It seems to me that there are several precisifications of this question.
One, might status-seeking be a motivation of suicide or suicidal ideation? I highly doubt it. Of course, many a suicide (quite possibly the vast majority) is motivated by a desire to escape the painful experience of being low-status, but I don’t think the prospect of being posthumously post-status plays any role.
Two, is suicide status-threatening for the bereaved? I’m pretty sure it is perceived that way. It does, after all, signal that the suicide didn’t care enough about them, didn’t want to “play their game”, if you will—in that way, it does seem very analogous to the child leaving the game.
Three, is suicide perceived as high-status on the societal level? It seems like in the case of leaving the game, the status attack it implies usually doesn’t go through, but is averted by denouncing the suicide as irrational or immoral or both. Not that the status threat idea is needed to explain this behavior, it’s obvious enough why such memes would exist. So on the whole, I think suicide isn’t perceived as high status.
Now there are exceptions to this. Cultural conventions may exempt certain groups from the suicide prohibition and even explicitly mark it high-status for them, as in the case of the samurai. I expect that suicide wasn’t high-status if committed by a Japenese commoner.
Then there are artists in our culture, for which suicide doesn’t seem to be particularly low-status. I suspect that this is because they are, to some extent, granted a special position and seen as not playing society’s game anyway.
And then there are some small circles where suicide is considered perfectly respectable or even high-status (this would be the traditional European intellectuals, I suppose), but that kind of local status-reversal happens for all kinds of things in various subcommunities.
I think one might want to make a distinction between society’s proclaimed statement that suicide is immoral and how it is biologically wired. If biologically, we are wired to perceive suicide as high-status and it causes obvious negative effects, especially to the community, then it makes sense that as a society we have evolved to proclaim it as low-status.
For example, Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rate. My guess is that it as Japan’s society proclaims less than others that suicide is low-status. This might be part of causation architecture behind the high suicide rate.
If biologically, we are wired to perceive suicide as high-status and it causes obvious negative effects, especially to the community, then it makes sense that as a society we have evolved to proclaim it as low-status.
You’re right. I didn’t take into account that it may be possible for something to be high-status without people acknowledging it as such (even to themselves), depending on what exactly our internal status assessor is sensitive to.
It seems to me that there are several precisifications of this question.
One, might status-seeking be a motivation of suicide or suicidal ideation? I highly doubt it. Of course, many a suicide (quite possibly the vast majority) is motivated by a desire to escape the painful experience of being low-status, but I don’t think the prospect of being posthumously post-status plays any role.
Two, is suicide status-threatening for the bereaved? I’m pretty sure it is perceived that way. It does, after all, signal that the suicide didn’t care enough about them, didn’t want to “play their game”, if you will—in that way, it does seem very analogous to the child leaving the game.
Three, is suicide perceived as high-status on the societal level? It seems like in the case of leaving the game, the status attack it implies usually doesn’t go through, but is averted by denouncing the suicide as irrational or immoral or both. Not that the status threat idea is needed to explain this behavior, it’s obvious enough why such memes would exist. So on the whole, I think suicide isn’t perceived as high status.
Now there are exceptions to this. Cultural conventions may exempt certain groups from the suicide prohibition and even explicitly mark it high-status for them, as in the case of the samurai. I expect that suicide wasn’t high-status if committed by a Japenese commoner.
Then there are artists in our culture, for which suicide doesn’t seem to be particularly low-status. I suspect that this is because they are, to some extent, granted a special position and seen as not playing society’s game anyway.
And then there are some small circles where suicide is considered perfectly respectable or even high-status (this would be the traditional European intellectuals, I suppose), but that kind of local status-reversal happens for all kinds of things in various subcommunities.
I think one might want to make a distinction between society’s proclaimed statement that suicide is immoral and how it is biologically wired. If biologically, we are wired to perceive suicide as high-status and it causes obvious negative effects, especially to the community, then it makes sense that as a society we have evolved to proclaim it as low-status.
For example, Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rate. My guess is that it as Japan’s society proclaims less than others that suicide is low-status. This might be part of causation architecture behind the high suicide rate.
You’re right. I didn’t take into account that it may be possible for something to be high-status without people acknowledging it as such (even to themselves), depending on what exactly our internal status assessor is sensitive to.