Status Symbols By Region and Time
What is considered a status symbol will differ among countries and cultural regions, based on their economic and technological development. Highly-valued status symbols may change over time. For example, before the invention of the printing press, possession of a large collection of books was considered a status symbol. After the advent of the printing press, books (and literacy) gradually became more common among average citizens, so the possession of books became less-rarefied as a status symbol. Another common status symbol of the European medieval past was heraldry, a display of one's family name and history. In some past cultures of East Asia, pearls and jade were major status symbols, reserved exclusively for royalty.
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Famous quotes containing the words status, symbols, region and/or time:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There comes a time when suddenly you realize that laughter is something you remember and that you were the one laughing.”
—Marlene Dietrich (1904–1992)