[Inspired by a few of the science bits in HP:MOR, and far more so by the discussions between Draco and Harry about "social skills". Shared because I suspect it's an insight some people would benefit from.]
One of the more prominent theories on the evolution of human intelligence suggests that humans involved intelligence, not to deal with their environment, but rather to deal with each other. A small intellectual edge would foster competition, and it would result in the sort of recursive, escalating loop that's required to explain why we're so SUBSTANTIALLY smarter than every other species on the planet.
If you accept that premise, it's obvious that intelligence should, naturally, come with a desire to compete against other humans. It should be equally obvious from looking at human history that, indeed, we seem to do exactly that.
Posit, then, that, linked to intelligence, there's a trait for politics - using intelligence to compete against other humans, to try and establish dominance via cunning instead of brawn.
And, like everything that the Blind Idiot God Evolution has created, imagine that there are humans who LACK this trait for politics, but still have intelligence.
Think about the humans who, instead of looking inwards at humanity for competition, instead turn outwards to the vast uncaring universe of physics and chemistry. Other humans are an obtainable target - a little evolutionary push, and your tribe can outsmart any other tribe. The universe is not nearly so easily cowed, though. The universe is, often, undefeatable, or at least, we have not come close to mastering it. Six thousand years and people still die to storms and drought and famine. Six thousand years, and we have just touched on the moon, just begun to even SEE other planets that might contain life like ours.
I never understood other people before, because I'm missing that trait.
And I finally, finally, understand that this trait even exists, and what it must BE like, to have the trait.
We are genetic, chemical beings. I believe this with every ounce of myself. There isn't a soul that defies physics, there is not a consciousness that defies neurology. The world, even ourselves, can be measured. Anger comes from a part of this mixture, as does happiness and love. They are not lesser for this. They are not!
This is not an interlude. It is woven in to the meaning of what I realized. If you have this trait, then part of your values, as fundamental to yourself as eating and breathing and drinking, is the desire for status, to assert a certain form of dominance. Intelligence can almost be measured by status and cunning, and those who try to cheat and use crass physical violence are indeed generally condemned for it.
I don't have this trait. I don't value status in and of itself. It's useful, because it lets me do other things. It opens doors. So I invest in still having status, but status is not a goal; Status is to me, as a fork is to hunger - merely a means to an end.
So I have never, not once in my life, been able to comprehend the simple truth: 90% of the people I meet, quite possibly more, value status, as an intrinsic thing. Indeed, they are meant to use their intelligence as a tool to obtain this status. It is how we rose to where we are in the world.
I don't know what to make of this. It means everything I'd pieced together about people is utterly, utterly wrong, because it assumed that they all valued truth, and understanding - the pursuits of intelligence when you don't have the political trait.
I am, for a moment, deeply, deeply lost.
But, I notice, I am no longer confused.
Status perceptions are tricksy things
It seems to me that a lot of people read status moves into just about every action. The way that a lot of people define it is not to define it at all - everything becomes connected with status. If you behave in just about any way at all, it will be perceived as desired or undesired, and that gets added into the status evaluation. The way some people use it, it's like they're trying to create the ultimate hasty generalization.
Considering the all-encompassing nature of status perceptions, I don't see a way to invalidate them, so I hope that anyone reading status into this discussion post is thinking "If I can't think of a way to invalidate my perceptions through testing, might my perceptions of status-seeking work exactly like the Barnum effect - I paint status seeking perceptions with such a wide brush that everybody qualifies as status-seeking by my definition?"
If you claim not to be motivated by status, you will have difficulty finding anything to say or do that escapes other's status evaluations for that reason.
There are incentives, as well, for others to read status moves into your actions. If most of the group is evaluating your status, and someone is competing with you for status, this someone has to alter the group's opinions of their own status relative to yours. Failing to evaluate your status would leave them at a disadvantage. More importantly, not believing that you're actively seeking status would put them at a further disadvantage by preventing them from trying to predict what status moves you will make next.
How should status be defined?
Pitfalls of status perceptions:
I see a lot of people making the kinds of mistakes that are described in 37 ways words can be wrong:
5 The act of labeling something with a word, disguises a challengable inductive inference you are making.
8 Your verbal definition doesn't capture more than a tiny fraction of the category's shared characteristics, but you try to reason as if it does.
11 You ask whether something "is" or "is not" a category member but can't name the question you really want answered.
12 You treat intuitively perceived hierarchical categories like the only correct way to parse the world, without realizing that other forms of statistical inference are possible even though your brain doesn't use them.
13 You talk about categories as if they are manna fallen from the Platonic Realm
23 The existence of a neat little word prevents you from seeing the details of the thing you're trying to think about.
24 You have only one word, but there are two or more different things-in-reality, so that all the facts about them get dumped into a single undifferentiated mental bucket.
I do not see a way to create and use status perceptions that doesn't qualify as a logical fallacy, bias or "way that words can be wrong". This is the reason why I say "I don't believe in status." It's not that I don't think other people are creating status perceptions. It's that I think the status perceptions they create are irrational.
How I evaluate others without status perceptions:
I think an easier question to address in public than "Do I care about my own status?" is "Do I make status evaluations of others?" and this is relevant because if you don't care about status, you theoretically shouldn't evaluate others that way, either. Here is how I evaluate people without using status:
People are systems and they're out there interacting in a system. They are not just little bundles of traits, so it makes no sense to me to lump all of these traits together into a status evaluation (committing mistakes #5, #8 and/or #24) and rank everyone in a hierarchical organization scheme (committing mistake #12). If I want a person in my life for some purpose (lover, friend, etc.) my question is not "Which options are high status?" but "What interactions do I want to have with the chosen person and which specific traits are necessary for that?" (Avoiding mistake #11).
Essentially, I create specific questions to answer, break my perceptions down into component parts and consider how the traits of the person will play out in context in terms of cause and effect. This is the only way to get the specifics of my social needs fulfilled and it helps me avoid the halo effect.
Ranking people by status looks about as useful to me as guessing the teacher's password is for answering questions about how things work.
Understanding the cause and effect is also how I go about understanding myself. Other people's perceptions of me have little to no influence on my ideas about myself because my ideas about myself are far more complex and detailed than theirs are. This is how I ended up caring so little about what others think of me.
My first reaction is "people DO that?"
I can evaluate status in a very crude sense, but the algorithm seems to be a combination of HasAuthority and Friends_With_Authority. So Co-Worker A, who is friends with the CEO, can probably make higher-status requests than I can. And my boss can obviously do that. But the idea that Co-Worker A could have more status than my boss is a concept I can't evaluate; as far as I can tell it just can't be true.