Which box you are in? A stupid question, but unfortunately, very valid if you are in England. English society is so clearly divided into classes and sub classes that every member of the society has his/her place, his/her box to live in.
To start with there were only two boxes, one for the English gentry other for the working class and farmers. With industrial revolution new classes like the white collared factory owners/managers and bank managers etc were added to the society as middle class and were duly put in their boxes. Then a new class…foreign workers arrived in England. They were allotted a very crowded, lowest class, foreign worker box.
The box system is functioning like a clock work. Every one in the society knows his/her place... his box. They are so used to these boxes that they never try to go out of their boxes. If by chance one goes out of it, he/she feels very insecure and rushes back to the safety of their box.Just like a caged bird... which if released, always tries to get back into its cage.
Strangely, a box does not mean a different locality; there may be many boxes in the same locality. People living in a box have very little or no communication with those living in the other boxes. They are living side by side but very far. Like the gulf streams in the ocean.
Here in the United States, the primary classification is one of wealth. Certainly old money is classified better than new money, but anyone who can get a lot of money can get some respect by paying for it… It's kind of like getting sex by paying for it. We have our hierarchy, our matrix, of bosses and workers, that puts everybody in their place, their box. It's hard to break out of the matrix here just like it is to move from box to box in the UK.
Ron