-sleep grind. Someone reading a book is effectively signalling possession of the ultimate luxury: free time.

It can also mean that a person is wise when it comes to apportioning their spare time. Many people with the free time to read books spend that time on television or video games instead. Someone who reads has probably thought about what’s actually valuable in life, and how they can get to a place where they have more of it.

The fourth point is that people who read tend to be free mentally. Reading is a sign that a person is not a slave. They want new ideas – perhaps because they’re building their own philosophy of life – rather than mindlessly following someone else’s. That’s very attractive in a system where 95%+ of people are little better than drones.

If you want to look like a classy person today, forget the tailored suit or the sports car – build a library.

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