The Importance of Social Status
I was not popular in high school. Or middle school, or really any of the schools. And, what adults always used to tell me at the time, was his thing about how the nerdy kids would eventually grow into successful adults, and all those popular bullies or whatever would peak in high school and go on to be losers in later life.
I don’t think it’s true.
In fact, my best estimation of what happened is, a lot of the kids with high social status went on to live happy normal lives, and a lot of the kids with low social status ended up needing to recover from that experience. In fact, research shows that people who are bullied in school go on to have long term health effects from it, often including things like PTSD. For me personally, I believe having low social status in high school was linked to things like getting sexually harassed by lots of boys, who knew I didn’t have the social support to retaliate, and even eventually being sexually abused by a guy I dated.
I had one particularly traumatic incident with him, and one question I really struggled to answer as an adult was, “why didn’t I just dump him?”
And, the answer was, I was lonely. I was isolated, and I wasn’t used to people giving attention. While, ultimately I did make many good friends by the time I graduated and perhaps wouldn’t even have looked unpopular to a casual observer, I was always haunted by the loneliness of the time I had no friends. Even when people weren’t directly mean to me, just having no friends was painful. Just being ignored by everyone was painful. So, when someone was paying attention to me — even if that attention hurt me — I often felt like, well, it hurts me less than being alone. So, I should just tolerate it.
This set up a pattern for my 20s to early 30s, where I dated people who were mean to me, and I just tolerated it because I didn’t know any better. I was always drifting between the pain of being alone, and the pain of being with people who hurt me. It wasn’t until my mid to late 30s that I figured out how to hang out with people and partners who were kind to me.
I don’t think that people who were popular in high school end up having that same experience; I think people who are popular are used to people treating them well, so they won’t tolerate being around people who treat them badly.
And, you know, we act like all this social status stuff goes away after you graduate — the lie those adults told me back in the day — but it doesn’t. I expect I am especially primed to notice this, because of my experience as an adolescent, but I see social hierarchy everywhere. Everywhere.
And we never talk about it!
I think, this is one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to understanding our current social situation. So much of the arguments we are grappling with, are really arguments of social status.
For instance, anti-racism activists know that it is really hard to get a white person to apologize for being racist, even if that white person is also an anti-racism activist. Why? Because for a white person, admitting they were racist causes a drop in their social status. Even if this person believes, ideologically, in the cause of combatting racism, when it comes to their social status being lowered, their defenses go up.
Now, I’m not saying this isn’t hypocritical (because it is) — I’m saying this is an expected part of human nature. So many of the blocks, and obstacles that we’re facing in current society are happening because someone will risk losing social status if they’re proven wrong.
The act of losing or having low social status is extremely painful. So painful, in fact, that at the extreme having chronic low social status is one of the risk factors for becoming a mass shooter. Now, I’m not saying it’s justified, I’m just saying this is how people behave.
This is actually one area where I take issue with how liberals attempt to impose their values upon the world; often, liberals use techniques like humiliation and ostracization to impact political change (often known as “cancel culture” colloquially.) However, this can be so painful for people on the receiving end of it that it leads to unintended consequences.
If you act like a mean girl long enough, eventually, someone’s going to go Columbine on your ass. Again, I’m not saying that’s justified, I’m saying that’s people. So, the unfortunate impact of things like “cancel culture” is that it will generate disproportionate resistance, which is ultimately likely to move you further from your ideal goal. I’m not completely sure what technique should be used in place, however, I am afraid that we are about to weather on oncoming storm of this resistance, and I’m afraid of what that’s going to look like.
Additionally, for some people on the giving end of cancel culture may actually be motivated by the desire to increase their own social status rather than to solve the social ills they claim to be solving. I believe this is problematic, because this desire to elevate ones own social status even at the cost of liberal objectives (mostly solving various types of inequality) will ultimately hinder the movement.
Anyway. I’m not completely sure how to go about tackling this, but I think a good first step, is to start observing and commenting on perceived social status. I think it will illuminate many things that seem confusing without that explanation.
