Another example he cites is British cooking, which improved from the 1980s with the rising prestige associated with leading chefs, influenced by the very alpha male Marco Pierre White. (It is worth noting that, where something is low status, it will often be female-dominated because men place huge emphasis on employment status: whereas the traditional English male chauvinist believed that women belonged in the kitchen, his French equivalent saw it as the exclusive domain of the all-male culinary art.)
But just as often status games can be toxic, and do dreadful things to people — especially if religion, politics or some other marker of identity are involved.
I’ve long believed that political beliefs work as status-markers, and have become more so in recent decades as other signals have declined in importance. People will adopt positions not just out of sincerity, partisan loyalty or conformity, but because they signal social status. Crime and immigration are the most obvious examples, because liberal positions are associated with higher education levels. Low-status members of society are less likely to benefit from freedom of movement, and more likely to be victims of crime. At best these views are vulgar.
This can have perverse results, the most visible example being with architecture. Post-war architecture is almost universally loathed, which is why pre-20th century buildings consistently sell for more, even though they have huge technological disadvantages. Polling shows that a dislike of modernist architecture is one of the few things that every demographic agrees on – black, white and Asian, male and female, rich and poor, young and old. They all prefer the vernacular style.
The one section of society which disagrees happens to be architecture students — and the longer someone has been studying architecture, the more pro-modernist their views. That suggests an opinion which has become a status signal, marking the sophisticate out from the hoi polloi who share Prince Charles’s love of “pastiche”. If the public suddenly decided they actually liked the stuff that wins architecture awards, the high-status people would all be trying to build the new Poundbury.
That may be just my cynicism, but humans will repeat untruths if they feel it helps their position, and Storr cites various social science experiments showing that participants will make statements which they know to be false if other, high-status “participants” (actually actors) say it first. Worse still, “those asked publicly not only endorsed the false majority view, they punished the sole teller of truth by down-grading them.” If you’re ever mobbed on social media for a bad opinion, it might be of some comfort to know that a lot of the people throwing stones will secretly agree with you. Or perhaps it won’t.
To some extent all societal debates are in part a status competition, especially with regards the modern quest for moral status. Although dominance games are behind a great deal of violence across the animal kingdom, humans have evolved to live in far larger groups than other great apes and have therefore become much less violent. Instead, we we have learned to use virtue to raise our status, a quality which shows commitment to the wider community.
Unsurprisingly, it has been the strategy of choice for manipulative bullies since time immemorial, with virtue games inspiring some of the most appalling cruelty in history, ranging from the witch hunts of the 17th century to the ritual child abuse panics of the 1980s.
Those responsible for these atrocities played a virtue game, creating the narrative that they were fighting some all-powerful, evil enemy, with the “maintenance of conformity, correct beliefs and behaviours being of heightened importance.”
The same process is clearly at work behind social media-led bullying, These are always framed in terms of protecting the weak, the urge to care and protect from harm; the more people imagine themselves aiding the vulnerable, the more horrendous their behaviour, giving them free rein to commit what Jonathan Sacks called “altruistic evil”. People do terrible things more out of love than out of hate. But it is also a status game, the aim being to “seek the maximal removal” of their opponent’s status: “ideally, reputational death.”
“When their mob grows into a status goldrush, a massive blast of vindictive energy gets directed at the victim. Attracted by the prizes, more and more ambitious players pile in and the game becomes an animal of attack, glorying in the ecstasy of dominance.”
This is all especially dangerous because status is important not just to individuals but to groups, too, and many people feel that collective success and failure intensely. When a group is on top, its people feel happier; Storr cites a study tracking language across millions of books and newspaper articles which suggests that the British were most content in the 1880s. I don’t find this implausible: despite the huge amounts of poverty and early death relative to today, it was around the period when “to be born an Englishman was to win first prize in the lottery of life”.
Modern-day identity politics is dangerous because it unleashes a competition for status that can never really end. Many idealists hope to make the world fairer by raising the status of one group, often by increasing the prestige of their ancestors through historical reinterpretation. Yet status is a zero-sum game, and unlike wealth the pie cannot be expanded: if your group rises in status, others must fall, and the psychological and even physical effects of losing status are real.
Most of humanity’s problems have to some extent been solved or alleviated by technology and progress; we have never been richer, healthier or more at peace. But desire for status is the one thing that can never be overcome, because it is not enough that I succeed — others must fail.
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SubscribeChasing status is as futile as a dog chasing its own tail. You’ll always find people better and less well off than yourself. It is better to work on personal development and financial freedom, as well as staying fit and eating healthily. Reading stoic philosophy helps too.
Marcus Aurelius: The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
This quote could quite easily apply to modern life.
Wouldn’t it be great if unHerd got rid of the upvote/downvote buttons and just let comments stand on their own merits and not their status. (have an upvote anyway..)
As a frequently downvoted contributor, can I disagree? The buttons let people contribute in a simple, quickly read way – if there were no buttons, everybody would have to post instead (as on twitter). The result also tells you interesting things about the views of the community (which, alas, are often different from mine).
But then. I get my status hit by being listened to rather than by being agreed with 😉
Look at your upvotes Rasmus! Your twitter analogy is apt, as it is a particularly unsatisfying experience and does not reflect the general response. You can only LOVE something or post something in reply (at the constant risk of something going viral and being put upon by baying crowds).
Yes, it is an unusual experience, this 😉
One thing I like about Unherd is that people here disagree but generally treat each other respectfully. It’s very difficult to find that on other platforms.
That’s a stupid thing to say! Only joking !
You’re not joking, you really mean it!
It would be helpful if the buttons were clearly labelled as either agree/disagree, or high/low quality. The standard way to do comment voting is problematic for lots of reasons but one is that it leaves ambiguous what voting is actually for.
I want a button that says ‘this made me think’.
Maybe a ‘lightbulb’ button?
That’s a really good idea
seconded – lets hope that Unherd has read this article properly and had a lightbulb go off !!!!!
I would like a laugh button -hoping that it wouldn’t be used to deride, as it sometimes is on FB.
Good points, well made. If I was feeling negative I’d say there was no right answer. However, positive me says theres no problem either way and I’m glad you got a double status boost too!
Or at least the downvote. I’m sure people self censor a bit because of that.
“Wouldn’t it be great if unHerd got rid of the upvote/downvote buttons”
NO, this way the wheat is separated from the chaff by giving best to worst ranking so we can start at the top – that is if you believe the people here have any ability to discern wheat from chaff.
I would like it to greatly expanded, say 12 different boxes to check up/down, like
Poster is obviously: Crazy, Commie, Fas *ist, loon, Conspiracy Loon, Idiot, Radical Feminist, Q-anon, TDS sufferer, Deplorable, The Worst, XR Corbynite, and so on – so we can look at the aggregated scores of any poster and know what they are without having to read all their stuff to find out.
I wonder how my score would read……
Yeah but Sanford we all know that you are going for the downvote record – why such obsessive signalling – do you need to be seen as specially different and therefore noticed ??
At the very least a button for each herd, likes and dislikes. But better would be a button that marks a comment as worth reading because it adds something illuminating to the article, which you may or may not agree with.
Agreed. It was almost better to not be a subscriber, because the comment section would then be without likes and downvotes.
All of the things you want to work on are things that will grant you status.
Who is this mythical creature that achieves high status while being financially dependent on others or the state? Who achieves status who has no personal development and a lowly fitness level?
If an unvalidated claim to study deeply in the writings of the philosophers is not a claim for status, I don’t know what is.
That may be. I tend to view status as a by-product of a good life, not as a pursuit in itself.
It’s certainly a healthy way of viewing status, if you can make the necessary psychological contortions. I remember Jordan Peterson answering a question by a young woman admitting her feelings of jealousy. His advice was to think, what is it about this person I’m jealous of? Then use that as the basis of an ambition.
I agree. But I am also of the opinion that the sole pursuit of status for no other reason than to gain status would only bring ridicule.
The only way to achieve true status is through achievement.
The question is not the pursuit of status but how much we revel in it once we achieve it.
Then there are those who try to bask in the status of others, but that too, usually ends in ridicule.
True, but the anxieties examined in the article cannot just be wished away. Paradoxically, the best response to them is a class structure, which ringfences status games within narrow bounds, and offers the option of a general downgrade for the sake of a local boost – meaning that a medium sized fish, defeated in the big pond, can leap into the smaller pond and feel better again. It’s better still if the ranks of society have a degree of corporate identity and cooperative strength, for then their members will note that one of their number is in trouble and try to help. Patriotism supplied another mitigation, as did religion – e.g: “He’s one of us!” The general slowing down of “progress” which such practices entailed offered a degree of stability and security in themselves. Now that the ponds of custom and identity have all been swept away and everybody swims selfishly about in the same enormous sea, very little beyond the personal virtues of circumspection, independence and thrift, stands between fragile consciousness and the ruthless imperatives of nature. In short, we’ve been Americanised – an obvious mistake and clearly the prelude to final dissolution.
Someone (Karen Blixen, I think) once wrote that this is a quintessentially bourgeois anxiety. The elite feel safe at the top and the most marginalised people know they cannot sink further. The middle class, meanwhile, are in a constant state of anxiety about whether they are rising or sinking.
Quite so. But the old bourgeoisie, the sort in toppers at Ascot circa 1924, who worked as doctors, solicitors, headteachers and parsons; whose daughters married in lace and orange blossom, whose sons did a stint with the territorials and governed some tiny corner of Kenya – this lot were definitely secure. They didn’t even have to work very hard – city men had long lunches and knocked off at three; auctioneers were more interested in the goods than in the clients; schoolmasters dozed through prep and so on. These were the successor to the “middle state” so praised by Defoe at the start of Robinson Crusoe. Happy days…
Excellent. ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate …’ : the secret of happiness is to know, really KNOW your place.
Indeed it is. Open, permeable hierarchies are better suited to mankind than either the American war of all against all or the brutal, clandestine hierarchies of Bolshevism. One notes the aggressive, mean spirited sarcasm of your remark – so typical of the resentment which poisons contemporary society, and hence evidence in support of my view.
Oops … misunderstanding … there was zero aggression, mean spirit, sarcasm or resentment behind my post: I was in agreement with you, supported by my practical experience of a non-theological interpretation of the hymn verse.
I see. In which case, my apologies. It was the emphasis which wrong-footed me, seeming to hint at oppression when it occurs to me that society resolves itself quite naturally into sub-groups hierarchically arranged.
Perhaps you’ve been “Americanized” in the way that America itself has changed over the past few decades. But that wasn’t always the case. I remember reading how we Yanks could be divided into two quite distinct groups: the elite taking after modern Sweden, and the masses being much like India. That is, irreligious and unpatriotic at the top, and the opposite for the rest of us. Now we have changed largely into the elite model, at least in the Blue areas. Would that it had gone the other way!
I agree that chasing status is futile. Can you suggest a better alternative for giving a sense of significance?
The very Greek pursuit of excellence, or arete. And as Robert Pirsig tells us, we all have an intuitive understanding of what constitutes Quality, and have no need of invidious comparison with anybody else.
There ae of course damaged souls who look at the accomplishments of others in envy and powerlessness. The solution is to attend to their own salvation.
Making something has always worked for me.
That’s nice that you have risen above status-chasing. That puts you above me in the status rankings.
It’s probably been done to death already, but consider the Brexit referendum as a status game playing out nationally.
You could argue that one of the major successful Leave arguments was ‘taking back control’ – as greater control implies greater status.
You could argue that Remain had no major arguments except to maintain their existing status – which they found difficult to express in a positive way and could only express it in terms of future loss (which became more hyperbolic as that tactic failed to persuade).
You could even argue that the remaining Arch Remainers are still so persistent because they see their ‘reduction’ in social status as a personal insult rather than ‘merely’ a political outcome.
Remainers (I am one) certainly would find it hard to lose politically to a low-status bunch. But admit at least that the ‘future loss’ argument was both real and sincere. We believe that Britain inside the EU would have both more money, power, and actual influence, if maybe less status. And maybe, feeling individually of higher status and seeing ourselves as part of the group that made that influence happen, we were less attracted by the gain of feeling part of a big-name club, at the cost of having less actual control over what happened in the world.
I think Remain lost partly because their argument amounted to saying only money matters so we were better off as a colony, and partly because they never addressed the obvious question – Remain in what, exactly? Nobody knew what Remain actually entailed, which was of course their major argument against Leave.
You have a point, but you exaggerate. It was not just money but power and influence, Britain was less free to act alone but never in any sense a colony, and ‘remain in what’ was a lot better defined than ‘leave to become what’ since leave never even said clearly what relationship to the EU they were planning. But yes, enough people valued that status of ‘fully independent and sovereign’ more than they worried about actual influence, and remainers never had an answer to that
From a very quick internet search (News item 10 May 2019):
A big ‘so what’. Do you normally get all upset about locker-room talk (‘p***y-grabbing’, ‘camel-riders’, and the rest)? I do not. .
If anything notice that they were talking about the situation after Britain had left and no longer had a voice inside. Trade negotiations, especially between large blocks and small neighbours, were always about screwing over your opponents.
A lot of people I know voted Brexit because of money. A monetary union of budgetary sovereign states will ultimately fail and the UK would have been dragged down with it…. luckily not linked to the Euro. I said this 20 years ago and was unsurprised to watch the Greek debacle.
I voted Remain but I’ve come to appreciate the case for Leave over time. I think a significant factor was Remain’s failure to harness the rhetorical factors of Ethos, Logos and Pathos. It was all Logos (‘It’ll be bad for the economy’.) Whereas Leave had the sense of identity (Ethos) and the emotion (Pathos) in Take Back Control.
I think Remain lost mainly because they never actually provided an argument for Remaining. All they seemed to do was sneer at the little people.
If this is true, then it means that the meaning of status has changed over time, because there was a time when ‘growing the pie’ worked for status as well. And status was related to what you could buy and put in your home and garage, thus very much tied to wealth. But when wealth creation moves off shore, and class mobility becomes a thing of the past, it becomes easier to gain status at another group’s expense rather than grow the pie.
I do not think that it is a coincidence that contemporously having real contempt and disgust for your fellow man has gone from something that people did, especially when they were young and foolish, but felt somewhat ashamed and embarassed about, through a stage where you _said_ you felt contempt and disgust, but didn’t really feel it but only really meant that somebody had an opinion you disagreed with, to now when people feel proud of their contempt for others and think feeling it is great stuff — empowering, even. This is not just the normal young-person-having-contempt-for-his-elders-but-will-grow-out-of-it stuff, or the appalling cruelty that teenagers can show to one another, but something more akin to ‘everybody has the right to feel contempt for whomever they want to hate, but, of course, you have to hate the right people’.
There was a time when google would go a word search for usage over the past few centuries for free. I had them look up ‘eye-rolling’ for me. Pre WW2 fictional characters rolled their eyes, rarely, and as often with merriment and amusement as anything else. There was a distinct fashion in Romance books, where eye-rolling denoted feeling lustful. Some people rolled their eyes to show their approval of somebody being witty. You cannot imagine that happening right now.
These days, eye-rolling is ubiquitous among fictional characters, and it is all about contempt, and especially about expressing your contempt to third parties about something that somebody is saying or doing. You don’t write about people who are rolling their eyes when they are being lectured alone by somebody they resent (but have to listen to). It’s a great passive-aggressive behaviour — anybody who tried to ban eye-rolling in the classroom would look a fool. But it contributes to making classrooms places where it is harder to learn.
There is no way to back out of this massive normalising of contempt without people coming to the realisation that hating people who disagree with them is not virtuous. This means we should probably stop calling these perfomative and public shows of contempt as ‘virtue signalling’, as if you could become virtuous by hating the right stuff.
Excellent comment. Your reflections on ways in which our society used to be less contemptuous remind me of Orwell saying ‘The gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic..” Not something one would exspect him to say if he was exposed to the english speaking world this past couple of decades.
Certainly not the US. When I moved there in 1998 I started to listen to the Sunday shows. Over in Blighty the Sunday shows are all very collegiate. Over there the shouting was unbearable.
Yes indeed, there seems to be a number of U.S. tv shows based on the premise of three or four women with ear-splittingly loud screeching voices inviting a male participant onto the show and then not letting him speak.
An astute comment. I think both Hannah Arendt and Judith Shklar would approve of your analysis 🙂
Why thank you.
Very good point. “Hate signalling” expresses it much better.
This made me think of Pope: “Just when she learns to roll a melting eye / And hear a spark but think no danger nigh”. Miss Blount was definitely expressing desire, not contempt.
I agree. That’s why on climate change we have virtuous, high status planet savers calling anyone who disagrees “climate deniers”, and the latter calling the others “alarmists”.
That service still exists. It’s called n-gram viewer.
aha! Thank you very much for that.
Being automatically anti-Trump became a status symbol in parts of the Western world. Dare to question someone’s blind belief that he was the political villain of all time – someone akin to Stalin -and you would be branded an unenlightened, alt right, racist, bigot.
I never used to follow US politics much (and being socially liberal probably aligned my values more with Dems) until Clinton challenged Trump and the email scandal unfolded. I dared to suggest that a career politician, especially one whose husband had been president would know that you could not conduct business from a private email account, was hiding something and was not fit to be president.
So daring to criticise Hillary meant that I was automatically pro Donald and I experienced anger and ridicule. To some I became a deplorable and therefore of lower status.
This is an interesting take. Most empty assertions of virtue (as opposed to actual good works) function by impugning the virtue of others. For example: A church in the city where I live has a huge Pride flag draped over the main door that says “We welcome LGBTQ Worshippers”. The implication is that the other churches in the city do not, which is scarcely credible in this day and age. The message, in other words, is by its very nature divisive. It is exactly the same mechanism that makes “taking the knee” so offensive. If going down on your knees and looking somber and defiant makes you seem morally superior, then it does so only by “othering” – pardon the woke parlance – everyone else, who have to be downgraded so that you can be lifted up. It is virtue on the cheap, moreover, since it spares you the onerous task of actually having to do something.
Most empty assertions of virtue (as opposed to actual good works) function by impugning the virtue of others.
Exactly. And this demonstrates the current unwholesome combination of virtue-signalling (rather than actual good works, as you note) and striving for status; and striving for status by vilifying and persecuting others; and aiming for that status in the hope of achieving acceptance into some longed-for social group.
Others have noted that people in general are keenly aware of what confers fashionability, status, acceptance. As with consumer goods, views come in high-status and low-status options. So … spy out the latest high-status views, proclaim those views loudly, spit on ‘the deplorables’: and hey presto! you’re instantly brainy, nice, fashionable, friendship-worthy, virtuous, high-class, all in one go!
And all without having to actually, er, do anything.
The same analysis applies in the US where some people put signs in front of their houses that say things like “Science is real” or “Hate has no home here”–the implication being that their benighted neighbors believe in alchemy, and/or have homes seething with hatred. It’s another way of trying to achieve moral superiority by downgrading others.
Thanks for this. I’ve been trying to work out why I’m so offended by the knee-taking thing, and I think this is partly it. Also I’m deeply suspicious of the physical act of self-abasement. If we’d been asked to take the knee to the NHS during the first lockdown, rather than applaud them, I suspect it would have been less popular.
I share your sentiments, but would you mind in future quarantining “take the knee” inside quote marks.
Yes indeed. This is why I boo footballers who “take the knee”.
Also, thanks for quarantining the ridiculous phrase inside quote marks, where it belongs.
In the US, not only are there churches that do not welcome LGBTQ worshippers, but there are ones who, if the world was shaped to their liking, would criminalize homosexuality. A little overshoot in emphasizing inclusiveness is not so divisive if seen in this context.
Is it status we chase or belonging? Fear of loss and exclusion are two of the most powerful human motivators, and increase in impact under conditions of high inequality and unpredictability (smaller chance of being in the safe group). Status isn’t a zero-sum game, or one with universal rules! Does make for great entertainment, though.
Your point about belonging is excellent, after reading it I realise the article was poorer for its omission. We chase both though, surely.
I agree that fear of exclusion is a significant motivation to consider, and that status may confer acceptance and belonging.
However, I think that status is a zero-sum game. In fact, I would say that’s how status works. If one person or group is enhanced, then other individuals or groups are correspondingly debased.
(Rather banal parallel: if an 11th person arrives at a queue of 10 people, and gets ushered to the front of the queue, that person goes up 10 places, and the original 10 all go down one place each. +10 -10 = 0.)
Similarly, the concept in economics of ‘positional goods’.
Hello Ed, very interesting article with fun historical background as usual. I generally agree with the link you’ve drawn between moral image and status. Psychological studies have found that moral perception is an important aspect of impression formation. People tend to rate themselves as morally superior to the ‘average person’, a bias that is extremely stable across age and resistant to challenging information from the environment. Basically, moral image is a huge deal to people’s understandings about themselves and others.
There are a few particulars I’m unsure of though: for example, are low-status people ungenerous towards others merely because of status shame, or are they exhibiting survival instincts that are unnecessary for high-status people? In the workplace setting example, do people dismiss low-status clients simply because of status or because high-status clients tend to be sharing news that is relevant to more people at the table (because they oversee more people)? Basically at points, the role status plays appears slightly inflated.
A general question to conclude: are standards moral because high-status people like them? Or do high-status people like standards because they are moral? At the moment, I don’t have an answer: it’s always curious when a belief once reviled as a social evil (e.g., an acceptance of unconventional romantic relations) becomes the pinnacle of moral royalty. Anyway, this was a good read that generated interesting thoughts and questions. Thank you.
“Status is extremely important to wellbeing, so much so that it can have a profound effect on our health. ”
There it is – right there.
To win at the game of life, one must achieve an internal equilibrium such that “status” (of the sort being discussed here) is utterly unimportant – to the extent that the very idea of it having any effect on one’s health would be quite ridiculous.
Happiness and true resilience comes from within. Nowhere else.
Ain’t that the truth. And that’s why no one who seeks high office should be allowed to attain it.
What Jonathan Sacks called “altruistic evil”, Bertrand Russell called “the delicious emotion of self-righteous cruelty”
“Bertrand Russell called “the delicious emotion of self-righteous cruelty””
This is one of the reasons I enjoy the comments section. I learn a lot here. It’s easy to conclude that destructive virtue signaling and self-righteous behavior is a modern phenomenon fueled by the internet, but from this comment I learned Russell addressed the issue, and from Julian Farrows’ comment I learned Chesterton addressed the issue–with much the same conclusion.
This helps explain how fragile is our right to free expression. The case for free speech assumes that people are devoted to seeking knowledge. If they are really devoted to the status conferred by fashionable beliefs, why not conspicuously silence people who don’t agree with you?
Yes, but I take heart from the fact that there are times when those who go against the fashionable beliefs gain status, in the long term, for their courage. I find I’m increasingly impressed by those who know their own minds, speak their views even at personal risk, and have thought through their opinions rather than adopting the most fashionable ones, as you might the latest clothing trends.
“Yet status is a zero-sum game, and unlike wealth the pie cannot be expanded: if your group rises in status, others must fall, and the psychological and even physical effects of losing status are real.”
Insightful. This also explains why many socialists don’t care that in practice socialism harms the average person’s well being – its only the range of income and wealth, and thus status that matters.
“Those responsible for these atrocities played a virtue game, creating the narrative that they were fighting some all-powerful, evil enemy, with the “maintenance of conformity, correct beliefs and behaviours being of heightened importance.””
Bit too cynical there Ed, what about people who have status because they are Virtuous, Moral, Brave, Chivalrous, Genius, Talented, Dutiful and Remarkable ?
Great people, Mother Theresa, Florence Nightingale, General MacArthur, Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Alfred the Great, Einstein, President Lincoln, George Washington, Queen Victoria, Lord Nelson……..
I have been around a lot of people, and some are just much more than 99.9% of people are – and not by playing power and virtue games, they just are great people, they are a cut way above us, and all can see it in them.
To me, what you describe is the humility these people have because they are striving for a higher goal and so are not reliant on status.
Yes, I agree such people are noticeably a cut above, they have a purpose, know that purpose and thus in a good place and usually exude humility subconsciously. But all that does not just extend to just our leaders. Humility is good for all of us individually and for our relationships, sadly fewer and fewer would be aware of what the word even meant, even sadder some would see it as a weakness. I have seen humble people handle stress more effectively maybe because they have a freedom from pride and/or arrogance, so are not overly worried about proving (I struggle to find a better word) themselves… but such folk are few and far between.
Haven’t several of the people you cite been subjected to attempted cancellation? Nowadays genuine courage and virtue are more likely to be resented than admired because they set standards that most of us can’t meet.
Another article about climate change alarmists…
Excellent article, though somewhat overstated.
Life doesnt have to be a status game, often there’s a strong counter drive towards egalitarianism. E.g. in many indigenous cultures, some online communities, in Sweden and I guess some other countries.
Several studies in the last decade or so find people become less compassionate and pro social as they increase in wealth and class (appreciate that’s not quite the same as status). E.g. Piff , Keltner and others. Similar wisdom about the rich found is in the Bible, which also has some strong encouragement for equality (Gal 3:28 etc.). I’d also agree with Sanford Artzen that many playing the virtue game have a sincere desire to make things better for others.
This is an interesting article but I still do not understand why people need status markers. Are there other sources of significance? Status markers are clearly relative rather than absolute and this detracts from their value.
Humans need status markers to know how to behave and fit in. Not everyone can act as if they were kings, that would be delusional.
Imagine being a thin slightly insecure male, you are a low status individual. Then you exercise and build your body and strength for a couple of years. Now you have higher status. With status comes an commonly held and shared perception of how to behave yourself.
There will always be enough mugs worried about being high/low status to keep these sort of articles in print, but thankfully the vast majority of people don’t give two poos about this. Look down your street and see all the high value cars with lease/rental number plates. These are the people i am thinking about. In a less cossetted society they’d get an early Darwin award, but in the wealthy part of the world we indulge them, for now. The wisdom of the saying “you can call me anything, but don’t call me late for lunch” may one day be visited upon them, yimakh shemo.
While status based on dominance or achievement is zero sum, status based on virtue clearly isn’t. That is why it is a huge social advance that virtue has become an important indicator of status. It is a category error to conflate bullying of people for transgressions (dominance) with attaining status based on virtue.
G. K. Chesterton
Thank you for that. Been a long time since I have re-read Orthodoxy. Maybe it is time again …
It would be nice if that were what is happening at the moment. But I fear that too much is in reality virtue-signalling, rather than virtue in action.
Similar point: what is actually going on is certain people claiming virtue, while in reality doing nothing more than behaving viciously towards others.
Thanks for correcting Anton’s mistake.
@ Anton
Isn’t the problem today that people want the status without doing the virtue? Rather, they just “signal” the virtue frequently, and often damagingly, by disparaging someone else perceived to be on “the opposite side”, in the process. There’s no virtue in an empty, showy virtue signal. Quite the reverse.
An old adage suggests that we try, each day, to do someone a good turn. But importantly, no one must know that we did it – including the recipient – if anyone knows, then it doesn’t count. No points. Put that in the context of people who don’t do anything virtuous, but who do shriek their virtue on Twitter, and it makes today’s virtue look pretty lame, wouldn’t you agree?
I think there is a great deal less real virtue in today’s world than there was a few decades ago.
Status, and belonging, are important drivers in life but for personal well being I suspect that it is one’s personal perception of one’s success that is more significant than any objective measure. A lot of very successful people suffer from uncertainty about their status in the eyes of others. Trump won election to one or the most prestigious offices in the world but was disturbed by reports on the size of his inauguration crowd. The reward that is lasting is the effort and accomplishment underlying the status, not the recognition of others.
A film première raises the status of a film, if a red carpet is rolled out and the great and the good as well as top stars from the world of the arts and entertainments attend it. Well, they were more exclusive affairs long ago. And then the ordinary people would wish to mimic the stars and go and see the film.
I recall watching a documentary on the stage musical Mamma Mia! entering the Chinese market. This happened about ten years ago. If I recall the documentary correctly, its premiere performance, in Shanghai I think it was, was attended by very well dressed, intelligent-looking souls who knew all their Chinese operas. I took them to be the upper middle class, the sort of audience at a classical music concert. And, although the documentary did not gloss over the difficulties of bringing a stage musical from the West to China, the audience looked mystified; but the producers of the show were satisfied all the same. Perhaps the next day’s publicity carried the news that the learned and good of Shanghai had rolled into the theatre staging Mamma Mia! — and that’s all that mattered. The official seal of approval meant the ordinary people would now go to see it. Status had been accorded to the show. (Has the status of ABBA’s canon been raised or lowered by Mamma Mia!? Another topic).
How to raise the status of fish? In particular mackerel. What about porridge? In some European countries, porridge is seen as peasant food.
“I can’t meet you for coffee. I’m going for my root canal tomorrow. Remember when I told you and the girls last Friday evening? My third one! By the way! Did you know my dentist was telling me I’ll only be able to eat some porridge later. What a spoilsport! Porridge!” Shades of Abigail’s Party, n’est-ce pas?
I suppose those who cannot attain status concentrate on retaining their dignity. Like Laurel and Hardy, who always fretted about their bowler hats.
Some good observations in here as always, but as others have pointed out it overstates the case.
It’s in the tone of something a Incel would write.
Yes, status is a zero-sum game, whereas RECOGNITION is not. How about distinguishing between the more or less superficial current criteria for attributing status and the underlying question of recognition?
The lack of immediate connection between the two prompts the question: WHY? The short answer is what is already said: sometimes people act on quick, superficial judgements rather than the somewhat deeper question of truth. Then we are already close to the basic question of good and evil, true and false.
So that would be my objection to the above article (and probably to the book). It deals with “status” as if it were a separate matter. More interesting (and probably less prone to cynicism) would be dealing with status in a broader context. Yes, I suggest the author writes a different book (article).
This rings so very true. But I do not think it covers everyone. There are people who genuinely don’t chase status and others who ape and copy in order to not feel left out – or even so as not to get sacked.
God humans are pathetic
Maybe the best thing that can happen for humans/the planet/abused animals is that all computers crash due to a mega virus and all these pathetic ego trippers have to take up gardening for 6 hours a day to survive !!!