Flatness

In my view, the key characteristic of  someone who is NOT being bourgeois is the ability to be at odds with oneself, or in opposition to oneself. What this implies is that one part of the self is capable opposing another part. Despite proclamations by postmodernists that capitalism has taken all the fun and wind out of transgression, I maintain that there is an overabundance of possible situations in which one can find something within oneself to oppose.

Without such a characteristic of being capable of opposing oneself, a person simply isn't all that interesting. Lack of self-opposition leads to being dependent on others to judge one fairly. Yet this is an ultimate form of moral abnegation. To be judged by others but never really by oneself means that one travels through life without self-awareness, never really mastering on a deep level one's own ideas, feeling for directions or goals.

To be self-consciously at odds with oneself is much more interesting and allows character to form.   Unfortunately, in the eyes of  bourgeois individuals, the primary 'things in themselves', (that is, they themselves) are deeply and interminably unknowable.