That’s important because status is zero sum. You can’t just go setting up high virtue groups with strict entry requirements and expect it to affect people’s perceptions, because to make yourself notable enough you have to steal awareness from other similarly high status groups. The average person may know about the status of Yale and Harvard graduates, but does not know the status of many similar organizations with equally (or more) strong bona fides.
In order to develop such a group, you either have to be tremendously wealthy or high status (i.e. celebrity-level) like when Warren Buffett started The Giving Pledge and lent it part of his credibility, or you have to do a tremendous amount of work to establish the credibility through slower means. That work could possibly be spent more virtuously on directly virtuous acts.
Is it? I think that status is relative (in the sense that you need to specify the baseline relative to what something is high-status or low-status), but I don’t see why does it have to be zero-sum. And don’t forget that status is observer-dependent.
I don’t understand what you mean by “zero sum” here. Clearly in a group where everyone looks down on everyone else the total status is much lower than in a group where everyone respects everyone else’s opinion.
This is an excellent point, not necessarily because it is true, but because it suggests the idea of status is not sufficiently clearly defined. Personally I don’t think politeness/respect/consideration equals status, but sure as hell they have some sort of a relation and interaction.
In a very polite group, it would be very hard to express status differences, and in a very impolite group too. It seems status games develop where people have a middling level of politeness/respect…
Moreover I suspect people know this and use politeness and impoliteness for this purpose. In a boot camp when the sarge just called everybody a worthless maggot it will be hard to play at looking a like a slightly less worthless maggot than the other guy :) And the overly elaborate formal politeness of 19th century aristocrats (e.g. the novel The Count of Monte-Cristo) makes it hard, too, you can hardly express disapproval.
Winning a boxing match is insta-status amongst the fans. They are middling polite with fighters, they have a “let’s see what you can do” mood. They don’t disrespect anyone who trains hard and gives his best, neither do they sugar-coat defeat.
That’s important because status is zero sum. You can’t just go setting up high virtue groups with strict entry requirements and expect it to affect people’s perceptions, because to make yourself notable enough you have to steal awareness from other similarly high status groups. The average person may know about the status of Yale and Harvard graduates, but does not know the status of many similar organizations with equally (or more) strong bona fides.
In order to develop such a group, you either have to be tremendously wealthy or high status (i.e. celebrity-level) like when Warren Buffett started The Giving Pledge and lent it part of his credibility, or you have to do a tremendous amount of work to establish the credibility through slower means. That work could possibly be spent more virtuously on directly virtuous acts.
Is it? I think that status is relative (in the sense that you need to specify the baseline relative to what something is high-status or low-status), but I don’t see why does it have to be zero-sum. And don’t forget that status is observer-dependent.
I don’t understand what you mean by “zero sum” here. Clearly in a group where everyone looks down on everyone else the total status is much lower than in a group where everyone respects everyone else’s opinion.
This is an excellent point, not necessarily because it is true, but because it suggests the idea of status is not sufficiently clearly defined. Personally I don’t think politeness/respect/consideration equals status, but sure as hell they have some sort of a relation and interaction.
In a very polite group, it would be very hard to express status differences, and in a very impolite group too. It seems status games develop where people have a middling level of politeness/respect…
Moreover I suspect people know this and use politeness and impoliteness for this purpose. In a boot camp when the sarge just called everybody a worthless maggot it will be hard to play at looking a like a slightly less worthless maggot than the other guy :) And the overly elaborate formal politeness of 19th century aristocrats (e.g. the novel The Count of Monte-Cristo) makes it hard, too, you can hardly express disapproval.
Winning a boxing match is insta-status amongst the fans. They are middling polite with fighters, they have a “let’s see what you can do” mood. They don’t disrespect anyone who trains hard and gives his best, neither do they sugar-coat defeat.