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Why do men strive for status and money?
- smcg 10y agoTo get women. I think anyone could have told you that.
- Scea91 10y agoThat's way too simplistic answer and not true in many cases. Does Donald Trump strive to be a president to get more women? I don't think thats his primary motivation.
- retox 10y agoMoney, power, respect. None of these should be valid motivators for running a country, but we live in an imperfect world.
- billyjobob 10y agoThe fact that some individuals may have more complex motivations does not stop this from being the evolutionary subconscious basis of the drive.
- mc32 10y agoTrue but the Donalds are not the people we should measure but the regular Joes (and the Janes that seek same). Now maybe its ultimately the same motivation but expressing different things. But I guess what makes the drug dealer seek status, the thief, the used car salesperson, the food truck operator, the barber... I guess the only way to find out for sure would be to place lone stranded subjects on solitary planets with no chance to communicate or leave ever with anyone else at the end, come back and see what castaways did -knowing anything they did was for naught.
- mamon 10y agoMaybe not official, or even expressed motivation. We humans tend to think high about ourselves (compared to animals), that's why we tend to rationalize our basic instincts. We channel our hunting instinct in FPS computer games, or professions such as soldier or policeman. We are ashamed of our sexual desire so we developed complex system of rationalizations that we call "love". And we don't want to admit that we enjoy dominating others, so we call the jobs where we are in charge, such as governor or mayor "public service".
- finid 10y agoWe humans tend to think high about ourselves (compared to animals) What makes you think animals don't think high about themselves? We are ashamed of our sexual desire so we developed complex system of rationalizations that we call "love". Humans developed love? Seriously! Did we also develop gravity? Love is a universal (read: not limited to or developed by humans) attribute that we express to one extent or the other.
- AstralStorm 10y agoDeveloped in the same sense horned animals developed horns. Inevitable name for an ancient concept of attachment.
- irishcoffee 10y ago> We channel our hunting instinct in FPS computer games, or professions such as soldier or policeman. Huh? I uh, huh? > We are ashamed of our sexual desire so we developed complex system of rationalizations that we call "love". Speak for yourself, I ain't ashamed of shit. Also, go buy a Labrador puppy. Or maybe google something like "monogamous animals" and/or "do animals feel love"
- phkahler 10y ago>> Does Donald Trump strive to be a president to get more women? No, he gets the women because of his drive and social status. What the author fails to go into is that females have also evolved to seek men of high social status to father their children. The female genes are more likely to propagate if they mate with such a male, as their children will have similar traits. The other interesting omission is that women seek more masculine men when they are ovulating and less so when they are not - this has been repeatedly shown in studies. So women seek the alpha male for reproduction and the beta male providers the rest of the time.
- jdpedrie 10y agoYou only have to go back a couple of Presidents to get to one for whom that motivation isn't so far out of the question.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoTrue but there is more. To go deeper on this you can check Signalling Theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory Spent, Geoffrey Millers' book is a fantastically good reading on this subject. You would be surprised on how much that theory can explain and predict. https://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/dp/0143117238 https://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior...
- billmalarky 10y agoAlso autonomy. Not having control over one's destiny is stressful and unpleasant.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- saiya-jin 10y agopower is a drug, it twists the mind of even the best makes them crave for more... a perpetual lust. that's what I like about democracy on paper - nobody has too much of it, and never for too long. clever those greeks were
- SCAQTony 10y agoIronic for circa 2016 it is the poor in the US that generally have more children yet the goal oriented machinery within us males churns on. [ edit: Adding a statistic to validate the above assertion: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam... ]
- orasis 10y agoIMO reasonably high testosterone levels is one of the best feelings in the world. I run a startup and during the inevitable valleys where my self-perceived status is low, my testosterone falls off a cliff. I've suffered from low testosterone in the past and now that I understand the importance of sleep, diet (greens!), and exercise I can mitigate the drops quite a bit - but status is still a big ingredient. It has become taboo to discuss the importance of status and sex for male health, but there is an epidemic of males who aren't thriving.
- teekert 10y agoHow did you measure your testosterone levels? (Just curious)
- orasis 10y agoI've had it tested. Now, with some experience I can self gauge by how I feel. I do not take exogenous testosterone but will be open to it as I age if healthy lifestyle can't keep it up.
- DashRattlesnake 10y agoThey have blood tests for it, and a little bit of googling shows that there are home test kits too (that use saliva and are less accurate): https://www.amazon.com/Testosterone-Level-Hormone-Balance-Test/dp/B00846J5YO https://www.amazon.com/Testosterone-Level-Hormone-Balance-Te...
- kilroy123 10y agoHow do you know your testosterone levels dropped? Do you regularly get tested?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Silentscribbler 10y agoAre you sure? As a counter anecdote, I was diagnosed with low testosterone and went on replacement therapy. The injections were enough that my numbers in blood tests were up by a factor of three even a week after the injections. Certainly right after the injections my numbers would have been even higher. Despite this large change, I noticed no difference. I got more erections at night, that was it. I hypothesize that sleep, diet and exercise can improve your mood through a whole bunch of factors, with testosterone playing an overstated role. Or even a reverse causation: improved confidence leading to higher T perhaps. I've since stopped taking the injections as it simply wasn't doing me any good.
- mordymoop 10y agoHumans are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers.
- dpweb 10y agoTerror Management theory (Ernest Becker's Denial of Death) would suggest that these needs are based on the psychological desire to transcend death - making oneself immortal - through gathering not only great wealth and status, but any achievement that would reach past that person's lifespan.
- Kadin 10y agoI find this explanation particularly compelling because it also explains a host of behaviors that have little to do with producing children. Khufu didn't build the Great Pyramid as a place for his kids to live in.
- carsongross 10y agoThe eminent public american philosopher Tony Montana worked on this problem and, I feel, has the final word on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ7HZATMKBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ7HZATMKBY More seriously, most male/female social differences can be explained by the fact that women can have perhaps ten children in a lifetime, whereas men can have ten children in a day. Therefore the base sexual strategy of males is "many", and the base sexual strategy of women is "best". Men, therefore, must strive very hard for "best", particularly in winner-take-all societies. Lifelong monogamy attenuated both of these tendencies and, in my opinion, is the bedrock of civilization. One man and a thousand women is a potential civilization, whereas one woman and a thousand men is a horror movie.
- LizardLarry 10y ago"One man and a thousand women is a potential civilization, whereas one woman and a thousand men is a horror movie." Very well put. "Men, therefore, must strive very hard for 'best'" Aren't I getting a lesson in this. Spent most of my life in pure abjection until a doctor, with some actual competency, prescribed me some ritalin. You would not believe how mad I am. Now I'm trying to play catch-up to be the best and it's absolutely infuriating to hear people tell me to "relax". I went through unimaginable hell because the wrong men were promoted to higher positions and nobody told them to eat shit. I can't even recourse to a notion of ultimate karma and fairness because I've realized how ultimately such notions are a case of the sourest grapes over losing in the competition. There are MANY terrible and incompetent men and I want to devour them all. But my wants are nothing compared to what I need to do (develop skills and behaviors that are marketable and which act like positive feedback on another). My apologies for the little detour but figured that someone here has an inkling of what I feel and it's nice to know that one's turbulence isn't a lone storm.
- cloudjacker 10y agoAnd ritalin fixed this? What did I just read
- LizardLarry 10y ago
- mikebenfield 10y agoFrom the article: "In earlier societies where marriage did not exist..." I could stop reading right there. There are essentially no known human societies, past or present, in which marriage does not exist. (Possible exceptions for a few very small societies in highly unusual situations.) Marriage is considered a human universal by anthropologists. But a bit further on: "This study looked at research being done on 33 nonindustrial populations (nonindustrial = pre-marriage, pre-contraception)" You're seriously equating nonindustrial with a lack of marriage? You understand that the industrial revolution was less than 200 years ago, right? And that people have been getting married for all of recorded history?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Jyaif 10y agoPrimates have existed for 50 million years. Marriage is what, 10k years old at most?
- andreasklinger 10y agonitpicks: - anthropologists don't study primates. - primates don't strive for money.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lwhalen 10y agoNitpick: WE are primates. Therefor, at least some primates strive for money.
- baobrain 10y agoAgreed. The entire thing is based upon a false premise. Also weren't most very early societies without marriage matriarchal? Addition: Isn't this also ignoring polygamist marriage?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- susan_hall 10y agoIf the goal is to generate a lot of useless "just so" stories, then this is good advice: "Take any behavior seen in all humans, ie. not something that is due to local culture, and place that behaviour in the kind of tribal group that we lived in during most of evolution. Then ask the question 'what would be the consequence of this behaviour?' " But if the goal is to figure out why things actually are the way they are, rigorous agent based modeling would be a much better way to proceed. Also, all notions of human happiness were also shaped by human evolution, so the whole essay is nonsense. If evolution shaped our understanding of happiness, then evolution does not, in any simplistic way, explain why me might do things that go against happiness.
- kasperni 10y agoI have always found the "everything I do is to carry my genes forward view" to simplistic - Why do pregnant women have sex - Why do women have sex after menopause - Why do men stay with women who are no longer fertile - Why do 50 % of young people identity as bisexual in some way. - Why do sperm banks have to advertise for doners - Why do people adopt kids, its not their genes And don't get me started on monogamy...
- softawre 10y ago> Why do 50 % of young people identity as bisexual in some way. I was not aware of this statistic. I really have no thoughts on it either way except - wow! http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2016/3/11/less-50-teens-identify-straight-says-new-study http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2016/3/11/less-50-teens-iden...
- Kadin 10y agoWhile I normally detest simplistic evo-bio approaches to complex emergent social behavior (particular as it is frequently used to justify shitty, misogynistic behavior), quite a few of those examples could be chalked up to evolution taking a slightly longer view than "get everyone pregnant all the time". There is probably a strong reproductive advantage for a population as a result of having reproductively disinterested members, and there are individual benefits to sex and sexual desire outside of it leading to pregnancy.
- cgriswald 10y agoJust off the cuff... Pregnant women have sex because rewiring women to NOT want sex while pregnant would be evolutionarily pointless, not to mention sex is used to bond male partners. Likewise, sex after menopause. Women still seek shelter from males post-menopause and also want males around for their children and grandchildren's sake. Men's instincts do not have the abstract concept of "infertile" if a woman appears otherwise sexually appealing. I'm skeptical of the idea that 50% of young people identifying as bisexual, but if there is truth to this, I imagine that it is largely females who identify this way. And bonding between females is likely to strengthen the 'herd'. Men's instincts do not have the abstract concept of sperm banks. Even if they did, men are also selective in where they deposit their sperm, and in any case are largely motivated to reproduce through sexual desire. If sperm banks were the only way we reproduced, then we'd have evolved a desire for that. The idea that there are any humans on Earth that aren't closely genetically related is absurd... As for monogamy, it's a rational response on the part of males who want to be sure they are the father of their mate's children and who want a better mating opportunities than they might have if it was winner-take-all. Obviously, I'm not sure of the veracity of any of these, but I think it's fairly simple to explain most of these from an evolutionary point of view. I think it is a mistake to assume that because the rational part of our brain can grasp more efficient ways to spread our genes (e.g. sperm banks), that we must therefore do that if we are wired to spread our genes. The parts of our brains wired that way aren't quite that literal and probably haven't had time to catch up with those concepts.
- rayiner 10y agoBecause stuff costs money? Financial stress is the leading cause of friction in relationships: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/04/money-is-the-leading-cause-of-stress-in-relationships.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/04/money-is-the-leading-cause-of.... Something as small as getting a parking ticket ($50 here in DC) can cause a lot of stress for a family for whom that's not something they can just wave off. Also, high status jobs are usually a lot more interesting. A lot of people would code for free--nobody would restock shelves for free. And women strive for status and money too. Women outnumber men in college--and it's not because they're trying to improve their prospects on the marriage market.
- programminggeek 10y agoBecause someone has to or civilization doesn't exist.
- ravenstine 10y agoMen strive for resources because women used to rely heavily on men for those resources. It's really kind of weird how this ends up being an epiphany for many people, though I find it painfully obvious. Men and women are not difficult to understand if you don't look through the "blank slate" prism.
- noname123 10y ago>Why do men strive for status and money? Lovelessness; Because money and status is a proxy for love from friends and would-be lovers that we crave: “The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status. Money, fame and influence may be valued more as tokens of—and means to—love rather than ends in themselves.” Snobbery; Because underneath small talk amongst casual social situations underlies a constant of "sizing up" and civilized snobbery: “The company of the snobbish has the power to enrage and unnerve because we sense how little of who we are deep down—that is, how little of who we are outside of our status—will be able to govern their behaviour towards us. We may be endowed with the wisdom of Solomon and have the resourcefulness and intelligence of Odysseus, but if we are unable to wield socially recognized badges of our qualities, our existence will remain a matter of raw indifference to them” Outsized expectations; Because meritocracy, "American Dream" doesn't empower people; rather statistically forces us to confront the mediocrity of our ordinariness of lives, while feeling anxious about alleged "wasted potential" : "In aristocracies, servants often accepted their position with good grace; it was not impossible for them to harbour, in Tocqueville’s words, 'high thoughts, strong pride and self-respect.' In democracies, by contrast, the propaganda of the press and public opinion relentlessly promised servants that they, too, could reach the pinnacles of society and make their fortune as industrialists, judges, scientists or even presidents. Although this sense of unbounded opportunity could initially excite a surface cheerfulness in them—particularly in the younger ones—and though it did encourage the most talented or luckiest among them to fulfill their goals, as time passed and the majority failed to raise themselves, Tocqueville’s noted that their mood darkened, bitterness took hold of and choked their spirit, and their hatred of themselves and their masters grew fierce.” - Alain de Botton. “Status Anxiety”
- syphilis2 10y agoDo most of us agree that people strive for excessive (excessive meaning to their detriment) status, power, and wealth? I rarely see that behavior from my peers. I believe most people are very content with their current status, for example Gallup measures that 80% of Americans are satisfied with their standard of living and 48.7% live with a lot of happiness and little stress (compared to 10.7% with a lot of stress and without happiness). When 55% of workers are "completely satisfied" with the recognition they receive and 41% completely satisfied with their salary, it seems like most people are happy and are not striving for excessive wealth and power.
- gjolund 10y agoBecause women are attracted to rich and powerful men.
- ssivark 10y agoI wonder if this operates at the mimetic level instead of the genetic level, making this a cultural phenomenon rather than a biological one. As the article points out, in humans this striving for status/money doesn't confer much of a biological advantage, at least beyond a point. Hypothesis for mimetic reproduction: People with status and money (who tend to have desired it and worked towards it) weild more influence on a larger set of people than otherwise, and can broadcast their approach/perspective. A large number of people will then aspire to follow in their footsteps and similarly seek status and money, continuing this cycle.
- sunstone 10y agoThis is such a mystery. Oh and by the way, what do women want? Yet another mystery. Life can be so confusing.
- jstelly 10y agoI found an interesting talk called "Is there anything good about Men?" that includes potentially useful ways to frame questions about differences between men & women: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm "Nature rolls the dice with men more than women." and "Culture has plenty of tradeoffs, in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women."
- MollyR 10y agoThat was interesting. really really interesting. I feel like I understand my male family members a little bit better after it.