I'm not sure what you mean by "acknowledge that status hierachies are situation-dependent".

There are different kinds of status. My adviser might have higher science-status than me, but I have higher otaku-status than him. The situation determines which sort of status is salient.

I don't agree that purely professional relationships are optimal for work relationships -- I have learned more and gotten more done (both for myself and for my manager) when I feel that the manager truly cares about me and wants me to succeed, and when I truly care about the manager and the team's success.

Oh no, I didn't mean they're optimal. But they're a very useful fallback when you realize that you're just never going to actually like someone but still need to maintain collegiality with them.

Long before I found HPMOR, I reacted to the death of a family member by planning how to defeat death with science, because nothing less would give me safety. I was baffled that most people preferred to cry for a bit and then forget about it, without making any effort to save themselves or even to fix the particular problem that caused the one death. I read somewhere that EY had a similar experience and reaction, that is mirrored in HJPEV's reaction to Hermione's death.

I will admit that I never thought of transhumanism on my own, but I've ended up endorsing it simply because I can't actually think of an involuntary or unwanted death where I actually thought that we shouldn't have saved the person even if we could have. Then again, I only ever lost a grandmother and grandfather who were extremely old, and seemingly quite ready to pass on.

Harry claims "Suppressed memory is a load of pseudoscience! People do not repress traumatic memories, they remember them all too well for the rest of their lives!" (Ch. 6), but this is inconsistent with "Her mind was slow to remember [the negative information] for a few seconds, which frightened her" (Ch. 84), and denial is a well-known defense mechanism against trauma. The American Psychological Association website says "shock and denial are typical" reactions to traumatic experiences

I think it depends if you merely sustain a trauma or actually develop PTSD.

That said, I want to do the right, moral, thing, in the hope that there truly is a right thing to do and that my search for meaning is not just my reaction to loss of my mother's imposition of good/evil judgments.

Well of course there's a right thing to do. I'm just not going to tell you what it is, because I want to know if other people's conclusions when they research the issue converge with my own. :-p