Dominance Hierarchy
To explain dominance hierarchy in simple terms – It’s a social structure in which humans (and animals) organize themselves on the basis of their skills, competence, power, and status. This is a never-ending game that begins at the dawn of your life, and needless to say, the higher up you are, the better: You get more access to women, You are offered better quality resources. Your friends and colleagues are better.
“A rich man is respected more than a good man.”
This is something you can’t opt-out of; Our neurochemistry monitors our position in the dominance hierarchy. Serotonin is the key hormone, it also regulates our mood – feeling of well-being and happiness. If you happen to be in lower levels of dominance hierarchy – Your serotonin will be extremely low, making you feel depressed and in extreme cases making you feel suicidal.
For a man, Living at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy is miserable. Even your own neurochemistry is against you (Low serotonin instilling depression). Romantically women aren’t interested in you. Socially men don’t respect you. Mentally you are almost suicidal.
Moreover, a dominance hierarchy is a mechanism among human females to choose mates. Human females are choosy maters, women date up and around their level, no matter what, a woman won’t date below her level in the hierarchy, as it signals to her that the certain male is incompetent – he can’t protect and provide for her children. This is the reason why women who are highly educated or have high-paying jobs/businesses experience difficulties in finding a suitable mate. If you fail to attain noteworthy status in the game of dominance, you will be forced to fail your reproductive function. Statistically, Only 20% of men have access to all the women. As men, the higher up they are on the hierarchy, the greater their options. Men date down and around their level.
It is a common misconception that positions of dominance are won through violence, they are rather won through cooperation and coalition. Violence is often the last resort if two parties were to engage in bloody combat, both of them would be severely damaged irrespective of who wins, if a third comes in, it can easily wreck both of them as they already are damaged. Make no mistake, it pays to be powerful and strong, even if it isn’t always called for.
It is when you cooperate with other individuals in the game, with the incentive to reward them duly, that is with resources or a power position below you, is when you transcend hierarchies. It is a clever use of politics, cunning, and a display of high competence. For example- A female associated with a high-status male instantly becomes high-status or having a high-status friend instantly opens you up for connection with more such individuals.
It has been found in chimps, the male which is the strongest isn’t always dominant. It is the chimp that is strong and clever enough to form a meaningful relationship with other fellow chimps. (This is only true for cognitive animals)
The need for Status
The need for status is as innate as the need for survival, given the fact it’s directly linked with our neurochemistry (serotonergic system discussed above). According to Maslow’s hierarchy, the basic psychological needs for well being of a human are food, sex, water, homeostasis which are all sufficiently met if you are high-status (interchangeably used with high-position in dominance hierarchy). If a male wants to execute his sexual strategy to the fullest extent, that is to spread his speed as much as possible he needs to be high-status, as women find high-status men to be intrinsically more attractive than average.
Additionally, being respected by others is a necessary requirement for the development of healthy self-esteem. It testifies that the individual is worthy of some form of consideration, an important need among social animals. Those
with high-status are more confident, occupy more space than others – open body language, are more risk aggressive, and are presented with more opportunities.
According to the Darwinian concept (Survival of the fittest/strongest), this is social order developed to ensure that the strongest of species survive. There’s also a number of evolutionary benefits:
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Those of lower status will not challenge or threaten you.
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You get to eat first.
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You have the first choice of mate.
We all desire a form of control to some extent, the feeling of being able to dictate our own life is very innate to us. Consequently, when some lose their status or are low in the pecking order they feel high stress, and also are subjected to the risk of dying at lower ages, partly due to the discernment of losing control over one’s life – it’s an existential crisis combined with deep satiated depression.
This kind of structure is also necessary for social order since it doesn’t raise conflicts over the choice of who gets it first. This is an amoral system, but nature is amoral at best and immoral at worst.
The basic structure of dominance hierarchy is to maximize power and influence over others by raising one’s status in the dominance hierarchy, the medium of achieving it can be money, political power, corporate ascension, etc.
Types of Status Games
Ideally, for a man to be considered high-status he needs to win at multiple status games across varied domains – Money, Power, Social, intellectual, etc. Mastery lies in having the ability to conquer multifaceted domains, and integrate them into your life.
Monetary Ascension
The simplest trick in the book to attain status is by maximizing your monetary position. Money is the greatest determinator of a man’s worth and competence. If you are successful at making money, you are considered successful in the game of life. The first metric we humans use to anticipate someone’s status is through his monetary worth. Money allows you access to the upper echelons of the hierarchy.
Strength
This is not a game but rather an attribute to have, it certifies your credibility. Physical strength has been drawn out of it, but it is incorrect to say it doesn’t influence it in any way. Women find muscular men to be more attractive, and men are more afraid of threatening violence towards a stronger foe. It adds to your HALO effect – more attractive individuals are considered more trustworthy and hence offered more power.
Social Connection
This is one of the most important games you will ever play, humans are social animals. They need it for perfect mental health, and more importantly, attainment of power depends on you having the right connections. Being able to forge meaningful alliances with credible and highly competent individuals, that is having a monopoly over shadow economy – everyone knows who’s the most dominant (influential) person without him having a title or description. Naturally, you are associated with the value your social circle has, this is a loop – The higher up you go the better your social circle, the better your social circle the higher value you have.
Victimhood
For a great part of human history, victimhood was always shunned, and never considered a status game. As matter of fact, it was considered to be one of the lowest positions. It is fairly recently that being a victim is considered virtuous and knightly. Victimhood has come to be respected, stimulated, and even encouraged. Occasionally, some individuals will feign being a victim to gain status in the victimhood hierarchy just to be gifted with free handouts that come of it.
Hierarchy Rules
Every individual in the dominance hierarchy must abide by certain values that are mutually agreed upon to maintain the social order. It goes without saying that If you’re placed in a position of significant power there are certain rules you can afford to break, or even mend to some extent.
Equality is a myth, the entire principle of a dominance hierarchy is to display or assert in some way that you are better, stronger, wiser, richer, and smarter than the rest of the competition. But if status only was allowed to predict social order there would lead to a violent revolution from the low-status individuals.
Equality pertains you to forsake this need for status, be with on the same standard as everybody else. Yet again, if equality is established there would be no forward movement of society on a grander scale. Everyone would just work to be equal, that is sustain basic needs. Such a structure goes against evolution.
As such to maintain harmony within the social order, a Status-equality based economy is achieved. In animals (living in a group) the low-status individuals are offered food. In humans, the poor get free handouts from the government and the rich. Recall, that status ascension also requires you to work in collaboration, that is maintain good relationships so others can help you transcend. For example – A politician offering free handouts to the poor in return for votes is collaborating.
Most importantly, you must advance and maintain your status at all costs. Status is important, you just need to be able to mask this drive for status, appear to promote equality, and work in the background with cunning and careful maneuvering. According to the current state of the world, a shot at the ascension and extravagant ambition is frowned upon, as such it could be potentially dangerous. One must carefully mask their true desires & personality and appear to conform to the world order.
High-status individuals must be respected and obeyed, this is something evolutionally programmed in the brain. Movie/Tv workers (actors) are respected for absolutely no reason other than their status. When someone ascends positions, he’s gifted with power and influence over others. There will be people that disregard this rule but they are exceptions. While higher status individuals are admired, they are also subject to intense envy, there will be masses who hate their status over them – this is to the phenomenon that some people will hate you, and some people will love you.
Higher-status individuals are gifted with more opportunities and also have better options in terms of women (discussed above). This is due to multi-varied reasons – They are well-connected, i.e. their social network also consists of other influential personnel. Furthermore, they are more risk-aggressive and confident – they chase after opportunities actively, this partly due to having higher serotonin levels which makes them feel more confident and less depressed. While lower-status individuals are afraid of taking risks and run from opportunities even if they are presented because they are often in a deep state of serotonin (low) induced depression. It limits their confidence and their ability to trust in themselves.
One common belief found among low-status individuals is – they themselves don’t think they deserve to be higher up on the food chain. When are at the bottom, you are essentially a few feet above your grave, as such any uncertain decision can mean disaster. This is due to higher susceptibility to be affected by negative emotions, the serotonergic system also influences the emotions of an individual. If he’s low in serotonin he’s hyper-vigilant, stressed, and highly impulsive.
Ascending Position in Dominance Hierarchy
To be of high status is to be a leader, dominance is all about having an influence over people’s actions. Originally, animals ascended hierarchy through engaging in conflict (brute force strategy), or sizing up to each other and threatening, visual display of strength (it pays to be big), in cognitively advanced animals this also involved the use of superficial charm and political maneuvering.
Especially for humans, ascending anywhere is a lot less matter of strength & physical size and a lot more about competence, human hierarchies are set up such way that they favor the one better at work – in terms of multifarious domains (Competence, Charm, Cunning, Seduction, Physical ability) than like animals where it’s purely based on violence. For example – In a corporate hierarchy being just competent with your work is insignificant, you must appear (that is they must see you working) to be competent. This is a careful mix of cunning plus the actual work.
Excellence
The importance of being competent is stressed again and again, this is due to it being the easiest strategy to ascend your position. Excellence requires nothing more than dedicated work combined with a sheer focus in that field. In a world where most people just do enough work to get by, to chase pleasures. Someone who puts in a better effort will always easily transcend over these incompetent fools. An individual can easily rise from 50th percentile of the ladder to 80th, all through sheer effort. It’s at the higher levels one must deploy other tools.
Diplomacy
Having already been discussed the importance of social connections. We must look to how to forge them; we need each other sometimes for a mutual benefit, sometimes for a one-sided profit. It goes without saying that a good (well connected) social group must be maintained, it is always your choice who you decide to ally with. But you will encounter individuals who are necessary for your quest but don’t share the same beliefs and behavior patterns as you. Your ego may require to discard and hate them, but it’s an irrational choice. Better choice is to hide your contempt, appear to agree, and often relate to their beliefs. This is tactical diplomacy. One must befriend any and everyone who can help him in his mission, irrespective of his emotional biases.
Trust and Cooperation
This is the best method to gain people’s support – As trust makes people naturally side with you, that is out of their own accord. Trust also paves the way for cooperating, we are willing to collaborate, support, and work with people who we like and trust rather than, someone we distrust. Recall the days of your school, if you were appointed a group project, you likely wanted to do it with your friends.
What makes you trust others? What makes you think they have your best interest?… Likability. We trust people we like, how does one is/appear to be likable? By being similar, we think that people similar to us have the same beliefs and values as us. They will rationalize it into thinking that I’m a good a person, as such a person having the values as me must be a good person as well. (Note – Most people can not consciously manipulate or deceive others, the number of conscious manipulators is fairly very low). You can also simulate similarity by mirroring their behaviors, having the same clothing style as them.
Tactical Empathy (Callous Empathy)
Most people are fairly overwhelmed when they find someone who just listens to them. If you pretend to listen to their problems and connect with them using other people’s experiences as examples, from their perspective you are getting very closer, so as to maintain that closeness many people will overextend themselves in a form of cooperation.
Furthermore, studies have found that prehistorically hunters that brought meat back to camp (empathy), were rewarded with respect and prestige. It could be said status is an evolutionary currency that is most easily attained through cooperating with other individuals.