Copying external symbols does not make the copier inauthentic.

Evidence

And yet, the fact that symbols are imported from external, even fictitious, sources implies neither that they are meaningless nor that the importers themselves, tainted by the unreality of their symbology, are not themselves genuine. Such thinking rests on the belief that agents who do not produce their own symbols but copy them are themselves inauthentic, which, transferred to the ordinary world, is obviously ludicrous. Plutarch informs us that Alexander the Great slept with the Iliad under his pillow, sought to emulate Achilles’ wrath in combat, and worshiped Homer’s heroes as if they were real (to the point that while visiting Troy he asked to be shown Achilles’ harp—whereupon he was; Plutarch 1952: 544, 547). This obsession did not make Alexander any less real. Actually, it probably boosted his image and gave him greater self-confidence, not unlike that which Lucky Luciano extracted from his new look: “I had on a beautiful double-breasted dark Oxford gray suit, a plain white shirt, a dark blue silk tie with tiny horseshoes on it, which was Arnold’s sense of humor [Arnold Rothstein was Luciano’s Beau Brummel]. I had a charcoal gray herringbone cashmere topcoat, because it was a little cool, with a Cavanagh gray fedora, very plain. Rothstein gimme a whole new image and it had a lotta influence on me. After that, I always wore gray suits and coats, and once in a while I’d throw in a blue serge” (Gosch and Hammer 1975: 58). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 344

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reader’s framework: mafia adopting symbols (like a credit-rating institution adopting formal conventions) is a reputation-signaling strategy, not falsity. Echoes the argument about dress signaling in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back.’ — connects to: Copying an original makes both copy and original equally artificial — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 36
• SEED: Angle: ‘Imported legitimacy’ — how criminal and other non-state institutions borrow high-status symbolic systems (aristocracy, religion, corporate style) to signal trustworthiness to clients.