To be fair, I think that this triad is largely a function of the sort of society one lives in. It could be summarized as “submit to virtuous social orders, seek to dominate non-virtuous ones if you have the ability to discern between them”
I think it’s more along the lines of: people in the third stage have acquired and digested all the low-hanging and medium-hanging fruit that those in the second stage are struggling to acquire, that advancing further is now really hard. So they now seek sex and money/power partly because acquiring those will (in the long run) help them further advance in the areas that they have currently put on hold. And partly because of course it’s also nice to have them.
Could anyone elaborate on this? All the ones listed in the article seem fairly obvious or well-explained, but nothing jumps out to me on this one.
I think the problem is that I don’t see what positions these are occupying or signaling: The clothing stuff is about wealth, while all the political ones are about intelligence (apparent intelligence, specifically). My assumption is that the first is someone who has very little money and the last is someone who has a lot, but then I’m not sure where the middle one would be.
That and perhaps that Yvain didn’t list any distinguishing features between the first and last ones.
I’m noticing now that all the counter-signaling ones tend to be slightly different- I’m sure the Old Rich didn’t wear the exact same things as the poor, but rather nicer but less showy clothes. All the political examples have the third-stage ones usually acknowledging the existence of and problems with the lowest stage, often with significant differences. Likewise Hipsters have a lot of distinctly hipster traits that don’t make them look like any particular non-mainstream group, although my knowledge of Hipsters comes almost entirely from jokes about Hipsters rather than having seen the phenomenon much.
I also recently noticed this triad:
Seek sex + money / pursue only pure truth and virtue / seek sex + money
To be fair, I think that this triad is largely a function of the sort of society one lives in. It could be summarized as “submit to virtuous social orders, seek to dominate non-virtuous ones if you have the ability to discern between them”
I think it’s more along the lines of: people in the third stage have acquired and digested all the low-hanging and medium-hanging fruit that those in the second stage are struggling to acquire, that advancing further is now really hard. So they now seek sex and money/power partly because acquiring those will (in the long run) help them further advance in the areas that they have currently put on hold. And partly because of course it’s also nice to have them.
Could anyone elaborate on this? All the ones listed in the article seem fairly obvious or well-explained, but nothing jumps out to me on this one. I think the problem is that I don’t see what positions these are occupying or signaling: The clothing stuff is about wealth, while all the political ones are about intelligence (apparent intelligence, specifically). My assumption is that the first is someone who has very little money and the last is someone who has a lot, but then I’m not sure where the middle one would be.
That and perhaps that Yvain didn’t list any distinguishing features between the first and last ones. I’m noticing now that all the counter-signaling ones tend to be slightly different- I’m sure the Old Rich didn’t wear the exact same things as the poor, but rather nicer but less showy clothes. All the political examples have the third-stage ones usually acknowledging the existence of and problems with the lowest stage, often with significant differences. Likewise Hipsters have a lot of distinctly hipster traits that don’t make them look like any particular non-mainstream group, although my knowledge of Hipsters comes almost entirely from jokes about Hipsters rather than having seen the phenomenon much.