| Status has been important to humans since before humans were humans. It used to be a matter of life and death. I believe the only thing that has changed is our perception about our place in the status hierarchy. Mass media has the effect of making people aware of more high status individuals and this has been exploited by advertisement. But people on TV are easy to keep in a separate status box. The recent phenomenon has been social media and the positively biased posting by peers giving a false impression of low relative personal status. There is also a bias to pay more attention to those of higher status, the more people you know the more individuals of higher status you’ll know. Both of these effects can be undone by understanding selection criteria biases. I think the solution is to teach others of the effect of selection criteria biases. There is also the solution of breaking down the hierarchy into smaller niche hierarchies so more people can be closer to the top of their smaller hierarchy. E.g. maybe I’m not the richest person alive but I have one of the rarest sneakers, or the best Magic The Gathering deck, or Furry costume etc. I think there is a comercial drive towards niche activities that are now more viable with targeted advertising. So the disease may become the cure as there is money to be made in taking away a small subset of a bigger status hierarchy and creating a new one. Consider this as opposed to a communist utopia where there is only one hierarchy. |
Oops, I think we are done for.