On the one hand, sure, status probably is a trap and won't bring "true happiness." And I think this is well meaning advice.
But on the other hand, I think it's possible that an Ivy League educated founder/VC partner/executive coach might not be in the best position to see the whole picture. To paraphrase the Aviator[1], you don't care about status because you've always had it. I think that for many people who have experienced precarity, rather than being driven by vanity, this pursuit of status is a rational way to increase security.
I come from a pretty precarious background but through circumstance and luck I've ended up in much higher status environments from a fairly young age. (private school, later tech jobs)
The one thing I always cared more about than a lot of kids was money but not status. People who grow up poor tend to really be aware of how much it sucks to not have money. You see it in entrepreneurs in China or former Eastern bloc countries. People who grew up in insecurity tend to be very conscious about access to resources and are very competitive.
But status is a different thing. Most people who come from precarious backgrounds in my opinion hate status games because the people who play them the most are anxious upper-middle class people afraid of falling downwards. I think I've probably harmed my career prospects by just being allergic to networking or not going to posh events because of how fake they seem.
Also important to point out that status is a complex thing in the sense that a lot of high status people are "performatively broke" because that's paradoxically the only way to flex even more if you're rich (tech CEOS living in crap houses and sleeping on old mattresses etc), so that makes advice like this even more complicated because it's difficult to tell if it's genuine.
True. The way I see is one category of people who would need first hand experience to know status really matters or not. They wouldn't find this advice much useful. But there is other group who would rather take the word of someone with status to believe status doesn't matter if they are saying so. Simply because they have status so they know better about it.
I think at core most of advice from haves to have nots has different effect on smart vs average have nots. Smarts tend to see a kind of hypocrisy in these proclamations. Whereas average folks just see the real world the way it is. So these advise seems useful info coming from important people.
This is why Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, et al are so highly valued - they are born in positions of leisure, as freemen, and speak about truly good acts which are away from the transience of society towards the permanence of the soul.
>I think that pursuit of status is a rational way to increase security.
I agree, I would recommend increasing security as the priority, not status. Status doesn't pay the bills necessarily when the recessions hit, security does. If you can get security without status, that's better than status without security.
Agree, and the best security is obviously money. But to me, status means warm intros for new business opportunities, or that your resume will reliably get past the recruiter screening stage. Stuff that can help you maintain or rebuild security.
I'd argue they are probably in the best position to talk about the 'empty bowl' status is. I mean if you switch to the admin-view for a moment, status is basically the increasingly rare thing that others cant have by definition. that is statistically impossibly for commoners to have. and their advice of seeking contentment can/is always countered with 'sour grapes' style retort. We need more calming message from people who have been there and done it. after all I dont really need to get a Range-rover when my Hyundai gives me most of what I want.
As someone who has been both poor and relatively well off, the main thing is that you gain enormous stability and comfort from things like owning a home and having sufficient financial ability to choose what to do.
For example - "I choose to take the kids to school and then do some woodworking today".
The fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations aren't that great. The lack of slavery is.
"Money won't buy you happiness", said the billionaire. But how does that calming message really help the guy who'll get evicted because he won't have enough money for rent?
I don't think we need these messages. They're a mix of humble brag, virtue signalling and self-marketing for all I can tell, and don't hold any insights that you won't find on one of those One Inspirational Quote Per Day calendars.
I think the issue is that while the advice is literally true, most people aren't in life for "true happiness". Most people, if observed closely, are in it for the status.
The people who are in it for happiness tend to be ascetics.
> Most people, if observed closely, are in it for the status.
This is why people are so easily manipulated: they're beholden to something that is easily gamed by the world at large. And that's exactly what it does.
That's why the advice is so good: it's meant to rattle them and make them start to question those beliefs.
Status is a completely artificial construct that completely melts away the minute you run out of money. It's an unfair advantage, but it offers no security whatsoever.
I think some of it is artificial, but I think the types mentioned in the article[1] do confer real security. For someone without status, getting a top tier company on their resume will make future job searches either. Making it into the inner ring of a company makes ones position more secure against for example layoffs. Neither of these are directly tied to money, rather I think many view it as a way to protect against running out of it.
Obviously there are limits (ie governors running for president aren't doing it for additional security), but I think it is true for many.
[1] "They begin by trying to get into a top-tier investment firm. Once they accomplish this, they find a hierarchy to navigate within the fund, then realize that the real inner ring in VC is occupied by the investors who land the hottest deals."
When you look at individuals who have achieved things you admire, it's so often true that they themselves came from outside the status system that existed at that time.
They now sit within, or atop the current one, but it's often something they themselves have created to a greater or lesser degree.
There's a huge lesson there, I think. Being in that position in the current status system is not and never was their goal. It came as a consequence of acheiving real goals, real success. It was a reality they created.
If you want to emulate them, you won't do it by 'getting in' to that current system, that's for sure. Instead focus on doing your own thing, and maybe one day finding yourself within or atop a new one.
Ibn Khaldun's 1377 work Muqaddimah is a very old book that essentially says this.
The concept of "ʿasabiyyah" (Arabic: "tribalism, clanism, communitarism", or in a modern context, "group feeling" , "social cohesion", "solidarity" or even "nationalism") is one of the best known aspects of the Muqaddimah. As this ʿasabiyyah declines, another more compelling ʿasabiyyah may take its place; thus, civilizations rise and fall, and history describes these cycles of ʿasabiyyah as they play out.
Ibn Khaldun argues that each dynasty has within itself the seeds of its own downfall. He explains that ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of great empires and use the unity presented by those areas to their advantage in order to bring about a change in leadership. As the new rulers establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax and more concerned with maintaining their lifestyles. Thus, a new dynasty can emerge at the periphery of their control and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew.
From studying history a bit, I do agree that it's striking how often new powerful civilizations are formed from groups of people that existed on the periphery and had very little institutional power a generation or two beforehand. The Mongols, the Ottomans, and Napoleonic France are just a few examples.
“Things you admire” is an extraordinarily broad category, so yeah, you probably could.
But within the world of VC-backed tech companies, I do think “traditional” status markers are still very influential, and that when you dig into the About pages, the majority of founders/investors/current-high-status individuals come from high status backgrounds.
A Yale degree is not the end-all be-all, and “Ex-Google” is not a magic key. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of people in tech (myself included!) benefit from very, very privileged backgrounds.
> I like writing things as if I know what I'm talking about (I don't)
lol, made me smile. from your bio.
its also important to acknowledge privilege is valuable but not necessary. i know we're saying the same thing but it's important for the people on the other side to see and say it from the other side.
yale, xoogler are more bits of information the gatekeepers use. but not having those bits doesn't exclude oneself from the game. it's hard, being on the outside, i just want to make sure to say it. play another game. make another door. people like brand names. i get it it's a thing. it's just not the only thing.
we choose to all play the same games using the same signals in the same way. looking backwards for trends forward. only we don't have to. because the future is unknown.
Please show me a new status system. Not just different people on top of an already existing one.
I could see brand new status systems existing for, say, a new video game. Everyone starts out equally as newbies and works their way up. Maybe someone could leverage their position in a current status system (such as wealth or free time) to boost their potential in this new system.
Brand new industries could create new status systems, though I don't know how often they really do (for instance, the female programmers of the early computer era tended to bring their lower status into the system, not get status from the new system).
I suffer from the problem of not paying attention to status. Which kind of puts me on the outskirts of any status system, or at the very least not able to recognize my status within current systems.
There's status silos everywhere. Chess, sports, games, prisons, inside companies, inside professions, startups, inside academic disciplines. Each of these status silos shares an abstract similarity. They are groups of people battling it out for their peers' recognition and prestige in a zero-sum contest. The criteria by which prestige is bestowed will vary from silo to silo. So it's up to the players of the game to know what the criteria is in their silo of choice, and optimize for it. In a prison, it's violence. In chess, it's competence. In a company, it might be politicking.
> I suffer from the problem of not paying attention to status.
Are you sure? Maybe you just don't pay attention to conventional status markers. But you are still competing in a status silo (such as a contest here on HN for points?), just an unorthodox one.
Calisthenics was not previously the realm of social status, money or prestige, but there is an industry that "gives" people at the top a place to hold status, both social and financial.
I think this happened to a lot of typically very regular low status arenas when the "Influencer" was born, and being good at something non-profitable could now be turned into views, advertising and thus money and fame.
Now every grassroots arena can be converted into a vehicle for money and fame, and you have people famous for lots of non-competitive arenas. Like modifying cars, cycling for fun not racing, just generally being fit... there are people famous for making How To Make a Game videos who are considered authorities on the topic, who have never actually made a game.
Unfortunately, this is rare because status traps blind people to these possibilities.
I mean, look at this article’s comments: defense after defense of status as the most important thing.
Bluntly: this article isn’t for you if you’re so invested in the idea of status. Given the quasi-finance values that tech represents now, I can’t say I’m super surprised. The author speaks of a life beyond such pursuits.
I think there was a historical change that has complicated our conversation about status.
In the 50's, the peak of this, it seemed like many people got a 'deal' that went something like this: you & your work colleagues could afford a house, car, and the costs associated with several children, starting in your 20's. All of those things at a pretty high level actually (ie not a terrible unsafe house, not a broken down jalopy, etc.) In fact, only one of you in a marriage would have to work: one salary was enough.
In that situation - and this is where a lot of these attitudes to status first evolved - high status can be treated as a "who cares?" thing. You and the 1950's CEO making 5x as much as you do both have a few well fed & healthy kids, right? In a hand-wavey sense you can say you're 'the same.'
Well, times have changed.
Now the fight is a lot more desperate. Higher status can be the difference between affording a house, or not; having kids, or not. The ability to live a middle class life is much more on the line.
So while in the 50's, the advantages to being more high status seemed almost cosmetic, today, they're anything but.
This is an interesting, fallacious take. Basically: one thing about some time in the past was bad, thus everything about it was bad.
Higher wealth disparity, based on its impact on social stability, measured independently, is bad. Racism/sexism are bad. The impact of things must be measured separately, so our ideas regarding how to improve society are higher resolution and more accurate.
>So while in the 50's, the advantages to being more high status seemed almost cosmetic, today, they're anything but.
I disagree. There's plenty of people who are secure in their finances that you would never know about just by looking at them or hearing their name. Status is for the ego, security is way more important. You can go for status after you've achieved financial security if you so desire. The only status you need is when someone asks someone you worked with if you are good at your vocation, they say yes. If you are honest, they say yes. If you are a good person, they say yes.
> Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
My note: wealth is options; options are freedom, and buying your time back. Only play status games if you’re playing for fun, but don’t confuse it with success and freedom.
I agree wealth buys optionality, but regarding variance wouldn't that imply wealthy people have better and worse outcomes than nonwealthy people, who would have consistently middling outcomes? That doesn't really match my observations.
This seems overly reductive. Folks without wealth still try to demonstrate brands and experiences associated with wealth: luxury cars, clothes, trips, etc. Yet they sacrifice much more to do so.
Some also posses political forms of power, influence, and status disconnected from wealth. Gandhi for example was never weathly or rich in money or assets.
Appears to me that status is an abstract thing, albeit correlated with wealth.
When I lived in New York and worked at a trading firm, I met plenty of "high-status" people. They usually lived paycheck-to-paycheck on a 7-figure salary because they were busy playing status games - giving a few hundred thousand to charity, having a big loft in a nice neighborhood, throwing lavish parties, etc. Other people saved that money and retired at 40 to places like Wisconsin and Montana - they had wealth. Status is expensive. The only people for whom it is cheap are the uber-wealthy, those who earn $100 million a year or so.
I disagree; wealth can be displayed as status. Money can be spent in status-seeking ways. But money can also be earned so that one can care for sick family members (or a sick future self), or to put kids through college. Or money can be spent on enjoyable experiences that no one else will see.
Money is not the ultimate status game, even though it is an important ingredient in most status-seeking activities.
Status is based on attention, deference and so on other people give you. You can, to a degree, buy that, in different qualities, from different audiences. It doesn't mean wealth is status.
Money isn't all there is to status. A surgeon has higher status than a lottery winner or heir to a fortune. So Naval's point is that a desire for status can sometimes conflict with getting money, because it pushes you down a conventional path which is competitive and therefore unlikely to make you rich.
adding onto the "disagree" siblings. that money is status is far too simplistic.
plenty of people are simply not impressed by money. it's not even really a concerted thought, it's just a matter of different strokes for diff folks. people have all sorts of tribes. money is really just one. just a gawdy obnoxious one.
Most things are tied up with status games, even if they don't look like it at first glance.
Nietzsche gives the example of the self-renouncer, who might seem to go beyond status games by renouncing material things. But this renunciation of one status game is just replaced by another. It's the same desire for status, but aimed at a different object. The self-renouncer's object is the status of being seen as the exalted person who soars above everyone else, free from vulgar worldly desires.
> What does the self-renouncer do? He strives after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher than all men of affirmation—he throws away many things that would burden his flight, and several things among them that are not valueless, that are not unpleasant to him: he sacrifices them to his desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him the self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us his desire, his pride, his intention of flying above us.—Yes! He is wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us—this affirmer! For that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation
I can recommend the book The Status Game by Will Storr if you want to read more about status.
The Gospel teaches a similar idea with the notion of charity. Matthew 6:3
“But when thou doest alms, let not thy
left hand know what thy right hand doeth”
It helps if you’re familiar with the analysis, but I think the idea translates. The teaching being that if you’re going to be charitable, you shouldn’t do it as a means to advance your status. The people who give simply for recognition aren’t being charitable at all, they’re seeking status in the same way everyone else does.
I think status is our main currency as human beings.
All that really matters is what others think of us. The main thing you have to figure out is _which_ status hierarchy you want to compete in, not _if_ you want to compete in a status hierarchy.
Even people who claim not to care about what people think, actually do care what _some_ people think.
I rather have money and security, status is a means to that end, because sometimes there are gatekeepers or people who can help you but will write you off if they think you are not a peer or in group
I always am reminded of billionaire heirs, who shirk status games and give false last names to be treated as a normal person instead of a valuable business contact or such
> when our status is challenged, our body reacts like it's in physical danger
While it's not 100% certain, the fact that there appears to be a biological adaptation that makes us seek status and avoid losing status strongly suggests that the author is underestimating the importance of status in human society.
For example: "we find that status is significantly associated with men’s reproductive success, consistent with an evolved basis for status pursuit."
That adaptation may not be appropriate for the modern environment.
When exposed to modern/ internet-scale communities, it could be that there are so many false-positive threats to one’s status that the advice to (generally) not worry too much about it is good advice.
However, the author just assumes that is maladaptive, and that's a big and largely unwarranted assumption to make, particularly considering the presence of a biological adaptation. (I also didn't see internet communities as the main focus of the article, it seemed about status in general and in all contexts)
Also, just because something is maladaptive in some ways or some parts of the environment does not mean it is maladaptive overall. Nature makes compromises in her creature all the time, she has to! For an extreme example, look up female Hyenas...
Readit News
But on the other hand, I think it's possible that an Ivy League educated founder/VC partner/executive coach might not be in the best position to see the whole picture. To paraphrase the Aviator[1], you don't care about status because you've always had it. I think that for many people who have experienced precarity, rather than being driven by vanity, this pursuit of status is a rational way to increase security.
[1] https://youtu.be/br-ljup5Bow
The one thing I always cared more about than a lot of kids was money but not status. People who grow up poor tend to really be aware of how much it sucks to not have money. You see it in entrepreneurs in China or former Eastern bloc countries. People who grew up in insecurity tend to be very conscious about access to resources and are very competitive.
But status is a different thing. Most people who come from precarious backgrounds in my opinion hate status games because the people who play them the most are anxious upper-middle class people afraid of falling downwards. I think I've probably harmed my career prospects by just being allergic to networking or not going to posh events because of how fake they seem.
Also important to point out that status is a complex thing in the sense that a lot of high status people are "performatively broke" because that's paradoxically the only way to flex even more if you're rich (tech CEOS living in crap houses and sleeping on old mattresses etc), so that makes advice like this even more complicated because it's difficult to tell if it's genuine.
I think at core most of advice from haves to have nots has different effect on smart vs average have nots. Smarts tend to see a kind of hypocrisy in these proclamations. Whereas average folks just see the real world the way it is. So these advise seems useful info coming from important people.
I agree, I would recommend increasing security as the priority, not status. Status doesn't pay the bills necessarily when the recessions hit, security does. If you can get security without status, that's better than status without security.
For example - "I choose to take the kids to school and then do some woodworking today".
The fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations aren't that great. The lack of slavery is.
I don't think we need these messages. They're a mix of humble brag, virtue signalling and self-marketing for all I can tell, and don't hold any insights that you won't find on one of those One Inspirational Quote Per Day calendars.
The people who are in it for happiness tend to be ascetics.
This is why people are so easily manipulated: they're beholden to something that is easily gamed by the world at large. And that's exactly what it does.
That's why the advice is so good: it's meant to rattle them and make them start to question those beliefs.
Obviously there are limits (ie governors running for president aren't doing it for additional security), but I think it is true for many.
[1] "They begin by trying to get into a top-tier investment firm. Once they accomplish this, they find a hierarchy to navigate within the fund, then realize that the real inner ring in VC is occupied by the investors who land the hottest deals."
They now sit within, or atop the current one, but it's often something they themselves have created to a greater or lesser degree.
There's a huge lesson there, I think. Being in that position in the current status system is not and never was their goal. It came as a consequence of acheiving real goals, real success. It was a reality they created.
If you want to emulate them, you won't do it by 'getting in' to that current system, that's for sure. Instead focus on doing your own thing, and maybe one day finding yourself within or atop a new one.
The concept of "ʿasabiyyah" (Arabic: "tribalism, clanism, communitarism", or in a modern context, "group feeling" , "social cohesion", "solidarity" or even "nationalism") is one of the best known aspects of the Muqaddimah. As this ʿasabiyyah declines, another more compelling ʿasabiyyah may take its place; thus, civilizations rise and fall, and history describes these cycles of ʿasabiyyah as they play out.
Ibn Khaldun argues that each dynasty has within itself the seeds of its own downfall. He explains that ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of great empires and use the unity presented by those areas to their advantage in order to bring about a change in leadership. As the new rulers establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax and more concerned with maintaining their lifestyles. Thus, a new dynasty can emerge at the periphery of their control and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah
From studying history a bit, I do agree that it's striking how often new powerful civilizations are formed from groups of people that existed on the periphery and had very little institutional power a generation or two beforehand. The Mongols, the Ottomans, and Napoleonic France are just a few examples.
More recently, Hegel made the same point.
But within the world of VC-backed tech companies, I do think “traditional” status markers are still very influential, and that when you dig into the About pages, the majority of founders/investors/current-high-status individuals come from high status backgrounds.
A Yale degree is not the end-all be-all, and “Ex-Google” is not a magic key. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of people in tech (myself included!) benefit from very, very privileged backgrounds.
lol, made me smile. from your bio.
its also important to acknowledge privilege is valuable but not necessary. i know we're saying the same thing but it's important for the people on the other side to see and say it from the other side.
yale, xoogler are more bits of information the gatekeepers use. but not having those bits doesn't exclude oneself from the game. it's hard, being on the outside, i just want to make sure to say it. play another game. make another door. people like brand names. i get it it's a thing. it's just not the only thing.
we choose to all play the same games using the same signals in the same way. looking backwards for trends forward. only we don't have to. because the future is unknown.
I could see brand new status systems existing for, say, a new video game. Everyone starts out equally as newbies and works their way up. Maybe someone could leverage their position in a current status system (such as wealth or free time) to boost their potential in this new system.
Brand new industries could create new status systems, though I don't know how often they really do (for instance, the female programmers of the early computer era tended to bring their lower status into the system, not get status from the new system).
I suffer from the problem of not paying attention to status. Which kind of puts me on the outskirts of any status system, or at the very least not able to recognize my status within current systems.
> I suffer from the problem of not paying attention to status.
Are you sure? Maybe you just don't pay attention to conventional status markers. But you are still competing in a status silo (such as a contest here on HN for points?), just an unorthodox one.
I think this happened to a lot of typically very regular low status arenas when the "Influencer" was born, and being good at something non-profitable could now be turned into views, advertising and thus money and fame.
Now every grassroots arena can be converted into a vehicle for money and fame, and you have people famous for lots of non-competitive arenas. Like modifying cars, cycling for fun not racing, just generally being fit... there are people famous for making How To Make a Game videos who are considered authorities on the topic, who have never actually made a game.
I mean, look at this article’s comments: defense after defense of status as the most important thing.
Bluntly: this article isn’t for you if you’re so invested in the idea of status. Given the quasi-finance values that tech represents now, I can’t say I’m super surprised. The author speaks of a life beyond such pursuits.
In the 50's, the peak of this, it seemed like many people got a 'deal' that went something like this: you & your work colleagues could afford a house, car, and the costs associated with several children, starting in your 20's. All of those things at a pretty high level actually (ie not a terrible unsafe house, not a broken down jalopy, etc.) In fact, only one of you in a marriage would have to work: one salary was enough.
In that situation - and this is where a lot of these attitudes to status first evolved - high status can be treated as a "who cares?" thing. You and the 1950's CEO making 5x as much as you do both have a few well fed & healthy kids, right? In a hand-wavey sense you can say you're 'the same.'
Well, times have changed.
Now the fight is a lot more desperate. Higher status can be the difference between affording a house, or not; having kids, or not. The ability to live a middle class life is much more on the line.
So while in the 50's, the advantages to being more high status seemed almost cosmetic, today, they're anything but.
Is this the same Fifties with white and colored water fountains, and where women had to leave office jobs when they married?
Higher wealth disparity, based on its impact on social stability, measured independently, is bad. Racism/sexism are bad. The impact of things must be measured separately, so our ideas regarding how to improve society are higher resolution and more accurate.
> So while in the 50's, the advantages to being more high status seemed almost cosmetic, today, they're anything but.
The “deal” you are referring to was largely codified racism. [1]
And only cosmetic inasmuch as being granted pollution-free, affordable housing based on skin color would be considered “cosmetic.”
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-02/how-the-f...
Deleted Comment
I disagree. There's plenty of people who are secure in their finances that you would never know about just by looking at them or hearing their name. Status is for the ego, security is way more important. You can go for status after you've achieved financial security if you so desire. The only status you need is when someone asks someone you worked with if you are good at your vocation, they say yes. If you are honest, they say yes. If you are a good person, they say yes.
This is a tragic statement on the way we've made abundance illegal and mandated scarcity instead—points further articulated in more detail here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
Deleted Comment
> Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103627387813888
> Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
From @naval’s Twitter thread “how to get rich (without getting lucky)”
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
My note: wealth is options; options are freedom, and buying your time back. Only play status games if you’re playing for fun, but don’t confuse it with success and freedom.
Got it. Puts on Google here we go.
Some also posses political forms of power, influence, and status disconnected from wealth. Gandhi for example was never weathly or rich in money or assets.
Appears to me that status is an abstract thing, albeit correlated with wealth.
Money is not the ultimate status game, even though it is an important ingredient in most status-seeking activities.
plenty of people are simply not impressed by money. it's not even really a concerted thought, it's just a matter of different strokes for diff folks. people have all sorts of tribes. money is really just one. just a gawdy obnoxious one.
We have a whole mechanism in our brain dedicated to chasing status — harness it!
Yes. The part of our brain that we have in common with monkeys.
Nietzsche gives the example of the self-renouncer, who might seem to go beyond status games by renouncing material things. But this renunciation of one status game is just replaced by another. It's the same desire for status, but aimed at a different object. The self-renouncer's object is the status of being seen as the exalted person who soars above everyone else, free from vulgar worldly desires.
> What does the self-renouncer do? He strives after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher than all men of affirmation—he throws away many things that would burden his flight, and several things among them that are not valueless, that are not unpleasant to him: he sacrifices them to his desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him the self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us his desire, his pride, his intention of flying above us.—Yes! He is wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us—this affirmer! For that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation
I can recommend the book The Status Game by Will Storr if you want to read more about status.
“But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth”
It helps if you’re familiar with the analysis, but I think the idea translates. The teaching being that if you’re going to be charitable, you shouldn’t do it as a means to advance your status. The people who give simply for recognition aren’t being charitable at all, they’re seeking status in the same way everyone else does.
All that really matters is what others think of us. The main thing you have to figure out is _which_ status hierarchy you want to compete in, not _if_ you want to compete in a status hierarchy.
Even people who claim not to care about what people think, actually do care what _some_ people think.
I always am reminded of billionaire heirs, who shirk status games and give false last names to be treated as a normal person instead of a valuable business contact or such
While it's not 100% certain, the fact that there appears to be a biological adaptation that makes us seek status and avoid losing status strongly suggests that the author is underestimating the importance of status in human society.
For example: "we find that status is significantly associated with men’s reproductive success, consistent with an evolved basis for status pursuit."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1606800113
When exposed to modern/ internet-scale communities, it could be that there are so many false-positive threats to one’s status that the advice to (generally) not worry too much about it is good advice.
Our innate desire for sweets comes to mind.
However, the author just assumes that is maladaptive, and that's a big and largely unwarranted assumption to make, particularly considering the presence of a biological adaptation. (I also didn't see internet communities as the main focus of the article, it seemed about status in general and in all contexts)
Also, just because something is maladaptive in some ways or some parts of the environment does not mean it is maladaptive overall. Nature makes compromises in her creature all the time, she has to! For an extreme example, look up female Hyenas...
https://africageographic.com/stories/good-bad-gory-birth-hye...