You know Dr. G., I live in a small town. I can change my status in the eyes of the religious community simply by choosing to attend a different church. I can attend a blue collar church or I can attend one where the income and education level is higher and gain a higher status. So I guess status can be very fluid or very rigid. Status can be bestowed or sought after. I use church/religion as an example for several reasons. 1. If I were on the outside of 'religion' looking in, I think I would expect religious organizations/institutions to have a uniform character where status wasn't a player. In reality, that has never been the case with religion, but I used to think it was. Status is probably regarded as highly there as in any other group although some would have you believe differently. 3. I'm familiar with 'church'/religion. Edit in: Others could easily have a similar experience by moving to a more expensive neighborhood or becoming a member of an expensive club, etc. Or by wearing North Face apparel.
Considering all that, it makes me wonder if there is a kind of reverse denial (if there is such a term) where claiming to have no interest in status simply becomes another kind of status. I don't know. I'm just talking off the cuff. I think my point is that status wears so many faces, it is impossible to separate it from life at any level. Studying its implications on humanity would be a tedious undertaking.
I believe the human brain can be rewired, at least to some degree. I believe some rewiring has occurred in my brain not spontaneously, but because in a nano second, (that's pretty spontaneous come to think of it) I became accutely aware of a glaring chasm between what/who I was compared to who/what I beleived I was meant to be and made a passionate, committed decision to reconcile, remodel, renovate those differences. Ah, that nano second may have been the beginning of the rewiring! There had to be a moment of congruance, a cross roads where the two ways of being duked it out.
[/q] But in my view, we, as a group, are very unusual. I have not found this pursuit underlying the motives of the population at large— [q] I think you are right. The mystery to me is why the experience appears to be somewhat rare. I believe I could have missed that deciding moment in the blink of an eye. If that were the case, I would have been beguiled by a lesser solution.
tt
PS I think I should tell you that having this exchange with you kind of gives me 'status' in my own mind, but my reproductive juices haven't resurrected!
PSS I don't mind the elites being elite. It's just that I made a judgment, largely uninformed I suppose, that the article on the demise of talk therapy didn't apply to me.
