Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Taste, and the Psychology of Status Anxiety
By the early twenty-first century, the Western professional class had constructed a moral cosmology around cognition. Intelligence was no longer merely useful; it had become sacramental. To possess analytical fluency, elite credentials, and aesthetic discernment was treated not simply as evidence of competence, but as e...
The narrative constructs a powerful mechanism where technological abundance, rather than simply redistributing wealth, threatens the ontological importance ascribed to human achievement. The core pattern involves the desacralization of intelligence: the historical promise of meritocracy—where exceptional intellect guaranteed superior social value—is undermined when machines can perform high-level cognitive tasks. The reaction of the elite is not a simple retreat, but a strategic migration toward...