The Prestige-Seeking Impulse
A Journey into the Unmentioned
Note: This post is very related to my other post “Keepin’ it Real”
I’m getting new glasses and a haircut this week. I’m a bit torn about it. Part of me wants to look good. Part of me is hesitant to put effort into my appearance. I struggle with finding a healthy way to relate to “looking good”. Look good to whom?
There is a healthy “looking good”, where I earnestly enjoy taking care of myself while delighting in my appearance for its own sake. There is also an unhealthy “looking good”, where I go into a negative-sum game of trying to look better than others.1
I recognize this dichotomy from many other parts of life. It comes up in most “socially salient” areas. Examples include money, connections, activities & skills. If my social instincts think that something might impact the way other people treat me, the dichotomy appears.
In all these areas, intrinsic enjoyment is easily swallowed by an instrumental prestige-perspective. This perspective shift is driven by what I call “The Prestige-Seeking Impulse”
The perspective shift usually starts with a semi-conscious question: “I wonder what other people would think of this?”. This question is asked from an evaluating outside perspective. Once I go into this perspective, it’s hard to switch back. The question sets me on a spiral towards increasing levels of outside-view evaluation/judgement.
In this outside-view, prestige-concerns bubble up. I might become dissatisfied with a delightful experience, just because it’s not “valuable” in a commodified prestige sense. I also become aware of potential social risks & judgement, turning risk-averse and awkward.
Other times, I go into the prestige-perspective by realizing that I’m doing something that can be seen as cool2. This realization can be very rewarding, a powerful status3-rush. Unfortunately, taking pride in prestige also lead to negative consequences.
Firstly, I’m easily trapped by “achievements”4, trying to hoard them by turning them into stories or the building blocks of my personal mythos. When I get stuck on past “achievements”, I start focusing on trying to “stay successful”. In practice, this means valuing others people’s continued positive regard. Valuing things I can’t control makes me anxious & miserable. The anxiety escalates until I remember to shift my focus to the things within my control. I can control my decisions & attitudes. I can not control other people’s opinions of me.
Secondly, prestige is relational, not intrinsic. This means that my perceived degree of prestige will shift depending on the (sub)cultural context I’m in. My brain evolved to do status competitions in small tribal groups where this distinction is irrelevant. Because of this intersectionality of status level, I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to care about one’s perceived level of “intrinsic”5 prestige while also feeling safe & secure.
Thirdly, the first two points lead to a situation where I’m likely to:
Care about keeping a fictional inherent “level of prestige”
Be afraid that I’m not “actually high-prestige”
Be envious of high-prestige people that seem to be secure in their positions.
Hide the fact that I care about prestige. Caring about prestige isn’t cool.
“I used to care about other people’s opinions, but I’m much more mature now. Look at all those unenlightened people caring about others’ opinions. I have reached much farther than they have. I don’t even need to compare myself to others, that’s how enlightened I am.”
- Fictional Spiritual Bypasser
So, what have I learned? It seems like the prestige-perspective leads to risk-avoidant behaviour regardless of the level of prestige I attribute to myself. This means that the prestige-perspective makes me shut up and avoid doing anything that might lead to me being judged. This is a shame, since around 100% of the fun things I can do socially carries a risk of being judged.
My life is better when I stay with honesty & vulnerability. As such, I’d like to find ways to minimize my tendency to get caught in the prestige-perspective. I still want to have some degree of explicit status literacy, but I don’t want it to feel important to me on a visceral level.
Also, when prestige-seeking impulses turn intrinsically6 rewarding activities into instrumental tasks/chores, it saps the fun out of those activities. Going to the gym is much more fun if I focus on the pleasurable sensations in my body rather than long-term bodybuilding goals.7
So, how should I handle this prestige-seeking impulse?
[…]
Let’s start with a Summary:
Summarized, the general shift into the prestige-perspective goes like this:
Immediate experience →
Evaluating thought →
Prestige-perspective featuring prestige-pride or self-judgement →
Risk-avoidant behaviour →
Doubts, awkwardness, inhibition
Summarized, the prestige-perspective has the following features:
It’s hierarchical & comparative, causing impostor-syndrome-like concerns
It’s transactional; focusing on how interactions cause a gain/loss of prestige
It’s goal-oriented/telic
It tempts me into commodifying experiences into stories I “trade” for prestige8
It leads to envy when thinking about other people’s level of prestige
It’s sneaky; trying to be cool is very uncool. To be cool/high-prestige, other people must think that you don’t care. This can be done by not caring, or by pretending not to care. Pretending not to care goes hand-in-hand with tricking yourself that you don’t act with prestige in mind.
Disclaimer: Speculation ahead! I’ll talk a bit about probable causes & potential remedies, both of which should be taken with a few grains of salt.
Another thing I’d like to point out is that the prestige-seeking impulse is probably based on a lot of sexual selection/natural selection, considering the social nature of human reproduction/early survival. As such, I’m pretty sure it’s hard to escape from fully, but I’d like to make an attempt to reduce the severity/frequency, as well as make the topic less taboo.9
I’m also fairly certain that consumerism & advertising are major drivers of the prestige-seeking impulse. Advertisers exapt the human need for self-actualization, substituting it with lucrative status competitions. As such, a lot of advertising contains prestige-mode-inducing content. To escape the prestige-mindset promoted by advertising, I’m avoiding ads.
Now that I start thinking about it, some social situations are all about comparing other people. Gossip may serve a game-theoretical function in some cases10, but when the gossip is about bonding rather than warning, I think it’s better replaced with a bonding activity that doesn’t hone the prestige-mindset. The same goes for shitting on the outgroup11, as well as caring about competitions.12
I guess this can be summarized as “Be mindful with external influences that want you to compare & compete”. I’m pretty sure that avoiding all such influences is impossible. I’m also pretty sure it would make life rather boring.
I’m intending to avoid the meh ones, and replace the ok ones with less harmful substitutes.
As for what I can do about my mental habits? I’ll target the biggest weakness of prestige: the need for concealment/sneakiness. I’ll use a favourite tool of mine: TAPs (Trigger Action Plans). When setting up TAPs, I define triggers that I respond to by doing an action.
Trigger: I feel proud, judge myself or hesitate due to a perceived “social risk”13
Action: I will say it out loud to the people around me.
Example: “I’m feeling a lot of shame & self-judgement right now, and need a moment to calm down”
Trigger: I notice myself having a hidden agenda in social situations
Action: I share the goals with the people involved in the “plan”
Example: “Sorry I zoned out thinking about how to get you in bed.”
Trigger: I tell someone something that could be used as a prestige-earning trophy
Action: I share it unpolished, without concealing the less-appealing parts.
Example: “The tantric energy-orgasm threesome was nice since I didn’t feel any pressure to keep up a constant level of sexual energy. You know how I sometimes struggle with staying focused/horny during sex”
Trigger: I receive or give gifts/compliments
Action: I will put on relational glasses, rather than transactional ones.
Example: “Thank you for saying/giving that, It makes me feel happy and seen”
Trigger: I hear someone else going into prestige mode
Action: I give them a serving of positive regard.
Example: “You’re not an idiot. I like you” (note: only if true)
End Notes
I’ve been thinking about the prestige-seeking impulse for quite some time now. This is the first time I’ve structured it up like this, though. I did find some new things, but most of the TAPs/advice are reminders to pick up old habits.
Much of it boils down to speaking the truth, avoiding consumerism, and focusing on relations rather than status/transactions.
I sense that self-love will become an increasingly important component in resisting the prestige-seeking impulse. Self-love supports radical honesty with a foundation of security that comes from positive self-regard. The same self-sufficiency is bound to reduce judgmental thinking induced by insecurity.
Finally, I can try to satisfy my prestige-seeking impulses by channelling them into something good:
Pride in things under my control: my decisions & judgements
Sexual power play
PS.
Note: Speculation ahead, but I feel fairly confident. As usual, I will avoid hedging using “uncertainty words”
I think prestige should be an EA cause area.
It is a driver of civilizational inadequacy. It causes personal suffering on a mass scale. It is closely related to the attention economy, in a co-reinforcing manner. And it’s neglected, due to its sneaky nature. It also causes people to prioritize their altruism in radically non-utilitarian ways, even when they try to do good:
Thought experiment:
You get to choose between two different volunteer jobs. Both take the same amount of personal effort, time & resources. Working with the first one, you save 1 human life every year. Working with the second one, you save 100 human lives every year.
Which one do you pick? The second?
What if the first one is about attending rallies, and the second is about copying data between excel sheets?
I think it’s highly likely that many people would convince themselves that the rallies are more important.
Beware comparisons
I use cool & prestige interchangeably. They have different connotations, but both are about relative “social wealth”
I’m also using status & prestige interchangeably.
Added citation marks here because the word is part of the prestige-worldview, and I want to highlight that it’s not to be taken as base truth. When I talk about “achievements”, I mean actions or experiences that have later been commodified into some kind of "metaphorical “trophy” to awe others.
Quotation marks because there’s no such thing as intrinsic prestige.
I’m using “intrinsic” in two slightly different senses in this text. Both as “inherent to” and as “valuable in itself”
This is closely related to the advice not to turn hobbies into a living.
This is why I think decommodification is vital for immediacy.
I like being able to talk about my struggles. It’s tricky to talk about prestige though. It can easily come off as humblebrag. Or even turn into humblebrag, where I satisfy my prestige-seeking impulse in a backhanded way.
Gossip can help sharing information about people that break agreements or fail to do their fair share of work. As such, gossip can stabilize cooperation within groups.
Have you ever been in a social situation where you’ve all delighted in your shared dislike of Trump? That’s shitting on the outgroup. I usually break the outgroup-shitting dynamic by simply asking people to stop since I find it boring. But sometimes I go into fanatic mode, and shit on the outgroup hard enough for people to feel uncomfortable and stop.
I’m not sure you can tell, but I don’t really like sports. I think of watching sports as a kind of proxy participation in tribal pseudo-warfare. Better than real warfare I guess.
I’m glad I live in Sweden. Here, most risks aren’t really risky. I can date multiple people, kiss men, be an atheist, attend sex parties etc