it’s not contradictory at all. the white shirt itself is meaningless, it could have been a blue or yellow shirt, who cares. but now that the world put chashivus into it, it now has chashivus. the same as anything. things only have value when people put meaning into it and then it has value (except for Torah). why does gold have value? because people made it valuable. care to explain rav hutner rav chaim and the chazon ish? pretty sure the chazon ish even held that people should be wearing reklech. still waiting on that. also waiting on why kiruv rebbeim tell baalei teshuva to wait before waiting on a hat. i know a bt whos been wanting to put one one for months but his rebbe kept telling him no. if it’s “just a dress hat” then why would that be?
so please explain to me why my friends who go home with payos hat and jacket don’t have problems with
people talking to them inappropriately or inviting them to inappropriate places, while the boys who kept their levush from before all have these issues? if what you’re saying is true, then it should make zero difference. it should be “okay this guy likes to wear a dress hat very nice, very cool. so you wanna go to to x y or z?”. when they see his levush change they realize he stands for something else now, that he identifies as a ben Torah so he doesn’t want to talk about or do these things. and then you know what? when that boy looks in the mirror he sees the levush a ben Torah and he’s going to have the mindset of a ben Torah. i’ve seen it plenty in my life.
“The fact that people perceive some symbolism in the black hat, does not change what it is. A dress hat. No more, no less.” so gold is just a piece of metal. diamond is just some compressed carbon. the fact that people decided it looked pretty and made it expensive does not change what it is. compressed carbon. no more, no less. while you are right to some extent, there is a reality in the world that now it has more value because people gave it value. otherwise gold and diamonds would be dirt cheap, like any other rock. the only thing that has value no matter what people do is the Torah. other than that everything is inherently meaningless until meaning is put into it.