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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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it might make sense to consciously get people to adopt non-zero-sum measures for status.

Is this even theoretically possible, though? Status is a relative position, and a rising tide does not lift all boats. It'd be akin to raising everyone's SAT scores—you're still going to have a 99th percentile and a 5th percentile, along with the correlated benefits (or lack thereof).

One idea I've seen is having a multiplicity of status hierarchies. One person's status derives from being best in the world at chess; another at speed running Super Mario; another at laparoscopic surgery.

In practice, we could have that now, but we don't. My hypothesis is that by having a global status domain, the status hierarchies that can exist just aren't numerous enough to give everyone or even a substantial minority one they can sit on top of. Perhaps if instead we just compared against people in our neighborhood or city, things would be better.

One idea I've seen is having a multiplicity of status hierarchies . . . In practice, we could have that now, but we don't.

My instinct is that we absolutely have a multiplicity of status hierarchies operating today in a largely independent fashion. For example, there are plenty of American sub-groups in which status and money don't seem closely aligned. If you're a full professor of history at a large state university, then your status among colleagues will derive primarily from your research output and its reception. If you're a Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn, then your status in the synagogue will derive from your knowledge of Torah. If you're a Texas adolescent boy, then your status at school will derive from how many touchdowns you throw. These qualities are not closely related to earnings (if they're even related at all).

Arguably we already have that though. Magnus Carlson might not be a household name to everyone but he’s hot shit to anyone who’s remotely familiar with competitive chess. Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov and Boris Spassky were household names, to the point that they became important symbols and agents for national cultural struggles. The way they were talked about was closer to war heroes than people who play a game that involves moving small figurines around a checkered board. And I’m sure the top laparoscopic surgeons of the world probably feel they have a great deal more status than the average white collar wage laborer. I’ve also seen stories about internet content creators who are nobodies to the world at large, but if they walked into a comic con they would be treated like royalty.

I thought I had remembered a quote from de Tocqueville explaining that every American was content with his station in life because every American would at some point serve as president, chairman, or other elected official of an association, board, committee, government body, etc. So while he may be just another face in the crowd in one context, he would be a respected leader in another. I can’t find the quote I’m thinking of, but taken together, these two seem to speak to the same phenomenon, albeit more obliquely:

Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth of propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

And

The federal government does confer power and renown on those who direct it, but only a few can exercise influence there. The high office of President is hardly to be reached until a man is well on in years; as for other high federal offices, there is a large element of chance about attaining to them, and they go only to those who have reached eminence in some other walk of life. No ambitious man would make them the fixed aim of his endeavors. It is in the township, the center of the ordinary business of life, that the desire for esteem, the pursuit of substantial interests, and the taste for power and self-advertisement are concentrated; these passions, so often troublesome elements in society, take on a different character when exercised so close to home and, in a sense, within the family circle.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs. Apart from the voters, who from time to time are called on to act as the government, there are many and various officials who all, within their sphere, represent the powerful body in whose name they act. Thus a vast number of people make a good thing for themselves out of the power of the community and are interested in administration for selfish reasons.

I think it's an interesting, if somewhat abstract question. As a counterpoint, Maslow's hierarchy doesn't include "being superior to others", and plenty of religions try to challenge a relative notion of status: "the last shall be first", or the notion of kharma.

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