>Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it.
Read carefully the part about science. Status seeking is inherit in biology... it's tied to serotonin levels in your blood. When you say you don't seek status it is not only false, it is unscientific. You're a liar or delusional. End of story. I can literally cite science around this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11275287/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1606800113
This tracks not only in humans, but across multiple species including the lobster. Status seeking is in built into biology and society. Saying you don't status seek is like saying you never felt the emotion of sadness or happiness. At your job, in society, the social hierarchies are everywhere and we are ALL wired to recognize and respond to these things and to SEEK it.
Additionally there is extremely high correlation with women and status. Men with the highest status tend to get the most women. And women are attracted to the men with the highest status. It's directly tied to sexual selection and evolution. Like... this isn't even just a measurable thing via serotonin... it's tied to the theory of evolution and anthropological origins of humans. You literally have no argument other than a pathetic attempt to counter science with anecdotal bullshit.
Saying you don't seek status is in itself status seeking. You're claiming to be holier than thou but it's all just bullshit status signaling because it flies in the face of scientific reality. I think you're more of a person who is unable to obtain status in the human social hierarchy... you're probably among the lowest of society so you might've just given up and called yourself a person who never felt the emotion to status seek. Understandable... but again not realistic.
Also when I say you're pathetically on the bottom of the barrel in terms of status. You shouldn't be offended... because you don't seek status... it's not intrinsic to your character.. You should feel nothing when I call you an utter social outcast with no status whatsoever.
>To color that a little, I've literally told the last 4 managers I've had very explicitly that I'm not at all interested in career advancement. When I was asked to lead my current team, I said "I've done it in the past and can if you want, but check with A and B first to see if they want to". I literally do not care about it.
Bro this is another form of status signaling. "Everyone wants me to be their manager but I don't care for it." lol. It might be true but then again it very well might not be since your statement is a bit braggy here. If you could share with me something people and society will find pathetic and shameful about you... that's more solid proof that you don't care about status. Something like, "Everyone hates me, I've tried to be manager all my life but nobody likes me." That's a more true signal of zero status seeking. But I don't see this in you at all.
To put it in perspective, I think I believe you don't actually want to be manager... but that has nothing to do with not caring for status. It's more likely you're balancing "status" with the extra responsibilities that come with higher status. You can't handle the price that needs to be paid to reach that level so you "settle". Again, very common. You maintain a baseline level of status high enough to keep your wife around (she will leave if your status goes low enough as your status is tied to your ability to raise your family) but it doesn't demand to much out of you. If status was given to you without cost... you would take it without hesitation because... again... you seek status, like all humans do.
>Especially when it comes to teaching, if your identity is "better than child" instead of "person who helps children reach their potential" I'm not sure what to say. Sounds like a narcissist.
No. You're just someone who can't face reality. You have to talk about everything in idealist terms. If a teacher thinks all children are smarter, more educated or better than him, what identity does he have left? How is he even qualified to teach children? A teacher or any human does not think of his job as some selfless charity to society where he is at the utter whim of sacrificing himself for the class room. He has identity and gains status from the role as a "teacher" and that is a huge part of it. It's the same with being a doctor... if you think people become doctors solely just to save people and that it has nothing to do with status... you're out of touch with basic reality.
You not only fail to empathize from the teachers perspective but you succeeded in twisting your response into a direct attack on me. Manipulative. But pointless. This is just an internet forum... winning the crowd doesn't mean shit. This is one of the few opportunities you have to say things that are True and real with no affect on your status.
Anyway what I present is CLEARLY not a narcissistic concept. I am clearly not a narcissist and neither are you. It is a basic concept of basic intelligence. Something you're lacking.
>If we're talking about who's more human, I'd put forward that caring about who's best seems less humanizing than seeking to spend time with people you care about, remembering how lucky you are to have that time, and ignoring outside noise.
When I referred to humans I was more trying to illustrate how your claims don't make sense. Humans seek status period. End of story. If you don't seek status, you're not a human... you're an alien... you clearly aren't an alien... so you're clearly wrong. That was the point.
I'm talking from a hard scientific perspective. You're well outside of that right now and you're only thinking from the perspective of your family. But status seeking is still there, but it's more passed to the status of your children which is still inline with natural selection and biology.
You care for the status of your children, do you not? If your children grew up poor and homeless but extremely happy with their life style would you be content? Or do you care about the status of your children and not want them to grow up ending up in the lowest possible strata of status in human society?