Iconoclasm and the Products of the Times

 The bottom line is that iconoclasm doesn't work. It's fake.
 Allegedly iconoclasm is about not being the 'product of your times,' instead trying to transcend them. Put in spade language, it's about putting your thoughts in a hierarchy of logic rather than being shackled to producing support for the existing social hierarchy.
 Iconoclasm is in fact always hypericonism, the idea that the icons are unworthy representatives of the higher status, and need to be replaced with better icons. Idolatry is (supposed to be) the mistake of worshipping the symbol instead of the symbolized, and iconoclasm is the process of destroying the symbol so as to reach the symbolized more directly. It is never about idolizing something else. Iconoclasts never stop being idolaters, they simply want somewhat improved idols.

 If you're of low status, it's tempting to support high-status individuals because they can beat you up if you don't. If you're of high status, why would you want to rock the boat? The system is already rewarding you (so you believe, ref: wealth caps) why do anything to jeopardize that? Never mind defecting on cooperators, if you're already in position to change the system, wouldn't changing the system be defecting against yourself? (Revenge is Sour.)

 As a low-status individual, you can't change the system anyway. (Revenge Sourer.) If you could make it do what you want, you would already be of high status. Your live options are to appease the system or to antagonize the system. 

 This happens not merely subconsciously, but unconsciously. Trying to "win" the existing game happens as a reflex. It's not strategic.

 Put this another way: you don't normally think about the symbols of foreigners. For iconoclasm to be perceived as iconoclasm, it must be about the local, parochial symbols, and if it doesn't immediately fizzle into a fringe niche (burning sodomy-pride flags) then it's a winning move in the domestic game. If you have not submitted to the GAE in a sufficient sense, you don't think about rainbow flags at all, unless someone is trying to forcibly nail one up in your living room. 

 Even if you are wholly fascinated with base motives and rat racing, you don't want to be nothing more than a product of the times. Rome fell; all Empire will fall; if you are nothing but a product, you will fall along with it. 

 When an Empire falls, the elite are slaughtered. The Empire is always, sooner or later, overrun by barbarians. The barbarians successfully identify the old elite as a possible threat, and eliminate that threat the simple and easy way. You can't stop old-money families from rising to the top, but you can certainly stop them from existing, if they were dumb enough to shackle their fortunes to Empire. Indeed there's an argument that aristocrat slaughter is the primary driver of post-Bronze dysgenics.

 

 Society needs replaceable parts. If Sulla had not voluntarily relinquished power, he would have produced a Rome which relied entirely on a Sulla to function. As we know, there was no replacement Sulla. You don't want to run a machine that instantly collapses if one guy retires, gets sick, or gets assassinated by a product-man.
 However, you don't want to be one of those replaceable parts, due to the [why bother] factor. Why work hard if someone else is willing and able to work at least 99% as well as you? Take an easy job instead, perhaps part-time. Buy an index fund or real estate until you can live off rents and let the strivers do the striving. Technically you could be in it purely for base material motives, for the money, but it's not hard to find someone who will work better than someone motivated purely by pecuniary incentives. 

 Society needs NPCs, but there's no reason to be an NPC unless you don't have a choice. You want intellectual liberty.
 Iconoclasm &c is not intellectual liberty. Ironically, intellectual liberty is discipline and submission to a higher power. To avoid being a redundant and predictable product of the times, 

 As any kind of scholar or thinker, intellectual liberty from social status is non-negotiable. While we can use another cabinet-maker, as cabinet-makers have a finite throughput, there is no need to think a new idea more than once. 

 Put another way, there's a reason the shaman or witch-doctor lives out in the woods, rather than with the rest of the tribe.