Human Beings Become More Preoccupied With Social Status Once Our Physical Needs are Met
We continue to occupy
No one on the corner has swagger like us
Swagger like us, swagger-swagger like us
No one on the corner has swagger like us
— M.I.A
José y Gasset was concerned about the rate at which humans occupied every crevice on our planet. At some point in the early 20th century, humans could build a space and occupy it faster than it took to construct it.
The first reason could be obvious — when the situations are friendly, replication and reproduction ensue, as predicted by the sigmoid growth curve dynamics. But humans began occupying much more than the physical spaces.
In the past, rebellion was demonstrated by fleeing. When Cain sinned, he fled. When Moses killed, he fled. When Jacob took his elder brother’s birthright, he fled. Fleeing was a way of running to spaces unoccupied for a fresh start, bearing in mind the assumption that the sin would stay behind as one left. It was a physical means of escaping one’s past missteps.
These are singular instances that reveal occupancy could be a result of seeking refuge. Mass occupancy may be much more nuanced. We cannot assume that everyone rebelled.
José y Gasset, however, thinks that it was the case. Certain spaces were the province of the elite in society. Theatres, for instance, would only be frequented by the wealthy. Today, anybody can access it. A book could only be read by anyone who had some advanced education and the time to consume it. In a way, a book is an escape from one’s reality. A rebellion of sorts. Hence the name of his book, The Revolt of the Masses. Indeed, rebelling does manifest in seeking a new venture and occupying it.
The very act of rebelling implies crossing a line or territory one never thought they would have to. Adolescents tend to rebel by breaking rules, experimenting, and dismissing parental instructions. Peer influence is the likely cause. We, however, associate adolescent rebellion with peer pressure so much that individuals outside the teenage bracket forget that they, too, are influenced by their peers. And that points towards the preoccupation with social status, especially once one’s physical needs have been met.
Signaling
Ayo I know I got it first
I’m Christopher Columbus, y’all just the Pilgrims— Kanye West
A cue is only a signal if it can be interpreted by the receiver. If you buy a Lamborghini and it hardly phases me, it doesn’t qualify to be called a signal.
Signals evolve because they influence another organism, and in particular, if it benefits the sender. Thus, moving from a Honda Fit to a GLE Mercedes will recur multiple times if other organisms notice it and if it benefits the sender.
Khaligraph Jones recalls when he first bought his Range. Meetings with potential partners changed, because the price had to match the car he parked outside his office. The signal benefited the sender. It only makes sense that he gets cars of a higher quality than the Range moving forward.
In fashion, a signal can allocate status and indirectly relay one’s social class. As Jay-Z raps in one line:
You can learn how to dress just by checkin’ my fresh
Or when he laces it with another:
But I can’t teach you my swag
You can pay for school, but you can’t buy class
Fashion serves as status signaling. Then there are the extremely rich, who wear plainly. Maybe a layered transition, from the rich and flashy to the rich and plain. Perhaps a territory that only few can rock.
Cars are also involved in the social status game, as is the ownership of private jets and helicopters. The signal evolves if the sender benefits from it. And the rich have always found ways of distinguishing themselves by finding more signals that separate them from the rest. The wealthy, therefore, continue to occupy what they previously never did.
Rob Henderson writes:
Research has shown that sociometric status (respect and admiration from peers) is more important for wellbeing than socioeconomic status. Furthermore, studies have described how negative social judgment is associated with a spike in cortisol (a hormone linked to stress) that is three times higher than in non-social stressful situations. We feel pressure to build and maintain social status, and fear losing it.
The pressure to stand out is significant.
The poor consider the well-off to have a more satisfactory life than they do. In reality, the pressing urge to keep up with the Joneses or preserve their status among the rich preoccupies their time and mental real estate more than one would think, especially one who doesn’t rank in the same socio-economic status as them.
Evolution shows how signals are especially relevant when they are costly. Most of Amotz Zahavi’s ideas have been critiqued on the basis of logic, where the cost of a signal is an honest predictor of one’s capabilities. If I can get a Bentley when I sneeze, then I am better off than anyone who has to grind for years just to get to my level. It’s not costly for me, but for another person. The fault in this logic is that greater costs should be sought, which might run contrary to how the wealthy would like to be distinguished.
A Bentley is costly, but what’s more costly is giving it up to anyone. Better yet, letting a toddler scratch its new coat. But no car lover in their sane mind would consider that cost. Thus, Zahavi’s logic does not stand up to close scrutiny. It does, nevertheless, contain some explanatory power.
Signals sent by senders are supposed to be costly to anyone who cannot match such costs. At some point, it was owning houses. Eventually, everyone could match that standard. The wealthy then rebelled by occupying another space. Maybe the opera. Over time, anyone could buy tickets. It changed to enrolling in Ivy League universities and establishing a legacy means of admitting one’s bloodline. But after the rise of DEI statuses, these too were overcome. The transitory cycle of weakening signals was matched with rebellious occupancy of new spaces at every instant.
This led Rob Henderson to coin the term luxury beliefs. Once the rich had occupied goods that didn’t seem to convey their rich status, they rebelled by jumping ship to beliefs. Beliefs then became costly signals that again, could only evolve if they benefit the sender.
High-status people desire status more than anyone else
Henderson adds:
Take vocabulary. Your typical working-class American could not tell you what “heteronormative” or “cisgender” means. But if you visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will eagerly explain them to you. When someone uses the phrase cultural appropriation, what they are really saying is, “I was educated at a top college”. Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary, because ordinary people have real problems to worry about.
Vocabulary has always been a signal. It’s so potent that indigenous people would rather associate themselves with the language of their colonialists than their native ones. A Meru native would fervently wish to speak in the Queen’s language, but his accent may betray his roots. That’s how much we wish to occupy certain beliefs. Luxury beliefs. And once one joins the game, it becomes difficult to escape it. You want more. A Red Queen effect.
I first heard the word polyamory on campus. I didn’t know what the hell that was. My religious teaching only spoke of polygamy. I doubt I would have discovered the word had I not gone to one of the leading universities in the region. But the reality is much more than that. The particular people I interacted with gave meaning to the word. Another word is pansexual. I am certain many other people who spent their four or more years in the same university may not have known such a word exists. Even within top institutions, luxury beliefs persist.
Words sit somewhere between physical goods and beliefs to distinguish people of certain standing. The evidence can easily be seen in the Kenyan set-up in different settings. At work, a festival, or even a house party. Especially house parties.
On one side of the spectrum, you’ll find young folk use words such as “siku zombo” and “zoza” and “mzimbiting”, and on the other side, you’ll find “chilez” and “cheers baba”. They are not goods, nor are they beliefs. But they are territories we still seek to occupy.
Coach Carter had his players dress in suits because he wanted them to be affiliated with a certain group of individuals. It’s another form of occupancy. Once you have dominated the basketball court, you proceed to the next level and occupy the space previously thought to only be filled by academics and professionals. A suit and tie.
Once everyone has access to luxury goods, the next space is luxury beliefs. The beauty of this territory is that its space is infinite. Unlike goods, which are rate and resource-limited, beliefs can crop up anytime.
Recall that rebellion marks the transition from one occupied territory to another. The mass-man rebelled and occupied all the goods previously affiliated with the wealthy. Now it’s beliefs. The track record is present in much of human history. When you could no longer rebel by fleeing, you could do so through the mind. Dissenting opinions and new schools of thought began in this manner.
Why? I think to self-distinguish
For so long, I’ve often wondered why humans have different faces. Why have features that explicitly show how different one is? I’m still doing my research and will release an essay on the same soon. But the face continues to fascinate me. Even identical twins wish to have traits that distinguish them from each other.
Occupancy can hint at the evolutionary need to reproduce when conditions are favourable, but that might not completely answer the question. Flowers can give us a clue.
Bright and beautiful flowers have a tight budget. So the insect-pollinated type will become exceptionally colourful, but distinguish itself from other types of flowers. The signal should benefit the sender, so it has to distinguish itself from other flowers. That’s the only way it can evolve. It’s not only about reproduction and multiplication.
The face, I believe, serves the same purpose. Features of beauty are easily distinguishable on the face. A smile, a dimple, white teeth, sharp teeth, clear skin, glossy hair, full beard, straight jaw, full lips, long eyelashes, huge eyes, oiled face, smooth scalp. Light travels faster than sound. The face is the first confrontation before someone speaks.
The need to self-distinguish stretches from the face to cover luxury goods and presently, luxury beliefs. Preoccupation with new territories explains the rush among the rich to be the first to generate an AGI or start an exoplanetarian human civilization. The urge to self-distinguish is equally as potent a goal as the need to reproduce. This explains the tango between occupying and signaling, I believe.
What I’m trying to say is…
The wealthy continue to find new ways of distinguishing themselves, while the poor continue to replicate and occupy these new vistas.
The cycle is a real-life manifestation of evolution at work, not necessarily through genes or reproduction.
It shouldn’t surprise us that only the wealthy can have the financial girth to switch genders and defend the idea. It’s a new territory, costly to those who cannot afford it, and of immense benefit to the sender.
Naturaliter.
Further reading — How the luxury beliefs of an educated elite erode society by Rob Henderson.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube