Managing status

As the prefrontal cortex grows with us, we increasingly become concerned with managing social status among our peers and humanity in general. Throughout adulthood, managing status is one of the main things we do.

Every thought and action is an attempt to maintain or gain social status in the form of more respect from others through greater wealth, generosity, intellectual acumen, physical strength, beauty, and many other nonessential skills and characteristics we seek.

Sometimes such a tendency comes at the cost of honesty—the attitude to say and do things in their uncorrupted, pure form. Not for someone else, but for oneself. Not to make an impression, but to learn, develop, and transform something internal beyond appearances.

Like the kindergarteners in the Spaghetti Tower design challenge, it is most often right to directly get to build the tower, make mistakes, and iterate, instead of planning, defining who plays which role, and protecting the possibility of mistakes at all costs to avoid public embarrassment.

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