Maybe our culture fits our status-seeking surprisingly well because our culture was designed around it.
We design institutions to channel and utilize our status-seeking instincts. We put people in status conscious groups like schools, platoons, or companies. There we have ceremonies and titles that draw our attention to status.
And this works! Ask yourself, is it more effective to educate a child individually or in a group of peers? The latter. Is it easier to lead a solitary soldier or a whole squad? The latter. Do people seek a promotion or a pay rise? Both, probably. The fact is, that people are easier to guide when in large groups, and easier to motivate with status symbols.
From this perspective, our culture and inclination for seeking status have developed in tandem, making it challenging to determine which influences the other more. However, it appears that culture progresses more rapidly than genes, suggesting that culture conforms to our genes, rather than the reverse.
Another perspective: Sometimes our status seeking is nonfunctional and therefore nonaligned. For example we also waste a lot of effort on status, which seems like a nonfunctional drive. People will compete for high status professions like musician, streamer, celebrity and most will fail, which makes it seem like an unwise investment of time. This seems misaligned, as it’s not adaptive.
Maybe our culture fits our status-seeking surprisingly well because our culture was designed around it.
We design institutions to channel and utilize our status-seeking instincts. We put people in status conscious groups like schools, platoons, or companies. There we have ceremonies and titles that draw our attention to status.
And this works! Ask yourself, is it more effective to educate a child individually or in a group of peers? The latter. Is it easier to lead a solitary soldier or a whole squad? The latter. Do people seek a promotion or a pay rise? Both, probably. The fact is, that people are easier to guide when in large groups, and easier to motivate with status symbols.
From this perspective, our culture and inclination for seeking status have developed in tandem, making it challenging to determine which influences the other more. However, it appears that culture progresses more rapidly than genes, suggesting that culture conforms to our genes, rather than the reverse.
Another perspective: Sometimes our status seeking is nonfunctional and therefore nonaligned. For example we also waste a lot of effort on status, which seems like a nonfunctional drive. People will compete for high status professions like musician, streamer, celebrity and most will fail, which makes it seem like an unwise investment of time. This seems misaligned, as it’s not adaptive.