“Not terribly sensitive to status” isn’t the same thing as completely indifferent to it or committed to lowering one’s status.
I think a great many people aren’t working to raise their status, even if they’re making some efforts to keep it from being lowered.
Trouble is, many important status-enhancing behaviors are as natural as breathing air for some people, but mysterious, unnatural, and hard to pull off for others. People of the latter sort have to commit significant thinking and effort if they wish to achieve the same results that others get by simply going with the flow.
When people whose natural behavior is decently good status-wise say that they’re “not terribly sensitive to status,” it’s as if someone with good language skills said he was not terribly sensitive to fluency of speech, without stopping to consider the fate of folks suffering from noticeable speech impediments. The analogy is not perfect, in that many more people suffer from impediments in social behavior than in speech, but the basic point holds: just like generating fluent speech, navigating through human status games is a task of immense complexity, which however some people can handle adequately or even superbly without any conscious effort—which can make them think that there isn’t really anything significant about it, if they haven’t stopped to consider the problems of those who aren’t as lucky in that regard.
So, yes, lots of people who don’t suffer from status-related problems aren’t investing effort in raising or maintaining their status, in the same sense that they aren’t investing effort in maintaining their language skills. For them, the hard work is done by their brains at subconscious levels, and manifests itself as spontaneous adequate behavior. That, however, doesn’t mean that the whole issue is vacuous, no more than the fact that most people speak normally without conscious effort (and some with great eloquence) means that linguistics is a vacuous science.
For the record, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s about a decade back; believe me when I say that I’m one of those people who’s had to “commit significant thinking and effort if they wish to achieve the same results that others get by simply going with the flow.”
If anything, I’d say that having to deal with status in a conscious and deliberate way has caused my status-indifference: I have a very clear picture of how shallow that game is. I only play it when I need to.
I’d agree with Nancy that polyamory isn’t consistent with maximum achievement. Devoting resources to intimate relationships always has that effect, even if you only have one at a time; polyamory necessarily requires more of an investment. It’s a trade-off that I’m more than happy to make, but your priorities may not agree. It’s (potentially) a good reason not to be interested in polyamory.
NancyLebovitz:
Trouble is, many important status-enhancing behaviors are as natural as breathing air for some people, but mysterious, unnatural, and hard to pull off for others. People of the latter sort have to commit significant thinking and effort if they wish to achieve the same results that others get by simply going with the flow.
When people whose natural behavior is decently good status-wise say that they’re “not terribly sensitive to status,” it’s as if someone with good language skills said he was not terribly sensitive to fluency of speech, without stopping to consider the fate of folks suffering from noticeable speech impediments. The analogy is not perfect, in that many more people suffer from impediments in social behavior than in speech, but the basic point holds: just like generating fluent speech, navigating through human status games is a task of immense complexity, which however some people can handle adequately or even superbly without any conscious effort—which can make them think that there isn’t really anything significant about it, if they haven’t stopped to consider the problems of those who aren’t as lucky in that regard.
So, yes, lots of people who don’t suffer from status-related problems aren’t investing effort in raising or maintaining their status, in the same sense that they aren’t investing effort in maintaining their language skills. For them, the hard work is done by their brains at subconscious levels, and manifests itself as spontaneous adequate behavior. That, however, doesn’t mean that the whole issue is vacuous, no more than the fact that most people speak normally without conscious effort (and some with great eloquence) means that linguistics is a vacuous science.
For the record, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s about a decade back; believe me when I say that I’m one of those people who’s had to “commit significant thinking and effort if they wish to achieve the same results that others get by simply going with the flow.”
If anything, I’d say that having to deal with status in a conscious and deliberate way has caused my status-indifference: I have a very clear picture of how shallow that game is. I only play it when I need to.
I’d agree with Nancy that polyamory isn’t consistent with maximum achievement. Devoting resources to intimate relationships always has that effect, even if you only have one at a time; polyamory necessarily requires more of an investment. It’s a trade-off that I’m more than happy to make, but your priorities may not agree. It’s (potentially) a good reason not to be interested in polyamory.
Even monogamy isn’t always consistent with maximum achievement, as illustrated by the expression “married to the job”.