People rarely exhibit long-term planning to acquire social status any more than we/they exhibit long-term planning to acquire health. E.g., most unhappily single folk do not systematically practice their social skills unless this is encouraged by their local social environment.
Long-term planning for status: Long-term education plans (e.g., law school or medical school)
For health: Controlling weight; regular medical check-ups
[I omit the last because I don’t understand what it means to “practice social skills.”]
You overstate the degree of goal-urge disconnect. Usually, when people ignore their professed goals, it’s a case of “approving of approving.” If goals were truly so disconnected from conduct as you imply (and have apparently convinced yourself is the case), they would serve little real function (except Hansonian signaling). You report that your friends came to grief by living by their urges alone, but if goals have minimal inherent power to guide conduct (that is, if they don’t tend spontaneously to recruit urges in their support), then we would all (or most of us) be living like your unfortunate friends, since most people don’t go through the self-help exercises of conscientiously attaching urges to goals.
A hypothesis better accounting for the facts is that we often don’t pursue our goals because our limited supply of will-power produces decision fatigue. We have to carefully focus our efforts and only pursue the goals most valuable at the margin. But that doesn’t mean we practically ignore our paramount goals.
Long-term planning for status: Long-term education plans (e.g., law school or medical school)
For health: Controlling weight; regular medical check-ups
[I omit the last because I don’t understand what it means to “practice social skills.”]
You overstate the degree of goal-urge disconnect. Usually, when people ignore their professed goals, it’s a case of “approving of approving.” If goals were truly so disconnected from conduct as you imply (and have apparently convinced yourself is the case), they would serve little real function (except Hansonian signaling). You report that your friends came to grief by living by their urges alone, but if goals have minimal inherent power to guide conduct (that is, if they don’t tend spontaneously to recruit urges in their support), then we would all (or most of us) be living like your unfortunate friends, since most people don’t go through the self-help exercises of conscientiously attaching urges to goals.
A hypothesis better accounting for the facts is that we often don’t pursue our goals because our limited supply of will-power produces decision fatigue. We have to carefully focus our efforts and only pursue the goals most valuable at the margin. But that doesn’t mean we practically ignore our paramount goals.