I would say that being recognized as a competent professional is a HUGE part of one’s feeling of status.
We have threads here where people insist they pay no attention to advertising or marketing or public relations. They’re too smart to be taken in. They don’t click on ads. They see through the bullshit.
And yet advertising and marketing and public relations work, and work best when they’re done in ways that don’t make you feel the manipulation. Much of what they do is steer people to attain what they feel their proper status is. Status can be measured and defined in hundreds of ways, as noted in my earlier link. Thinking of status unidimensionally is sometimes the entire point of the manipulation industry, but mostly not. Status is more like a dartboard. You get points anywhere the dart lands. Some spots may be worth more than others, but everybody plays the game.
BTW, hyperbole is part of that manipulation. It’s like clickbait. People can’t help but respond, if only to refute. Works here on the Dope every single time.
Yes the statement implies never achieving the goal, whatever it might be, and is overstating the case in my opinion. I do think the vast majority of people have an interest in either achieving or maintaining status and that it’s not necessarily about always working upward. This is probably why it’s more obvious in younger people as they are more likely to be still searching for who they are and how they fit in to the social machine.
Different people advertise their status in different ways. One approach I more commonly see among those with high levels of status is to ostentatiously eschew traditional status displays: conspicuous non-consumption, matched with inconspicuous but still subtly advertised, consumption.
Advertising that your worth is high enough that you don’t need to advertise it, that you can even mock it, is a bit meta maybe, but it is very real status signaling. As a fashion aesthetic it drove the move from Brooks Brothers to t shirts and sneakers as the uniforms of the most powerful. Of course it is a more potent signal in some subgroups than in others, and it is a signal aimed more at those of similar status than those of lower levels.
Status is of course important in all cultures, not just modern America. Privilege and power (within society and within our small societal microcosms, be they work, family, or social) emerges as a result of status within those groups. We are social creatures. We therefore define ourselves by our relative positions to others and we define others relative to ourselves. How we compare to the other fish and our knowledge of what pond we are swimming in.
On average, in aggregate, and not always. That I can generate more revenue than I spend on the advertising campaign (not a given) says nothing about individual responses.
I was musing on this topic this morning, and I concluded that the word ‘status’ usually carries a connotation of superficial external validation, and also an implication of hierarchy – one’s status is always in relation to the lesser status of those beneath you and the greater status of those above you. But there are other adjacent words that have more richness to them. For example, ‘respect’, or ‘esteem’. These can be bestowed by virtue of achievements which are better than those of others, but they can also be a function of such things as being perceived as honorable, sensible, wise, generous, fulfilling one’s obligations to family and society, and the like.
For many people, being admired for one’s money, style, religiosity, personal beauty, or other intimidating qualities, is a desire that is matured out of. If you are lucky, time makes you humble and grateful.
Status seems to be getting defined in an overly expansive way.
You can argue that they work enough of the time on enough people without then jumping to a “100%” conclusion.
Either you think Americans spend 100% of their lives in a quest for status or you don’t. If you do, then you’re not putting a hyperbole out there as manipulation that’s like unto clickbait; and, if you are putting a hyperbole out there as manipulation that’s like unto clickbait, then you and I may well agree about what’s true and merely disagree about whether to state it.
Of course. I was merely attempting to offer one example - the example that - without thinking about it too deeply - I think generally has the highest status in the US. Status and privilege may not be identical, but I suspect there is generally considerable overlap. And, of course, there are differences between status across groups and status within a group.
As my wife and I get older, we become more aware of how real ageism is. Personally, I don’t really care. I’m irrelevant and invisible to wide swaths of people. Which frees me just to pursue what I wish. But if I DID care about others’ opinions of me (outside of immediate family and a small circle of friends), or opportunities they offered, it would be a significant issue.
I’ve never dressed really fancily, and used to dress even worse. When I was much younger, but had a decent job, I used to get a kick out of going to a nearby fancy mall (Oak Brook - for those near Chicago) dressed in my worst clothes, and see how the salespeople ignored me, tho I had enough $ to buy pretty much anything I wanted. Now I have no need for such playacting. And if I dress in more “average” ways, just in clothes that fit, match, and are in good repair - I am even more invisible. Which I prefer.
And what specific definition do you suggest?
I agree, and a lot of it isn’t even on a conscious level. Where you shop, keeping up with the latest styles, the suburb you live in, the type of automobile that you own, the kind of job that you have, etc, are all ways of measuring your status in society.
This should not be surprising because humans are social predators, and all you have to do is study social predators in nature to see that status is everything in terms of an individual’s place in the hierarchy of its group.
But let’s say that, in your studies, you see Guy A do something you can arguably describe in terms of a quest for status, and then you see Guy B do something else you can arguably describe in terms of a quest for status — and then you see Guy C, who’s about to do something: if he does X, you’ll say it’s because of his quest for status; and if he does Y, you’ll say it’s because of his quest for status.
Is there some hypothetical Z — which, if he did that instead, would prompt you to say, “huh, that guy didn’t seem to give a crap about status, did he? Something else is more important to him, I guess?”
Or, no matter what he does, would you point at it and say “yep, that’s proof positive: it’s the status-seeking drive at work; what he did fits oh-so-perfectly, just like him doing the opposite would have; so, why bother to even see what he does?”
You are truly free. If you care about what people think about you it’s like handing them the keys to your emotions. That’s a terrible way to live.
Being publicly shown to be of high status or low status does have neurochemical effects, sure, but you can overcome them.
Once an old boss said to me, “someone said you smelt of booze the other day”. I shrugged my shoulders and said “I’m not in control of what other people say”. That wasn’t the reaction he wanted, he wanted me to ask “who?”. But I never gave a fuck so why would I ask who. He was nonplussed.
Yes, without a doubt. There are highly evolved individuals who consider service to others and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition to be paramount to all other considerations in life. Unfortunately, they are a minority, and their philosophy is not what runs our society.
And they’re not spending 100% of their time on it even when they are on that quest.
I had a very status-seeking (and often -achieving) uncle, who worked in a field in which that status was important to success. But he also loved to spend time with my mother, which didn’t advance his status in the area in which he was concerned about it; and to pat his cat; and to do a host of other things which had nothing to do with status.
Not all relationships are relative in that fashion. Wanting to be well thought of by one’s friends and family most certainly doesn’t require wanting to be able to think them less worthy – rather the reverse. It’s the people who I think well of who I want to think well of me; and this isn’t because I think they’re better (or worse) than me, it’s just because I think they’re generally good people. Nor do I feel any need to rank them against each other; and it would generally feel nonsensical to try, because they’re different from each other. I have a friend who’s great with horses but can’t cook, and one who’s a great cook and excellent with kids but knows nothing in particular about horses, and one who’s terrible with kids (and was careful not to have any) and a merely passable cook but excellent at business organization and engineering – how on earth would one even compare them? (And I doubt any of us even notices what brand of shirt anybody’s wearing.)
Again, there are plenty of people not paying attention to any of that: who shop where it’s convenient and/or where the service/prices/whatever are good; who pay no attention to what clothes are in style; who decide where to live based on whether the place is near family or friends/near work/convenient for other things they need to get to/has decent farmland/is in hill country or on the flatlands/is in the country or in the city or somewhere inbetween/is in a climate that suits them/has a view they like/has a house layout that suits them in particular/has a diverse neighborhood/et very cetera; who buy a car (if they have a car) based on cost/safety/mileage/reliability/whether the seats fit them/whether what they want to move in it fits/whether it fits in likely parking spaces; who took a job because it was the one they could get/the one they’re good at doing/it lets them be at home more/it keeps them away from home more/the hours let them take care of somebody else/it pays enough to cover the mortgage on the house which was chosen not for status but for one or more of reasons above.
And absolutely none of that requires thinking “this will improve my status in the heirarchy!”
I hang around mostly with people who aren’t into heirarchies. I recommend this to you; it’s a lot easier on the nerves.
Multiple people can all be respected members of the same group without needing or trying to rank each other.
There are definite gradations in status-seeking…after having worked with tons of executives, you can see the differences (I mean, they all have some focus on status, but some are more obsessive/reactive around it than others).
“Status” is the same as worthiness and desiring status relative to others does not necessarily mean superiority.
Of course I care about status. I want to be respected, trusted, and thought well of in particular by those that I respect and think well of. Professionally I want my opinions to matter and to be of impact. That’s status that matters to me. No I don’t signal for that status with expensive accoutrements. Those are one possible token for status but not the one that matters much to those whose respect I want.
The concept of status as signaling wealth and/or “superiority” or consciously and intentionally broadcasting to a general public your position in the social ladder, is overly narrow.
That should be is NOT the same as worthiness…
This is exactly what I was referring to when I opened the thread. The idea of status seeking for status sake alone never even crossed my mind. I don’t separate status from sphere of influence. My community status for example is mostly limited to the block I live on. I simply want to be thought of as responsible and a good neighbor. In the work place I would actively seek out a larger sphere of influence until I was happy with my current position. I was never particularly happy with my status at home when I was married and it finally led to a divorce. I enjoy the position of status I have with my children. Socially I tend to gravitate toward a status where I am not a leader or trend setter but well accepted. I have to admit that it is a good feeling when the higherups in any group professional or social give me a solid acknowledgement. I never did like the pressure of being at or near the top in most groups but I did want access to the higher ups.
And every sexual encounter that is not a solo (and some, even then!) event is rape because an inherent social and physical power differential always exists between the people involved. I’m modest with my body and I don’t want to go out naked because this would somehow affect other people’s opinions about me, potentially leading me into other social situations like incarceration and dealing with the “judicial system” that I would otherwise prefer to avoid… Pretty low-hanging fruit to champion that hypothesis, though.
But I believe the OP was specifically after more apparent tendencies. Like giving a flying fuck what others think of you when their thoughts do not otherwise directly affect your well-being. To that I answer a big fat “usually not”. In fact, when I stopped caring what others thought of me, specifically with regard to who had more social status/power, life got a whole lot easier. People became nicer to me, job opportunities became more abundant, and my family enjoyed me more. Maybe everyone misinterpreted me not giving a fuck as me knowing I had extraordinary power and they all wanted to be near it, but that’s not my fault. But yeah, sometimes I care because I don’t like making people needlessly uncomfortable. I have concert tee shirts I only wear around the house, and I have nicer concert tee shirts I wear for fancier occasions.
OK. Some people in the thread are clearly talking about competitive status; and the term is often, though I’ll grant not always, used in that fashion.
And phrasing like this:
implies strongly that you’re talking about relative status; not just about being respected in the group without rating individuals in the group as “higher” or lower relative to others.