Secret-society exclusion expresses aristocratic valuation of members

Evidence

The separateness of the secret society expresses a value: people separate from others because they do not want to make common cause with them, because they wish to let them feel their superiority. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 8814

Categorization

• XREF: The aristocratizing motive of exclusion parallels the social-capital idea that group-boundary creation is a strategy of value distinction.