The OP has a useful framing of status being attributed in verticals but we'll still (illogically) struggle with this logic. Inwardly we'll compare the status of

The OP has a useful framing of status being attributed in verticals but we'll still (illogically) struggle with this logic. Inwardly we'll compare the status of a doctor, lawyer, or software engineer vs. our profession like a game of Top Trumps. Status games are fundamental evolutionary behaviours however much we want to believe otherwise. Here are a couple of relevant pull quotes from https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/what-is-social-status https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/what-is-social-status: "Research indicates that our brains spend about 50% of the time mind wandering. Researchers find that the areas of the brain that are active during mind wandering overlap with the areas of the brain that concentrate on our social lives and ourselves. Left to your own devices, with no task demanding your immediate concentration, you tend to spend a good deal of time thinking about other people—your judgments of them; their evaluations of you." "So what did status get our human ancestors? Resources, allies, territory, mates, and, most importantly, offspring. The idea is that humans who cared a lot about status were more likely to win romantic partners and thus had children who also cared a lot about status. It’s possible that there were early humans who didn’t care much about status or reproduction. They might’ve only cared about safety, survival, and didn’t concentrate on attracting mates or having children. They didn’t reproduce. Those early humans are not our ancestors."