© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete text of Human Action, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's philosophy of human achievement.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
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“I was walking through my old neighborhood about ten years later after my sister's wedding when I ran into my old friend Donny. Donny and I had been like two peas in a pod from grade school through high school, until I went to college and he went to work in the mill. Well we ended up having a beer and we didn't even finish it. He looked at me. Maybe I was wearing the wrong kind of shirt and my New York haircut was too expensive. He said something like 'what's happened to you?' and made an excuse and left.”

Dave found himself unable to go home again. He quickly realized that the reaction of his family had been the same as Donny's: “Who the hell do you think you are? Don't you care about your roots? We're not good enough for you?”

Of course they were good enough for Dave. He wasn't a snob. He'd never even really felt at home among the “yuppies” in New York. He spoken frequently about where he'd come from, with pride. The intolerance was coming from below, not from above. His family and friends saw Dave's changed clothing and mannerisms as a threat. It didn't matter that Dave was still Dave. Dave just didn't fit into their box anymore. On the other hand, Dave hadn't made a conscious effort to turn his back on his roots; he drifted to other places over a considerable period of time. He became his own person. He couldn't undo the change if he'd wanted to.

Dave hadn't truly been conscious of social class until that moment with Donny. He knew some people made more money than others and had different priorities in spending it. But the realization that in either direction he was expected to act, speak, dress and consume in certain set patterns left him uneasy. Eventually I found him much more comfortable with his position. Rather than consider himself between two social classes, he began to consider himself above all of them.

It doesn't matter which direction the snobbery or intolerance goes, social class limits us. We can make an analogy to morality. The truly kinetic person does the right thing because he or she has made an independent moral judgment that the action fits in with the value of human life and interaction. The static rule is the least of it. The same goes with the values associated with a social class. Donny was threatened because Dave spoke English grammatically. Dave doesn't speak proper English because he pretends to be a member of the upper middle class, but because he has made the independent personal judgment that it is worthwhile to do so. He doesn't drink expensive beer because of the image it projects, but because he has come to like it (and he can also afford it). Dave knows that some other people he associates with are more concerned with status and the external trappings of their social class. In the financial work he does he often deals with very wealthy people. He finds that some are stuck on their class and social position (he calls them the “name-droppers”) while others have a quiet dignity despite their money.

No matter what social class others in society associate you with, you can pick and choose whatever values you find valuable. You cannot always prevent others from “pegging” you with certain associations because of the way you walk and talk, but no one is forcing you to do any pegging yourself.