Patriotism as the Status Symbol of Last Resort

Executive Summary

• How Humans Desired and Communicate their Status
• The Importance of Lying About Merit
• How Humans Manage Their Status

Introduction

Being low status is stressful. Decades of research by Dr. Robert Sapolsky has demonstrated this conclusively. Dr. Sapolsky learned this by darting and taking blood samples from Baboons and his findings are there is an inverse relationship between the status of various Baboons in the troupe and their stress level. That is the lower the status of the Baboon, the higher their stress level.

There are several reasons for this. One reason is simply the condition of being low status causes stress, but secondly, low-status individuals are picked on by higher status people and have a harder time meeting their physical needs as they have fewer access to resources. This status relationship applies equally to humans, with low-status humans having higher stress related health issues than higher status individuals even when adjusting for all other health factors. In fact, low status humans and low-status baboons both have similarly elevated stress hormones.

How Humans Desired and Communicate their Status

Humans of all status levels make efforts to enhance their status and to display higher levels of status than they have. Both German made cars, and expensive universities primarily are selected to communicate the status of the individual how has the car or the expensive college degree. Humans deny the fact that they are making any decisions primarily based on status. One reason is declaring that you have done one thing or another to impress people immediately reduces the effect. Secondly, humans themselves are deluded as to their motivations for status. Therefore they use cover terms to lie to themselves and others. When purchasing an unnecessarily expensive car, they might declare the importance of “German Engineering,” while working in marketing, or use the term “excellent education,” on the school they attend, because they can’t say “status symbol.” Attaining things that are high in status just because they are high in status is considered gauche, so a reason for what are often tremendous wastes of resources or time or both, must be manufactured.

One reason is declaring that you have done one thing or another to impress people immediately reduces the effect. Secondly, humans themselves are deluded as to their motivations for status. Therefore they use cover terms to lie to themselves and others. When purchasing an unnecessarily expensive car, they might declare the importance of “German Engineering,” while working in marketing, or use the term “excellent education,” on the school they attend, because they can’t say “status symbol.” Attaining things that are high in status just because they are high in status is considered gauche, so a reason for what are often tremendous wastes of resources or time or both, must be manufactured.

This Faberge egg sells for around $100,000. The purchaser would have you believe that they did not buy this egg to show off their status, but because of the incredible workmanship. Here we can see that even at the most extreme and indefensible conspicuous consumption, humans will not admit to one another that they are seeking status. Not accepting the importance of the status markings of another person is the quickest way to alienate them. 

Maintaining one’s status is expensive. Marketers love approaching people from the perspective of status because unlike “needs” such as for food, water, or transportation, status needs are virtually unlimited. Status is also about the people that you compare yourself to.

So someone living in Beverly Hills may be a high status on average, but they may only live in a medium sized house, and only have a middle of the road Mercedes. However, their social group of comparison has a mansion and the top of the line Lamborghini. The very existence of high-status brands, that are highly conspicuous (i.e. large labels, etc…) is evidence of high resource inequality in society.

I began noticing Polo brand shirts with enormous brand markings being worn by people in expensive parts of town a few years ago. Certainly, most people can recall that markings of this size did not exist five years ago. Recently I saw a similar gigantic brand marking (the Lacoste crocodile). The wearers of these shirts are clearly very intent on having the brand of their shirt (and the fact that they are expensive) known to all people they come into contact with, in addition to any people that they happen to pass by when they are walking. This can be predicted by the economic inequality in the country, which is now the highest since the great depression.

The greater the economic inequality, the more important it is to show one’s financial status in the most easily observable way. Manufacturers may get the last laugh as both these shirts were manufactured in sweatshops and probably had a total manufacturing cost of just a few dollars (with the workers who made the shirts getting around a quarter for their efforts).

The Importance of Lying About Merit

Obviously in all societies, but particularly those that are more resource unequal, the status system results in some component of the population being low status. The more unequal the society, the worse, the lower status individuals are treated, and more stressful are their lives. Individuals typically inherit the status of their parents. Societies, where individuals can either rise from the position of their parents (or fall, an undiscussed point, but a required feature to have mobility), is called a meritocracy. Education inherited money, inherited knowledge, and social bonds all work against meritocracy.

All societies lie to themselves and to their members regarding how much the resulting status is based upon merit. The elites, in particular, must be somewhat successful in fooling the rest of the population into believing the exaggerated claims of meritocracy because if they are not properly convinced, and they have a chance to change the distribution of status, they will.

How Humans Manage Their Status

People respond to their status position in two ways. First, as we discussed, they exaggerate their status. They can do this by looking for the area where they have the strongest status and focus on that. So for people that are relatively low in individual talent, but come from a family of high-status individuals, the natural tendency is to focus on the accomplishments of those people that they are related to.

For talented people from poor backgrounds, the natural inclination is to shun one’s family, because association with them, or having other people see who they are related to reduces their status. People that are tall and attractive but not well off focus on their appearance status, and people who are short and unattractive but well off discuss their “breeding.” This approach is brought to an extreme with patriotism, and this explains why patriotism is so often promoted as a value among low-status individuals. Patriotism, or your country being better than other countries, is in a way the largest group a human can associate with. However, the tendency to do this is related to the status of the country, and the strongest appeal to patriotism will naturally be where the country has a high status, and the individual has a low status within that society. The US is a very powerful country, even if its reputation has been lowered considerably after the Bush Administration.

Low-status Americans can feel good about themselves by declaring their patriotism, i.e. their preference of chauvinism for their country over other countries. This makes the individual fell better about themselves and explains why American flags bumper stickers are so much more frequently found on less expensive cars versus expensive cars. It explains why country music, a type of music which is very popular among those with low status, has so many patriotic references frequently contained within it. It also explains why classical music, a type of music which is popular with the wealthy has virtually no patriotic influences (except for some compositions which are played traditionally around the 4rth of July.)

Conclusion

Patriotism is a form of delusion, which is particularly attractive to the lower status members of society. All humans seek status, and for those that have low status, patriotism can be seen as the status symbol of last resort.