Are the lives of people higher up in the social order more valuable than those at the bottom?  Are the little people truly insignificant in the grand design of the world?  Sometimes it really feels like it.  Especially when a stretched blonde tart runs amok with daddy’s credit card and pokes fun at people working to survive.  I was never really sure if The Simple Life meant the simple minds of the two hosts or that everyday survival was simple.  The latter is incorrect, but the first…

“Let Them Eat Cake”

Back in the days of flowing gowns and statuesque hair, there was a great division between the classes.  The lower class was excessively poor and shunned; the middle classes just worked for their living and occasional perfumed bath; and the royal upper class was so far removed from this, they might as well have been on a different planet.  The French suffered terribly under the fatuous and extravagant rule of the Sun King Louis XVI.  Naturally this led to bloody revolution.

Louis’s wife has gone own in history for epitomizing the class struggle.  Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Emperor Francis I.

At the age of fourteen, on the day of her marriage to Louis-Auguste Dauphin of France, she became Dauphine de France. At the death of King Louis XV, in May 1774, her husband ascended to the throne of France as King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette assumed the title of Queen of France and of Navarre. After seven years of marriage she gave birth to a daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, the first of their four children.

Initially charmed by her personality and beauty, the French people generally came to dislike her, accusing "the Austrian" of being profligate, promiscuous, and harbouring sympathies for France's enemies.  At the height of the French Revolution, Louis XVI was deposed and the royal family was imprisoned. Nine months after her husband's execution, Marie Antoinette was tried, convicted of treason, and executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793.

A Bake Sale

The phrase, ‘back in the good old days’, cannot be applied to social hierarchy.  Class structures were clearly mapped out and maintained:  poor bad, wealthy good and royalty excellent.  And it was especially difficult for people to move upwards, hence the many examples in classic literature: The Prince and the Pauper, The Little Princess, and we can even go further back and have a look at most of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado. 

Today the fanciful notion that class and social hierarchy have disappeared is totally incorrect.  Social hierarchy and class division have not disappeared; they have, for the most part, just gone undercover.

Undercover

Firstly, let’s look at a planet-wide scale of social hierarchy:  first-world and third-world countries.  First-world countries are civilized, with free healthcare and education; and their political stories revolve around campaigns and press kits.  Third-world countries have struggling economies, delinquent political systems, and generally rely heavily on first-world aid for the survival of most of their citizens.  Developing countries are the middle class of the world, hovering somewhere in between the first and third world.  The third world countries also despise developing countries, as one hates the beautiful older sister who always outshines, and wins at sibling rivalry.

First world countries are on the top rung of the worldwide social ladder.  For proof we need only look at the international criminal court.  Most of the war crimes are levelled against third-world Africans.  Regardless of whether the accused are guilty or not, the question we should be asking here is: shouldn’t George Bush or Tony Blair answer for their Middle East devastation as well?  Courtenay Griffiths, Charles Taylor’s attorney, maintains there is a larger battle to be fought in the world.  Maybe the battle he means is the world’s current social order?

A Proud Little Person

As someone who is not famous, not wealthy and not a closet member of the royal family, I am by definition: average; a middle class citizen of the world.  You can tell this about me by the following facts:  I live in the suburbs; I went to a high-ranking public school; and I now work nine-to-five to pay the bills and continue forward.

In South Africa the class order here is not neatly defined.  And even more importantly there is a huge gap between the upper and middle class and the lower class.  Johannesburg may be a vibrant metropolis but the signs of poverty lurk in the shadows.

Ponte, built in 1975 as a huge hollow cylinder, has always been a furnished rental block, with 470 flats. Soaring to 173 metres, or 54 floors, with the best views in town, it's integral to Joburg's skyline, more so at night with its flashing Vodacom advertisement bouncing off the top floors. The building has a chequered history: when it initially opened it was one of the city's most desirable places to live in, but by the late 1980s it had degenerated into a haven for criminals and drug lords.  Such was its reputation that in 1998 a proposal - soon rejected - that it be turned into a prison, was aired. From 2001 its act was cleaned up and a new security system chased out the criminals.  But what the building really needed was a huge dose of renovation.

- Lucille Davie; Ponte: Revival of a Joburg Icon; South Africa.info

This description of the Ponte building epitomizes the current problems with our society, the marginalization and disregard of the lowest rungs of the social order.  We literally blank them out of our existence.  South Africa and the world in general turn a blind eye on the problems around us.  As with all things in life, judgment on life or death cannot be determined by wealth or power, and the consequences of our actions should not be dictated by the terms of our livelihood.