The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (2 page)

If your answer’s “No,” you’re lying.

If your answer’s “Yes,” your qualms about becoming a social climber are irrelevant, because you already are one. We’re not telling you what to want, just how to get it.

Are you brave enough to be honest about what you really desire? Willing to listen to what your inner child tells you you’re entitled to? Do you have the courage to open your eyes to the importance of the superficial in postmodern life? If so, you already have the makings of a good social climber. And our book will make you a great one!

Follow our instructions, embrace our dos and don’ts of upward mobility, and social climbing will cease to be something you have to do in order to get ahead and instead become a way of life—a shining path as contemplative and revealing of the life force within you as Buddhism, only a hell of a lot more fun.

How It All Began

According to anthropologists, social climbing was imprinted on human behavior before primitive man descended from the trees. If you didn’t have it in you to be the alpha male or female, the second best way to ensure your survival was to develop the social skills that would enable you to become the new best friend of those with the sharpest teeth and the most lethal hunting skills, before they decided to eat you. Like the ability to make a flint hand ax, or start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, social climbing was both a tool and a skill that could not only radically improve the quality of life for those who walked on their hind legs, it could save your life.

How Did Social Climbing Get Such a Bad Reputation?

Think of all the varieties of intimate human behavior and interaction that were once unfairly judged by the so-called moral authorities to be bad, unhealthy, and, worse, unnatural that are now
embraced as varieties of normal. To nineteenth-century Victorians, masturbation, premarital fornication, oral sex, sodomy, and homosexuality were vices. Today, even the Archbishop of Canterbury recognizes them as beautiful manifestations of the drives that make us human. So why does a human form of social intercourse as age-old, widespread, and instinctual as social climbing remain a stigma?

Consider the fate of two of the most famous fictional characters of the twentieth century. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby
, the über–upwardly mobile Jay Gatsby isn’t just punished, he’s shot in his swimming pool for a murder he didn’t commit. And how about poor Eve Harrington in
All About Eve
—she pays doubly for her climbing ways. Not only is she blackmailed by the slimy theater critic portrayed by George Sanders, but once she makes it to the big time, she has to pay off by sleeping with him.

Psychologists tell us that a healthy friendship is based on common interests, hobbies, values. If you never get the chance to socialize with your boss, or better yet, the president of the company you work for, how are you ever going to know whether you
have the same interests and values? Yes, you are in the same income bracket as the drone in the cubicle next to you, but isn’t it a perverse and reverse bigotry to assume that just because the CEO has three more zeros at the end of his paycheck than you do, he is unworthy of your making an effort to get to know him?

Know that social climbing is an expression invented by snobs to make other snobs feel superior to you. Dictionary definitions of social climbing as the pursuit of friendships with those of a higher social status assume and perpetuate a notion we think is offensive, i. e., that one group of people is superior to another. We believe you are not only as good as anybody else, you’re
better
. Because you, by reading
The Social Climber’s Bible
, have joined us in our fight to redefine social climbing, to establish it as a positive attribute rather than a pejorative designed to shame you into believing you are not good enough to go to the party.

Social climbing is not about getting to know people because you want something. It is about giving highly successful people a chance to get to know you well enough to realize you’re a great person, a special person, a person worth their friendship. And if they help you when you’re in need, well, isn’t that what real friendship’s all about?

We don’t teach our children to search out playmates who will do bad things to them. Yet as adults, we are made to feel ashamed for seeking friendships that can help us fulfill our dreams. And turning dreams into reality is what
The Social Climber’s Bible
is all about.

Freedom from the tyranny of the class system, the opportunity for upward mobility, was the dream that brought the
immigrant to America. Europe’s peasants came to our shores to escape the unfairness of the feudal system they were born into, to have their God-given right to climb the ladder.

So, if social climbing is democracy in action, why all the ugly pseudonyms: ASSLICKER, BROWNNOSER, SUCK-UP?

Of course, one’s tongue and/or the exchange of bodily fluids are often involved in social climbing, but for now let’s concentrate on how social climbing became a pejorative.

The demonization of the social climber began with the Puritans. Faced with a harsh winter and failed crops, our Pilgrim forefathers would have starved to death had they not shamelessly sucked up to the Indians and invited them to cater that first Thanksgiving. Conversely, if the Indians had had a problem with social climbers, they would have butchered the newcomers when they first showed up at Plymouth Rock. The original sin and seeds of hypocrisy surrounding the stigmatization of “social climbing” can be found in the Pilgrims’ behavior at subsequent Thanksgivings. As soon as the Pilgrims had enough food to feed
themselves, the Indians were disinvited to the party. Worse, our forefathers thanked their aboriginal hosts who saved them from starvation by proceeding to steal their land, infect them with syphilis, and kill off those who refused to die a natural death.

These early American asslickers then went to work ingratiating themselves with those who commanded the next rung on the ladder—the English Crown’s governors, generals, magistrates, and tax collectors. And once the Puritans had used them to get rich enough to establish their own ruling class, they thanked the royals by starting a revolution and disinviting them to the party. Having gotten more than their fair share of the pie by befriending and then betraying any and all who helped them climb to the top, our pioneer American aristocracy had no intention of letting the succeeding generations of immigrants who followed them to America exploit them in similar fashion. The Puritans didn’t just torch witches; they tried to burn the ladder.

The rich have always known the value of social climbing. The nineteenth-century nouveau riche made few friends on the way up. But once they had made too much money to be snubbed, they solidified their position by marrying themselves or their offspring into families who, though not as rich, had cachet, class, accomplishment, and connections that wealth alone could not buy; or at least, not unless they had an awful lot of money.

Railroad robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt gave his daughter’s hand in marriage to the comparatively impoverished but supremely well-connected Duke of Marlborough and in doing so, was finally able to snub the Astors. So it goes a hundred years later. Ralph Lifshitz changes his surname to Lauren, makes billions
selling the preppie look to people who didn’t go to prep school, has a son who marries Lauren Bush, the granddaughter of George H. W. Bush and the niece of George W. Bush, who demographics alone would lead one to believe will be the last two WASP presidents of the United States. We mention this not in any way to imply Ralph was obsessed with or fetishized the glamour of snobbery, or that Lauren + Lauren is not a love match, but merely to underscore the point that social climbing is not just about money. It’s about having the taste and intelligence to ignore what less ambitious souls have told you since you were a child you can’t have and shouldn’t want . . . and having it all.

Take a lesson from the Middleton sisters: Set your priorities and put yourself in a petri dish where great things will happen to you and the sky’s the limit. Did Kate and Pippa stop climbing when they were nicknamed the Wisteria Sisters in honor of that clingy, climbing, flowering vine? Of course not; they climbed faster. Kate went from daughter of a “trolley-dolly,” aka an airline stewardess, to mother of the future king of England. How Pippa will top that remains to be seen, but we know she won’t settle for second best, unless his name is Prince Harry.

Who are those boldfaced names chiseled on the walls of art museums, opera houses, hospitals, and Ivy League universities? They’re social climbers. If you pay for the new wing to a cultural institution, you are no longer a crass, pushy vampire squid who beat the rap on insider trading, you are the new best friend to the cultural elite of the world. Though
Roget’s Thesaurus
would disagree, philanthropy is now and has always been a synonym for social climbing.

The rich don’t make six-figure donations to get their children into the right nursery school because they like the teachers. They want to make sure their children start learning the secrets of social climbing by the time they’re toilet-trained—secrets they don’t want you to know, secrets that give them an unfair advantage, but secrets
The Social Climber’s Bible
believes you have a right to know.

Whether you dream of partying with billionaires or running for political office, or long for a job that won’t require you to ever have to ask anyone again, “Do you want fries with that order?” or simply want to know what it’s like to knock back a six-pack with the reality stars of
Duck Dynasty
, we can show you a shortcut to the top. However, before we start, a few words of caution:

L
ife teaches us that the less you have to bring to the party in terms of looks, charm, education, professional achievement, intelligence, worldly experience, famous relatives, and yes, of course, that ultimate game changer, money—the harder it will be for you to get to the top. That is, unless you’re a Mountaineer.

Though the world is neither fair nor democratic, those lacking any or all of the above assets will be happy to know that if you are mediocre-looking and lacking in special skills, you have an advantage when it comes to a career in climbing. Why? Because the more accomplished and attractive you are, the more likely it is you will be pegged as a social climber.

What separates the good social climber (that is, the invisible one) from the bad (i.e., the obvious) has nothing to do with how pushy, self-serving, or ruthless you are. It’s all about manners. And we will teach you tricks of etiquette that will make your climb seem as innocent and uncalculated as a child’s smile.