Hi Toonalfrink, Status seeking appears to have its origins in infancy, consequently it is a fundamental form of cognitive behavior that can only be changed with sincere diligence and perseverance. Status confirmation rewards begin with early parental approval, and because it is a rewarding behavior, status seeking can resemble an addictive behavior.
Perhaps, in extreme cases there are people who may become addicted to their own hormones produced in response to the social and material privileges awarded to their status.
Like many behaviors, status seeking may become habituated, unconscious behavior.
Fortunately, many members of most societies often recognize inappropriate bids for approval or reward and may respond by chiding or punishing; however, the flip side is that punishment can become a form of status seeking gratification.
Even if a person feels as if status of any sort is deplorable or undesirable, they will most likely, at times, revert to status seeking behaviors, particularly when stressed.
Oddly enough, declaring status seeking to be deplorable can be a form of seeking status.
And yes, please, lets try to treat and regard all other people as equals, not only with regard to status, but in all other dimensions of existence, such as intelligence, security, justice, health care, finance, employment, and other resources.
Gung ho! We’re all in this fix together, for better or worse.
Enjoy!
Regarding:
What if the accepted intuition regarding the relationships of our minds and bodies is wrong? What if our minds act through our brains to control our bodies, but are really independent of any particular physical body?
If it is true that there are many alternate reality universes, then perhaps we have multiple iterations of instances of our specific, personal dna sequences; the physical organisms encoded by our dna sequences in different universes may be collectivized by groups of minds sharing similar senses of identity including similar physical traits distributed across a spectrum of alternate realities.
To our own ways of seeing things, we each have many bodies sharing many minds distributed across many universes. It appears (to ourselves) as if our minds resemble energetic fields ‘attuned’ to our specific physical organisms, but capable of read/write/command operations across a spectrum of other organisms, such that those organisms most resembling ‘our own’ organisms are the easiest for us to operate.
Then, as we see it, it may be possible to have the will to do something before we can locate a brain/body able to act in response to our will.
Enjoy!