The first thing that comes to mind reading this is today’s cancel culture operating by the same principles. Only the dominance mechanics, rather than using physical, chimpanzee-like violence, uses the invisible violence of reputation destruction.
To wit, Dr Robert Galatzer-Levy of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute studied the Columbine Tragedy extensively, leading him to study how the Thalamus channels both physical pain pathways to the cortex to understand the meaning of pain but also emotional pathways joining it.
When “emotional pain” such as loss of self-esteem in dominance experiences occurs absent physical pain (physical violence being one source), the result is the cortex and our conscious understanding has us experience “an insult is no different from a punch to the face.”
Reputation being at the identity level sense of self, reputation destruction seems to be a “killing” equivalent, a psychologically murderous chimpanzee-like dominance act, while not physical like the actual chimpanzee hierarchies.
And if you look at Deborah Tannen’s work studying average behavior of boys vs girls when she says the worst thing that happens to girls is exclusion from groups but the worst thing that happens to boys is being “one upped” or defeated, placed lower in the hierarchy for “losing” it seems to have a place in this model.
Boys and men talk of “making a killing” or “killing the ball” in baseball or “killing it” with a successful work project- all expressions not of physical violence but of the instinct Barry and Seager have researched in males specifically, called “fighting and winning.”
At the instinct level which is felt at the deepest level of identity and “existing”, being excluded for girls and women or being “a loser” for boys and men in a hierarchy might feel like “dying” just a little, “thalamically” like reputation destruction both feels and cognitively processes to conscious life like “being killed” - words no different than a punch to the face, or a death blow if substantial enough.
I think part of what is driving the current culture war that includes DEI (something I oppose) is that capable women in the workplace have been frustrated because capable men in the workplace have this "fighting and winning" motivation and thus more often prevail. The affiliation motivation is much stronger for women, and they will often reject work opportunities and challenges that put them at conflict with others. This is the disagreeable vs agreeable difference.
I am a CEO. I have female board members that want to make my performance measures based on employee engagement survey results. Most of the male board members want to make my performance measures based on achieved market share and profit.
My perspective on this is that if a female model of less individual competition and more collective egalitarianism actually worked better, that business would adopt it as the competitive advantage. The fact is that it does not work very well... that peak performance of the organization falls trying to keep everyone feeling equal vs having a model of individual achievement and competition.
I think this realization is why we have DEI... they cannot beat the existing competitive system in terms of results, so instead make rules that force hiring and promotion by identity instead of demonstrated performance achieving results.
Wow. Exactly. Early on when it was said that women would bring more collegiality to the workplace etc. I thought great, but how does that push a company’s agenda forward ? At this point, I think a lot of ‘female impulses’ hold progress back in the name of ‘can we all be friends’. Moreover, too many men have submitted to these impulses. Entrepreneur Peter Thiel has said of late that little or no technological progress has been made over the past 50 years which coincides with the feminist movement and the introduction of The Pill. Makes ya wonder whether mankind had taken a wrong turn. (I am a woman - but over six decades, I have gone from being an avid feminist to actually disliking what the introduction of and even dominance of women in many spheres has meant to modern culture, especially to universities.)
Completely understand your point, but I think you need to take into account the societal expectations of women and the very real price we pay in the workplace if we don’t conform. Women are expected to be selfless, nurturing, and community driven, but I don’t think there’s any genetic basis for this. It’s all conditioning. All my mentors have been men, so I always had that target driven approach you mention. I’m also in sales so that’s always served me well. I have been passed by for promotions by less capable men in every workplace I’ve been a part of, and I was still given feedback that made me question my own likability (side note - the book “The Likability Trap” is fantastic). Ultimately, woman have these impossible expectations put on us to fulfill our societal expectations with our teams yet still be seen as strong and capable and *then* ensure that every man who could possibly be threatened by us at the leadership level is also in our corner and sees us as both non threatening yet extraordinarily capable. I’m exhausted just thinking about the code switching and the political maneuvering. Add family obligations into the mix and it’s an impossible feat for women. This is why so many of us opt out of trying to get to the c-suite.
"Women are expected to be selfless, nurturing, and community driven, but I don’t think there’s any genetic basis for this. It’s all conditioning."
I'm not sure this is completely true given all the scientific testing on female vs male cognitive processing. There is a pretty remarkable difference in how the two genders tend to process information. There certainly is no doubt that much is conditioning. But regardless, this is a good point. Despite nature or conditioning, if the tendency for women to be more nurturing and community-driven, then if these tendencies don't play well in business, then women would be at a disadvantage with those innate tendencies.
So, the question is do we retool business to be more accommodating of these tendencies, or do we put more effort in helping women overcome some of those tendencies to orient themselves more to what the business best-practice norms are?
I guess my thinking is that the latter is needed because the former has not proven to work as well returning business results. Frankly, human nature is to be individually competitive. My experience is that is even more pronounced within a high female office space... it is just that the competition is more passive-aggressive and not direct. It is frankly more toxic and more difficult to deal with. It is weirdly bipolar... with an outward orientation for collaboration, friendliness and respect... but seemingly easily seething resentment over the slightest difference that becomes a hidden agenda to diminish the standing of that coworker in conflict. As a manager having to deal with that type of thing, I tend to value the male employees that will directly confront a coworker, but get over it and have a beer together.
With respect to the difficulty that woman face, men have more career stress and shorter life expectancy. In my experience, when given the choice between work-life balance, women more often choose the life side and men more often choose the work side. Yes, some of this is connected with child and other family care, but I have many examples of capable female employees where their kids are out of the house and their parents are young and taking care of themselves, that turned down promotion opportunities or territory reassignment opportunities because they valued their personal time more.
A good example is a past female sales officer that lived in a beach community where she would surf every morning... but had low numbers of new business opportunities... having the chance to move to another beach community next to a large metropolitan area where she could do much more business and make much greater commissions... turning it down because her friends and life in the existing beach community were a higher value to her. Certainly some males might share her value decision, but my experience is that the male sales professional would want to go where they could make the most money.
How do we accommodate these differences? I frankly respect both of them, but one is better for business and the other is not.
Interesting that in one of the most woman-rights progressive countries, Finland, more educated women choose to be stay-at-home mothers instead of pursuing careers. It seems to me that Finland has progressed to a 4th wave of feminism that adopts the realization that the previous feminists were not really focused on what was good for women in general... but only power attainment over men... which has been making everyone miserable.
I mean there are also studies that prove that women do more of the domestic labor even if they’re the primary breadwinner in their household. Also women in high powered positions are far more likely to be cheated on by insecure spouses, so the dynamics outside the workplace are complex. I disagree that feminism is to blame, and instead there’s poor corporate policies that devalue the balancing act outside the workplace that falls primarily on women. The last company I worked for was danish and their US maternity policy was 6-8 weeks while the danish employees got a year of parental leave for both parents. Just because it’s not paid labor doesn’t mean our species would survive without domestic labor and childcare. And who decided that’s unpaid anyways? It’s too simplistic to blame women for problems that were created by the patriarchy and perpetuated by its unwillingness to adapt to try and bring some equity to the workplace.
Well it seems you’re a brave man. Perhaps just being a dead center moderate is brave these days.
What you make me think of, since we can’t just eliminate human instincts that are de facto part of the unconscious that we can’t wish away. (Except one attempt to eliminate them would be to pretend they are “pretend” - aka “roles”....
...is this:
How would a company work if it were large enough to have normal distribution of males and females on their separate bell curves, then if they had a 50/50 division of male/female staffing.
Would the male “fight/win” instinct balance out and mutually check the “social harmony/communion” instinct?
Would it work like a bicameral government? E g would it be stable and profitable in comparison to 100% one or 100% the other?
Wish there could be an experiment run on that.
Oh wait, did that already get tested by the American economy of past decades?
"since we can’t just eliminate human instincts that are de facto part of the unconscious that we can’t wish away"
The problem with the current Progressivism is that it totally denies 'human nature' and its impulses, which hopefully, in short order, will render this destructive utopian movement moot. #ThisTooShallPass
In most organizations that exist in competitive industries today there is no material gender discrimination as the hiring, retention and promoting is motivated by getting the best talent that can produce outcomes. What I have observed though is female employees decline higher level responsibility and don't tend to do as well as sales reps compared to their male peers. These are often generally females as educated, as intelligent and as talented as their male peers. When females look at what their professional lives would be like to succeed in those higher level positions many back down. Some use the excuse of the "boys club" and claim it is a glass ceiling to their career. It is generally not... it is THEIR decision to reject the assignments and advancements because the environment is not a good fit.
Instead of accepting and adapting to the environment, they want to change the environment... but the changes they desire can lead to a less successful organization in terms of bottom line business outcomes.
I have no problem at all with a different model... one of more collective cooperation and less individual competition... one that would theoretically be more attractive to female employees. I am all for whatever works best. My point is that in this current age of progressive management and leadership models to get the most productivity out of employees, if the collective model worked better, it would already be adopted.
My training and experience is results-oriented leadership. Collaboration and demonstrated care for employees is always and only based on the need for peak employee performance to produce results.
Of course I am generalizing here. There are exceptions. One of the toughest and most competitive managers I worked with was a female and a friend. She climbed mountains and was a pilot that flew acrobatic aircraft (it was that activity that took her life unfortunately). She was also a mother and demonstrated an ability to get greater collaboration from her staff. Frankly, it is that hybrid model that I think works the best. It is the one I try to model. However, in the end I hire, retain and promote based on demonstrated individual ability to deliver results better than others.
I have the top sales rep in my industry. He is very demanding and very short with staff that don't perform at peak levels. We are alike in that regard... although as CEO I have senior managers reporting to me and it is a different engagement. I have staff, primarily female staff, that complain about him... claim he is abusive. In all cases when we investigate it he was not abusive, just direct, honest and accurate in criticism. In these case, in my experience, a female manager would more often tend to side with the staff... weighing the impact of staff emotional turmoil as being more important than is the demand for peak performance and the criticism for when it is lacking. If that female manager was to become CEO, she would potentially value the feelings of staff over the retention of a top sales rep.
re: The touchiness and 'feelings' of females in the office ....
I graduated from MIT (Sloan) and spent about 6 years in a corporate environment after graduation. I was hard working and direct (did not suffer fools gladly) - I loved to see things get done. Overall, I seemed to get along with the men better than the women, the latter of whom were very critical of my directness and confidence. Admittedly, I felt more secure around the men because they were more direct - some were game players but no where near the women in the office. My male SVP boss (a former McKinsey dude) told me that I was intimidating, or so he was told by a female SVP, pointing out that my height (5'9") might be part of the problem; I queried as to whether I should cut myself off at the knees!!. This same female Senior Marketing VP, told me that I had 'anger issues' and at one point, took me to a local book store to buy 'anger management issues'. I was shocked, as she perceived my ambition to be that of 'anger'. I related this to the CEO, to whom I was an assistant to at the time, and told him that I wouldn't tolerate this female SVP's admonitions for me to heel. He appeared to be stunned when I told him what she did. The female SVP was an EST (Erhard Seminars Training) follower and had her entire staff take the course 🙄. The men seemed to equivocate or were at least uncertain as to how to handle the 'female drift' that was being introduced into a primarily male environment; The men wanted to be accommodating to the women but were seemingly unconvinced by 'female behavior' towards work. The men also couldn't abandon their own instincts of 'sticking together with the guys' and being competitive. My direct boss, a male Senior VP, was encouraging, but only to a certain extent. For one, he wanted me to stay late with the guys but I wanted to get my work done during the day to be able to have dinner with my husband. At one point, the CEO wanted to give me a significant line position, but my direct boss, the SVP said he didn't think I was ready for it, as told to me by the CEO. Between fending off 'intimidated women' and trying to convince the guys in power I was ready for bigger responsibilities, I found myself exhausted. At 32 years of age, I became pregnant and at that point was really tired of trying to make my way through the criss-crossing emotions of corporate life. Too much energy was expended on placating various constituencies...what and how I did things, ie, staying late at the office, what I did during my lunch (took walks and went to galleries), what I wore (I dressed 'too well' for some, and too bright for others when I wore a red dress), etc. Every gesture and movement was a cause for comment. I was the only woman in my group and was excluded from lunches with the guys when they went to a male club in the city.
While attending Sloan, I recalled being told that years after graduation the course that would come in most handy was 'Organizational Management'. It turned out to true. IMHO too much energy is expended on really stupid stuff in the office.
All this occurred during the 1980's, a transformational period for men and women in corporate life. I do think things have changed but there will always be the office politics craziness. My daughter, an Ivy League graduate, has made her way in the finance world and is doing very well. That said, she has related to me the hijinx and prejudices of male employees mostly from Third World countries like India who aren't as used to women in competitive positions. Her boss has stood up for her when these guys have tried to take her down or discredit her work. There aren't many women in her company so she doesn't have 'female feeling' to appease. The battle goes on....
Yes, men from other non-western cultures are absolutely misogynist. However, most males from western cultures, except some of the old dogs, are just competitive with their female coworkers and their female coworkers exploit gender grievance standards to destroy the competition in a passive-aggressive way.
In the 90s I had a very interesting case with a black male employee who was the nicest guy you would every meet, and a new hypersensitive female employee. She was working late and he told her when she left he would walk her out to her car in the parking lot to make sure she did not get mugged or raped. Now, his choice of words was not good. But the next day I get a call from the HR director that she had filed a harassment claim that my employee threatened to rape her in the parking lot.|
Her complaint was obviously biased toward a black man.
The HR director was stuck in an identity preference dilemma. We tried to mediate it. We ended up having to offer a separation with the female employee who would not come back to work unless we terminated the black employee.
She frankly was a mess of cognitive behavior dysfunction.
This is a perfect response and I think it matches what most women think/feel about the workplace. And I think this drives some of the frustration (I can hear it in your comment) that feeds the feminist movement and the woke movement to remake society into something different.
I run a 50-employee business that makes small business loans mostly for owner-operator commercial real estate. It is a very competitive industry... we compete with the big banks and also work with the big banks. I have 10 sales loan officers in the field. They are all male despite my significant efforts to hire females. Most of the industry of commercial real estate brokers, loan brokers and bankers are male. There are exceptions and ironically some of the most successful in our industry are female, but females comprise maybe 15% of the total population of sales people in this space.
It is brutally competitive. It is a "boys club" to some degree, but the job requires working nights and weekends to establish and maintain work relationships to develop a network of new business referral sources.
Ironically I am the CEO after being hired when the previous retired and no other staff in the organization was interest in moving up. The office was at that time 80% female (most back-room loan processing staff tend to be female). I have been trying for years as we have grown to raise up key backroom staff to management roles, but they refuse... they are not ambitious to take on new responsibility. They are especially not interested in a job that would have them responsible for interpersonal conflict... that I think they know is more apt to happen with a team of female office employees. Now, some of this is just common with younger employees too. I have some young male employees that also don't want to rise to management. The lack of ambition is astounding to me having risen from the corporate supply room to CEO.
Now, I have certainly considered the benefits of more female management. I hired my second in command recently, a female, who is my COO/CFO. She is a mother and there are definite improvements to female employee engagement in the company as a result of her management style. Although, she can be very direct and like me has a problem with too strong emotional responses to things by employees.
My point here is that I would be fine with moving the needle on a more female-satisfying management style and sales style if it worked. My experience is that we need more of it, but it cannot dominate because of the need to focus on top performance and results. We frankly lose productive steam when the work culture drifts too far to "take care" of employee feelings.
There is this balancing act of making employees feel connected with each other and the organizations... reaching into their emotional motivations to inspire them to be productive and creative... but also reminding them that it is a business and not a replacement for their family and friend relationships that fill their needs for love and being loved.
Again, if this female-dominated model would work better, we would see more of it. I think instead we need to be helping female through their education to adjust their mindset and expectations... and more importantly their behavior in terms of best-practices... to be more successful in the workplace. The grievance model pushed in the education system just makes it worse.
And to your comment about those female-dominated occupations needing to be payed more. If they are paid more, they will attract more males interested in the career. And then women are back to competing with males for those jobs.
I imagine this type of analysis makes a lot of people uncomfortable, because a lot of it comes off as a zero sum game. For some people to be high status then naturally others have to be lower status, etc. Also with the discussion of depression it feels like that could be a consequence of low status/power or a cause of it.
There are many different status domains. Maybe you make more money than your neighbors, but their kids are better looking than yours. Maybe you have more friends, but they’re in better shape than you. Maybe you can make better paper airplanes, but they have more Pokémon cards (we all have our aspirations in life). Having lots of different arenas mitigates the zero sum challenge of social status. More here: https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/it-would-seem-that-some-socially
I think a lot of people are uncomfortable at how status-focused people really are. It's considered low-status to openly say "I am high-status". It has to be conferred by other people.
Wow excellent article, very well researched, but there is only one thing I would like to Nitpick here sometimes prestige and dominance doesn't play a part. There are incidences of cronyism and nepotism where people are promoted on the basis of class, family affiliation and even race to an extent sure you can be competent but in well established circles you won't be granted access. This is probably the biggest bone I have to pick with evo-psych it's oversimplification of complex hierarchies.
There is also one more interesting idea which I have been looking into and is being researched quite heavily in Goldsmith's university by the researcher Agnieszka Golec de Zavala , the idea of collective narcissism which is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. So you would imagine the rules of dominance and prestige based leadership don't actually apply to the above scenario. I think you may have touched on this when looking into the concept of "luxury beliefs"
But hey would love and be grateful to hear your thoughts on this ?
There is an element of prestige in nepotism--according status to someone due to their family connections because of the belief that the person (or their family) can later reciprocate the favor. The hallmark of prestige is granting status to an individual because of what the individual can do for you (perhaps they are knowledgeable and skillful, or perhaps they have useful social connections or supply some other type of unfair advantage).
That does actually make sense it's not the individual that holds the prestige rather the group they are affiliated with, and I suppose that's why that individual got rewarded.
Also potentially associating with an member of an outgroup/indviduals considered low status could also risk your group ostracizing you as they feel you are giving away resources which should belong to them, and would be less likely to grant you favours going forward.
I also suppose there could be deeper examination by looking at controversial theories in evolutionary biology, i.e. group/kin selection say vs the individual. But thank you for clearing that up, always learn a lot from your Substack/Twitter.
This was a great article. In myself, I have found that I was given status by my peers for popularity. I maintained this person (self) for as long as I could manage. Then, I got overwhelmed. I didn't want to be on all the time. For 10 plus years now, I actively try not to find myself in friend groups and try very hard to stay to myself. I am grateful people find me likeable, but it's not who I naturally am. It's too chaotic, so I've retreated altogether.
You sound like an 'introvert' - which is just a-ok...which makes me wonder whether introverts and extroverts view status in the same way. I too am an introvert and I rather distain 'social status' and those who seek it. I adore my neighbor, but oft times she clearly expresses her interest and opinions about the 'local pecking order' but I could care less. It makes me think less of her - that she's superficial, insecure etc - but then again I really do like her and I know she means well. I am often on the verge of saying to her, "Who cares?" after hearing her stories but I hold my tongue.
'just watched Jane Austen's 'Pride & Prejudice' (the 1995 version with Colin Firth) it's all about social status and I just adore how Ms. Austen savages the social conceits of Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Darcy for that matter....it's eternally entertaining : )
This was a great read Rob. So many learning nuggets to take away.
"So what did status get our human ancestors? Resources, allies, territory, mates, and, most importantly, offspring." -- "Someone upsets you, you immediately start planning ways to get revenge without them knowing." -- "Another finding which helps to understand the difference between status and power is that men want power more than women do, whereas women want status more than men do."
These have me thinking about our current culture war including the attacks on free speech and systemic character and reputational attacks of people that oppose woke ideology.
Woke ideology manifests from Critical Theory content in education. It seems to be driven from 3rd wave feminists committed to a postmodernist agenda... and most of the active believers and practitioners in society appear to be educated women... primarily educated white women from upper-class families.
And when considering the human evolutionary psychology of dominance, prestige and power... the connection to innate, animalistic and survivalist motivations... it appears to me that we have headed down a path where all of these nature-developed behaviors that result in a hierarchy-filtering that best-serves the human condition are being overridden.
It appears to me that our evolutionary norms that sustain the species are being dismantled to our detriment.
For example, you say that “The currency of evolution is reproduction.”
But the current seek of high status within the “new culture” of luxury beliefs driven primarily by these woke educated females includes rejecting marriage and raising children.
"Relatedly, self-esteem is tightly linked with social status." -- "Sometimes we want to avoid the envy of others, and downplay our achievements in order to better get along with the group." -- "Some people see prestigious individuals who obtained their positions through skill, competence, and hard work and claim that these individuals seized their status through the use of dominant or deceptive strategies."
This caused me self-reflection. I think a level of real self-confidence of a strong moral core and the ability to accomplish difficult tasks to achieve meaningful goals... and that often naturally results in the achievement of status and prestige within a peer group... supports the lack of motivation to pursue status and prestige. I downplay it not because I want to get a long better with the the group... I downplay it because I think the entire impulse in people to confer status to others is a sign of their weakness... and also a sign of weakness in those that crave it. The exception to this is status conferred based on real achievement of challenging accomplishment.
One example that irritates the crap out of me is the conferred status and prestige for politicians and government officials. I work with both on a regular basis and I can tell you that most of them not only are not deserving because of the lack of demonstrated achievement, but they are actually below the norm of capable and moral people that should even be candidates in the pool of high status and high prestige.
"People also have strong emotional reactions to status gains. You feel pride, honor, jubilation, and so on. And you feel strongly about losses to status as well, with shame, humiliation, embarrassment, and so on." -- "and yet people feel awful if they are excluded in it." -- "Being socially devalued seems to be like a red light. The loss of status is a strong situation, people generally have a similar response to it, suggesting status is indeed a fundamental human need."
This reminded me of something else I read... that humans, because we are so damn dependent on our parents for such a long percentage of our life-expectancy... have a natural visceral and extreme emotional negative response to feelings of rejection. If our parents reject us while we are children we will likely die.
It seems we carry that with us. Feeling rejected... even if from a complete stranger... causes some deep primitive response of anger that leads to a commitment to retribution.
This was a key leadership lesson for me in my role as a corporate change agent. Stakeholder assessment is important because otherwise if people feel left out of the change that they believe they should be involved in, resentment will build and they will be motivated to undermine the change rather than support it.
And the same is true with family and friends. I have had friendships inexplicably deteriorate, and conflicts with family, and only later in conversation learned that the reason was some project or activity that my friend or family member expected me to reach out and ask for help or advice because they had a background and/or knowledge in the thing. I have two brothers and one is an investor in the family business, the other does not have money to invest but was angry at me for not making the offer for him to invest.
I keep thinking that much of what is causing so much social turmoil in our society these days is not so much the economic gaps, but the feeling of being left out of mainstream society. The inexplicable part of that is the people that seem motivated to divide us more... make people even more resentful at about being locked out of the mainstream. But you helped me explain that with this quote:
"In short, humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group."
This is where our current and last President has been so terrible for the country. Both have taken a strategy to appeal to their base at the expense of "the others". Both have been divisive instead of helping the majority of the county feel like respected stakeholders in the country. They both created the in-group and the out-group and, with the help of a broken and corrupt media, revved up the conflict between them.
Hopefully this next election we get a true leader that understand stakeholder analysis and this innate negative human response to feeling rejected.
Since dominance status is defined by inspiring fear (which bullies certainly do), wouldn't bullies technically have dominance status according to your framework? I find it hard to see them as only having power and not status, precisely because people comply with them out of fear of consequences – which seems to be the very definition of dominance status presented here
Outstanding delineation and sorely needed considering the CRT - Marxist crowd has decided that ONLY power alone is the enzyme that governs all else. Spooky that so many can be so uncurious. But how can messages like this, that should and could lead to breakthrough understanding be more widely disseminated. Bar bouncers have power for sure and Mother Teresa has prestige for sure. Whom did she cheat to gain her prestige (or power). But the indoctrinated and uncurious Left have no interest in such puzzles; they know enough to change the world and that's all that's needed to a true zealot. I'd love to see a survey of how many on the far Left have even heard of Big Five Personality Factor tests and conclusions. It's doubtful the numbers would be consistent with such a related yet critical body of thought (or simply inquiry). The Left hates "deplorables." Liberty lovers need to prepare and relate in the strongest manner to those who feel qualified or entitled to judge who is "deplorable," because if you're read this far in this comment and agree even in the smallest measure, they're coming for you too.
Thank you for the very thoughtful and thought-provoking article. I enjoyed it very much. I wonder, however, if this kind of analysis would benefit from a less teleological view of evolution ( https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/crossbill-finches-evolution-and-bisexual ), and a recognition of the very messy (and nonlinear) evolutionary history that gave rise to modern Homo sapiens. Often, we think of the characteristics of humans with which we are most familiar and then make a post-hoc assumption that some hypothetical, pre-modern group benefited from having "evolved" those characteristics. My sense is that the story's a bit more complicated. Thank you again for a great essay. Sincerely, Frederick
The first thing that comes to mind reading this is today’s cancel culture operating by the same principles. Only the dominance mechanics, rather than using physical, chimpanzee-like violence, uses the invisible violence of reputation destruction.
To wit, Dr Robert Galatzer-Levy of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute studied the Columbine Tragedy extensively, leading him to study how the Thalamus channels both physical pain pathways to the cortex to understand the meaning of pain but also emotional pathways joining it.
When “emotional pain” such as loss of self-esteem in dominance experiences occurs absent physical pain (physical violence being one source), the result is the cortex and our conscious understanding has us experience “an insult is no different from a punch to the face.”
Reputation being at the identity level sense of self, reputation destruction seems to be a “killing” equivalent, a psychologically murderous chimpanzee-like dominance act, while not physical like the actual chimpanzee hierarchies.
And if you look at Deborah Tannen’s work studying average behavior of boys vs girls when she says the worst thing that happens to girls is exclusion from groups but the worst thing that happens to boys is being “one upped” or defeated, placed lower in the hierarchy for “losing” it seems to have a place in this model.
Boys and men talk of “making a killing” or “killing the ball” in baseball or “killing it” with a successful work project- all expressions not of physical violence but of the instinct Barry and Seager have researched in males specifically, called “fighting and winning.”
At the instinct level which is felt at the deepest level of identity and “existing”, being excluded for girls and women or being “a loser” for boys and men in a hierarchy might feel like “dying” just a little, “thalamically” like reputation destruction both feels and cognitively processes to conscious life like “being killed” - words no different than a punch to the face, or a death blow if substantial enough.
I think part of what is driving the current culture war that includes DEI (something I oppose) is that capable women in the workplace have been frustrated because capable men in the workplace have this "fighting and winning" motivation and thus more often prevail. The affiliation motivation is much stronger for women, and they will often reject work opportunities and challenges that put them at conflict with others. This is the disagreeable vs agreeable difference.
I am a CEO. I have female board members that want to make my performance measures based on employee engagement survey results. Most of the male board members want to make my performance measures based on achieved market share and profit.
My perspective on this is that if a female model of less individual competition and more collective egalitarianism actually worked better, that business would adopt it as the competitive advantage. The fact is that it does not work very well... that peak performance of the organization falls trying to keep everyone feeling equal vs having a model of individual achievement and competition.
I think this realization is why we have DEI... they cannot beat the existing competitive system in terms of results, so instead make rules that force hiring and promotion by identity instead of demonstrated performance achieving results.
Wow. Exactly. Early on when it was said that women would bring more collegiality to the workplace etc. I thought great, but how does that push a company’s agenda forward ? At this point, I think a lot of ‘female impulses’ hold progress back in the name of ‘can we all be friends’. Moreover, too many men have submitted to these impulses. Entrepreneur Peter Thiel has said of late that little or no technological progress has been made over the past 50 years which coincides with the feminist movement and the introduction of The Pill. Makes ya wonder whether mankind had taken a wrong turn. (I am a woman - but over six decades, I have gone from being an avid feminist to actually disliking what the introduction of and even dominance of women in many spheres has meant to modern culture, especially to universities.)
Completely understand your point, but I think you need to take into account the societal expectations of women and the very real price we pay in the workplace if we don’t conform. Women are expected to be selfless, nurturing, and community driven, but I don’t think there’s any genetic basis for this. It’s all conditioning. All my mentors have been men, so I always had that target driven approach you mention. I’m also in sales so that’s always served me well. I have been passed by for promotions by less capable men in every workplace I’ve been a part of, and I was still given feedback that made me question my own likability (side note - the book “The Likability Trap” is fantastic). Ultimately, woman have these impossible expectations put on us to fulfill our societal expectations with our teams yet still be seen as strong and capable and *then* ensure that every man who could possibly be threatened by us at the leadership level is also in our corner and sees us as both non threatening yet extraordinarily capable. I’m exhausted just thinking about the code switching and the political maneuvering. Add family obligations into the mix and it’s an impossible feat for women. This is why so many of us opt out of trying to get to the c-suite.
"Women are expected to be selfless, nurturing, and community driven, but I don’t think there’s any genetic basis for this. It’s all conditioning."
I'm not sure this is completely true given all the scientific testing on female vs male cognitive processing. There is a pretty remarkable difference in how the two genders tend to process information. There certainly is no doubt that much is conditioning. But regardless, this is a good point. Despite nature or conditioning, if the tendency for women to be more nurturing and community-driven, then if these tendencies don't play well in business, then women would be at a disadvantage with those innate tendencies.
So, the question is do we retool business to be more accommodating of these tendencies, or do we put more effort in helping women overcome some of those tendencies to orient themselves more to what the business best-practice norms are?
I guess my thinking is that the latter is needed because the former has not proven to work as well returning business results. Frankly, human nature is to be individually competitive. My experience is that is even more pronounced within a high female office space... it is just that the competition is more passive-aggressive and not direct. It is frankly more toxic and more difficult to deal with. It is weirdly bipolar... with an outward orientation for collaboration, friendliness and respect... but seemingly easily seething resentment over the slightest difference that becomes a hidden agenda to diminish the standing of that coworker in conflict. As a manager having to deal with that type of thing, I tend to value the male employees that will directly confront a coworker, but get over it and have a beer together.
With respect to the difficulty that woman face, men have more career stress and shorter life expectancy. In my experience, when given the choice between work-life balance, women more often choose the life side and men more often choose the work side. Yes, some of this is connected with child and other family care, but I have many examples of capable female employees where their kids are out of the house and their parents are young and taking care of themselves, that turned down promotion opportunities or territory reassignment opportunities because they valued their personal time more.
A good example is a past female sales officer that lived in a beach community where she would surf every morning... but had low numbers of new business opportunities... having the chance to move to another beach community next to a large metropolitan area where she could do much more business and make much greater commissions... turning it down because her friends and life in the existing beach community were a higher value to her. Certainly some males might share her value decision, but my experience is that the male sales professional would want to go where they could make the most money.
How do we accommodate these differences? I frankly respect both of them, but one is better for business and the other is not.
Interesting that in one of the most woman-rights progressive countries, Finland, more educated women choose to be stay-at-home mothers instead of pursuing careers. It seems to me that Finland has progressed to a 4th wave of feminism that adopts the realization that the previous feminists were not really focused on what was good for women in general... but only power attainment over men... which has been making everyone miserable.
I mean there are also studies that prove that women do more of the domestic labor even if they’re the primary breadwinner in their household. Also women in high powered positions are far more likely to be cheated on by insecure spouses, so the dynamics outside the workplace are complex. I disagree that feminism is to blame, and instead there’s poor corporate policies that devalue the balancing act outside the workplace that falls primarily on women. The last company I worked for was danish and their US maternity policy was 6-8 weeks while the danish employees got a year of parental leave for both parents. Just because it’s not paid labor doesn’t mean our species would survive without domestic labor and childcare. And who decided that’s unpaid anyways? It’s too simplistic to blame women for problems that were created by the patriarchy and perpetuated by its unwillingness to adapt to try and bring some equity to the workplace.
Well it seems you’re a brave man. Perhaps just being a dead center moderate is brave these days.
What you make me think of, since we can’t just eliminate human instincts that are de facto part of the unconscious that we can’t wish away. (Except one attempt to eliminate them would be to pretend they are “pretend” - aka “roles”....
...is this:
How would a company work if it were large enough to have normal distribution of males and females on their separate bell curves, then if they had a 50/50 division of male/female staffing.
Would the male “fight/win” instinct balance out and mutually check the “social harmony/communion” instinct?
Would it work like a bicameral government? E g would it be stable and profitable in comparison to 100% one or 100% the other?
Wish there could be an experiment run on that.
Oh wait, did that already get tested by the American economy of past decades?
"since we can’t just eliminate human instincts that are de facto part of the unconscious that we can’t wish away"
The problem with the current Progressivism is that it totally denies 'human nature' and its impulses, which hopefully, in short order, will render this destructive utopian movement moot. #ThisTooShallPass
In most organizations that exist in competitive industries today there is no material gender discrimination as the hiring, retention and promoting is motivated by getting the best talent that can produce outcomes. What I have observed though is female employees decline higher level responsibility and don't tend to do as well as sales reps compared to their male peers. These are often generally females as educated, as intelligent and as talented as their male peers. When females look at what their professional lives would be like to succeed in those higher level positions many back down. Some use the excuse of the "boys club" and claim it is a glass ceiling to their career. It is generally not... it is THEIR decision to reject the assignments and advancements because the environment is not a good fit.
Instead of accepting and adapting to the environment, they want to change the environment... but the changes they desire can lead to a less successful organization in terms of bottom line business outcomes.
I have no problem at all with a different model... one of more collective cooperation and less individual competition... one that would theoretically be more attractive to female employees. I am all for whatever works best. My point is that in this current age of progressive management and leadership models to get the most productivity out of employees, if the collective model worked better, it would already be adopted.
My training and experience is results-oriented leadership. Collaboration and demonstrated care for employees is always and only based on the need for peak employee performance to produce results.
Of course I am generalizing here. There are exceptions. One of the toughest and most competitive managers I worked with was a female and a friend. She climbed mountains and was a pilot that flew acrobatic aircraft (it was that activity that took her life unfortunately). She was also a mother and demonstrated an ability to get greater collaboration from her staff. Frankly, it is that hybrid model that I think works the best. It is the one I try to model. However, in the end I hire, retain and promote based on demonstrated individual ability to deliver results better than others.
I have the top sales rep in my industry. He is very demanding and very short with staff that don't perform at peak levels. We are alike in that regard... although as CEO I have senior managers reporting to me and it is a different engagement. I have staff, primarily female staff, that complain about him... claim he is abusive. In all cases when we investigate it he was not abusive, just direct, honest and accurate in criticism. In these case, in my experience, a female manager would more often tend to side with the staff... weighing the impact of staff emotional turmoil as being more important than is the demand for peak performance and the criticism for when it is lacking. If that female manager was to become CEO, she would potentially value the feelings of staff over the retention of a top sales rep.
re: The touchiness and 'feelings' of females in the office ....
I graduated from MIT (Sloan) and spent about 6 years in a corporate environment after graduation. I was hard working and direct (did not suffer fools gladly) - I loved to see things get done. Overall, I seemed to get along with the men better than the women, the latter of whom were very critical of my directness and confidence. Admittedly, I felt more secure around the men because they were more direct - some were game players but no where near the women in the office. My male SVP boss (a former McKinsey dude) told me that I was intimidating, or so he was told by a female SVP, pointing out that my height (5'9") might be part of the problem; I queried as to whether I should cut myself off at the knees!!. This same female Senior Marketing VP, told me that I had 'anger issues' and at one point, took me to a local book store to buy 'anger management issues'. I was shocked, as she perceived my ambition to be that of 'anger'. I related this to the CEO, to whom I was an assistant to at the time, and told him that I wouldn't tolerate this female SVP's admonitions for me to heel. He appeared to be stunned when I told him what she did. The female SVP was an EST (Erhard Seminars Training) follower and had her entire staff take the course 🙄. The men seemed to equivocate or were at least uncertain as to how to handle the 'female drift' that was being introduced into a primarily male environment; The men wanted to be accommodating to the women but were seemingly unconvinced by 'female behavior' towards work. The men also couldn't abandon their own instincts of 'sticking together with the guys' and being competitive. My direct boss, a male Senior VP, was encouraging, but only to a certain extent. For one, he wanted me to stay late with the guys but I wanted to get my work done during the day to be able to have dinner with my husband. At one point, the CEO wanted to give me a significant line position, but my direct boss, the SVP said he didn't think I was ready for it, as told to me by the CEO. Between fending off 'intimidated women' and trying to convince the guys in power I was ready for bigger responsibilities, I found myself exhausted. At 32 years of age, I became pregnant and at that point was really tired of trying to make my way through the criss-crossing emotions of corporate life. Too much energy was expended on placating various constituencies...what and how I did things, ie, staying late at the office, what I did during my lunch (took walks and went to galleries), what I wore (I dressed 'too well' for some, and too bright for others when I wore a red dress), etc. Every gesture and movement was a cause for comment. I was the only woman in my group and was excluded from lunches with the guys when they went to a male club in the city.
While attending Sloan, I recalled being told that years after graduation the course that would come in most handy was 'Organizational Management'. It turned out to true. IMHO too much energy is expended on really stupid stuff in the office.
All this occurred during the 1980's, a transformational period for men and women in corporate life. I do think things have changed but there will always be the office politics craziness. My daughter, an Ivy League graduate, has made her way in the finance world and is doing very well. That said, she has related to me the hijinx and prejudices of male employees mostly from Third World countries like India who aren't as used to women in competitive positions. Her boss has stood up for her when these guys have tried to take her down or discredit her work. There aren't many women in her company so she doesn't have 'female feeling' to appease. The battle goes on....
Yes, men from other non-western cultures are absolutely misogynist. However, most males from western cultures, except some of the old dogs, are just competitive with their female coworkers and their female coworkers exploit gender grievance standards to destroy the competition in a passive-aggressive way.
In the 90s I had a very interesting case with a black male employee who was the nicest guy you would every meet, and a new hypersensitive female employee. She was working late and he told her when she left he would walk her out to her car in the parking lot to make sure she did not get mugged or raped. Now, his choice of words was not good. But the next day I get a call from the HR director that she had filed a harassment claim that my employee threatened to rape her in the parking lot.|
Her complaint was obviously biased toward a black man.
The HR director was stuck in an identity preference dilemma. We tried to mediate it. We ended up having to offer a separation with the female employee who would not come back to work unless we terminated the black employee.
She frankly was a mess of cognitive behavior dysfunction.
This is a perfect response and I think it matches what most women think/feel about the workplace. And I think this drives some of the frustration (I can hear it in your comment) that feeds the feminist movement and the woke movement to remake society into something different.
I run a 50-employee business that makes small business loans mostly for owner-operator commercial real estate. It is a very competitive industry... we compete with the big banks and also work with the big banks. I have 10 sales loan officers in the field. They are all male despite my significant efforts to hire females. Most of the industry of commercial real estate brokers, loan brokers and bankers are male. There are exceptions and ironically some of the most successful in our industry are female, but females comprise maybe 15% of the total population of sales people in this space.
It is brutally competitive. It is a "boys club" to some degree, but the job requires working nights and weekends to establish and maintain work relationships to develop a network of new business referral sources.
Ironically I am the CEO after being hired when the previous retired and no other staff in the organization was interest in moving up. The office was at that time 80% female (most back-room loan processing staff tend to be female). I have been trying for years as we have grown to raise up key backroom staff to management roles, but they refuse... they are not ambitious to take on new responsibility. They are especially not interested in a job that would have them responsible for interpersonal conflict... that I think they know is more apt to happen with a team of female office employees. Now, some of this is just common with younger employees too. I have some young male employees that also don't want to rise to management. The lack of ambition is astounding to me having risen from the corporate supply room to CEO.
Now, I have certainly considered the benefits of more female management. I hired my second in command recently, a female, who is my COO/CFO. She is a mother and there are definite improvements to female employee engagement in the company as a result of her management style. Although, she can be very direct and like me has a problem with too strong emotional responses to things by employees.
My point here is that I would be fine with moving the needle on a more female-satisfying management style and sales style if it worked. My experience is that we need more of it, but it cannot dominate because of the need to focus on top performance and results. We frankly lose productive steam when the work culture drifts too far to "take care" of employee feelings.
There is this balancing act of making employees feel connected with each other and the organizations... reaching into their emotional motivations to inspire them to be productive and creative... but also reminding them that it is a business and not a replacement for their family and friend relationships that fill their needs for love and being loved.
Again, if this female-dominated model would work better, we would see more of it. I think instead we need to be helping female through their education to adjust their mindset and expectations... and more importantly their behavior in terms of best-practices... to be more successful in the workplace. The grievance model pushed in the education system just makes it worse.
And to your comment about those female-dominated occupations needing to be payed more. If they are paid more, they will attract more males interested in the career. And then women are back to competing with males for those jobs.
“the love of money is the root of all evil”, not “money is the root of all evil”
I imagine this type of analysis makes a lot of people uncomfortable, because a lot of it comes off as a zero sum game. For some people to be high status then naturally others have to be lower status, etc. Also with the discussion of depression it feels like that could be a consequence of low status/power or a cause of it.
There are many different status domains. Maybe you make more money than your neighbors, but their kids are better looking than yours. Maybe you have more friends, but they’re in better shape than you. Maybe you can make better paper airplanes, but they have more Pokémon cards (we all have our aspirations in life). Having lots of different arenas mitigates the zero sum challenge of social status. More here: https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/it-would-seem-that-some-socially
I think a lot of people are uncomfortable at how status-focused people really are. It's considered low-status to openly say "I am high-status". It has to be conferred by other people.
Yeah I think it is mostly unavoidable. Like I try to not care about status but probably am in ways that I'm not considering as such.
Wow excellent article, very well researched, but there is only one thing I would like to Nitpick here sometimes prestige and dominance doesn't play a part. There are incidences of cronyism and nepotism where people are promoted on the basis of class, family affiliation and even race to an extent sure you can be competent but in well established circles you won't be granted access. This is probably the biggest bone I have to pick with evo-psych it's oversimplification of complex hierarchies.
There is also one more interesting idea which I have been looking into and is being researched quite heavily in Goldsmith's university by the researcher Agnieszka Golec de Zavala , the idea of collective narcissism which is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. So you would imagine the rules of dominance and prestige based leadership don't actually apply to the above scenario. I think you may have touched on this when looking into the concept of "luxury beliefs"
But hey would love and be grateful to hear your thoughts on this ?
There is an element of prestige in nepotism--according status to someone due to their family connections because of the belief that the person (or their family) can later reciprocate the favor. The hallmark of prestige is granting status to an individual because of what the individual can do for you (perhaps they are knowledgeable and skillful, or perhaps they have useful social connections or supply some other type of unfair advantage).
That does actually make sense it's not the individual that holds the prestige rather the group they are affiliated with, and I suppose that's why that individual got rewarded.
Also potentially associating with an member of an outgroup/indviduals considered low status could also risk your group ostracizing you as they feel you are giving away resources which should belong to them, and would be less likely to grant you favours going forward.
I also suppose there could be deeper examination by looking at controversial theories in evolutionary biology, i.e. group/kin selection say vs the individual. But thank you for clearing that up, always learn a lot from your Substack/Twitter.
Can you spell H-U-N-T-E-R B-I-D-E-N 🤣
This was a great article. In myself, I have found that I was given status by my peers for popularity. I maintained this person (self) for as long as I could manage. Then, I got overwhelmed. I didn't want to be on all the time. For 10 plus years now, I actively try not to find myself in friend groups and try very hard to stay to myself. I am grateful people find me likeable, but it's not who I naturally am. It's too chaotic, so I've retreated altogether.
You sound like an 'introvert' - which is just a-ok...which makes me wonder whether introverts and extroverts view status in the same way. I too am an introvert and I rather distain 'social status' and those who seek it. I adore my neighbor, but oft times she clearly expresses her interest and opinions about the 'local pecking order' but I could care less. It makes me think less of her - that she's superficial, insecure etc - but then again I really do like her and I know she means well. I am often on the verge of saying to her, "Who cares?" after hearing her stories but I hold my tongue.
'just watched Jane Austen's 'Pride & Prejudice' (the 1995 version with Colin Firth) it's all about social status and I just adore how Ms. Austen savages the social conceits of Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Darcy for that matter....it's eternally entertaining : )
This was a great read Rob. So many learning nuggets to take away.
"So what did status get our human ancestors? Resources, allies, territory, mates, and, most importantly, offspring." -- "Someone upsets you, you immediately start planning ways to get revenge without them knowing." -- "Another finding which helps to understand the difference between status and power is that men want power more than women do, whereas women want status more than men do."
These have me thinking about our current culture war including the attacks on free speech and systemic character and reputational attacks of people that oppose woke ideology.
Woke ideology manifests from Critical Theory content in education. It seems to be driven from 3rd wave feminists committed to a postmodernist agenda... and most of the active believers and practitioners in society appear to be educated women... primarily educated white women from upper-class families.
And when considering the human evolutionary psychology of dominance, prestige and power... the connection to innate, animalistic and survivalist motivations... it appears to me that we have headed down a path where all of these nature-developed behaviors that result in a hierarchy-filtering that best-serves the human condition are being overridden.
It appears to me that our evolutionary norms that sustain the species are being dismantled to our detriment.
For example, you say that “The currency of evolution is reproduction.”
But the current seek of high status within the “new culture” of luxury beliefs driven primarily by these woke educated females includes rejecting marriage and raising children.
"Relatedly, self-esteem is tightly linked with social status." -- "Sometimes we want to avoid the envy of others, and downplay our achievements in order to better get along with the group." -- "Some people see prestigious individuals who obtained their positions through skill, competence, and hard work and claim that these individuals seized their status through the use of dominant or deceptive strategies."
This caused me self-reflection. I think a level of real self-confidence of a strong moral core and the ability to accomplish difficult tasks to achieve meaningful goals... and that often naturally results in the achievement of status and prestige within a peer group... supports the lack of motivation to pursue status and prestige. I downplay it not because I want to get a long better with the the group... I downplay it because I think the entire impulse in people to confer status to others is a sign of their weakness... and also a sign of weakness in those that crave it. The exception to this is status conferred based on real achievement of challenging accomplishment.
One example that irritates the crap out of me is the conferred status and prestige for politicians and government officials. I work with both on a regular basis and I can tell you that most of them not only are not deserving because of the lack of demonstrated achievement, but they are actually below the norm of capable and moral people that should even be candidates in the pool of high status and high prestige.
"People also have strong emotional reactions to status gains. You feel pride, honor, jubilation, and so on. And you feel strongly about losses to status as well, with shame, humiliation, embarrassment, and so on." -- "and yet people feel awful if they are excluded in it." -- "Being socially devalued seems to be like a red light. The loss of status is a strong situation, people generally have a similar response to it, suggesting status is indeed a fundamental human need."
This reminded me of something else I read... that humans, because we are so damn dependent on our parents for such a long percentage of our life-expectancy... have a natural visceral and extreme emotional negative response to feelings of rejection. If our parents reject us while we are children we will likely die.
It seems we carry that with us. Feeling rejected... even if from a complete stranger... causes some deep primitive response of anger that leads to a commitment to retribution.
This was a key leadership lesson for me in my role as a corporate change agent. Stakeholder assessment is important because otherwise if people feel left out of the change that they believe they should be involved in, resentment will build and they will be motivated to undermine the change rather than support it.
And the same is true with family and friends. I have had friendships inexplicably deteriorate, and conflicts with family, and only later in conversation learned that the reason was some project or activity that my friend or family member expected me to reach out and ask for help or advice because they had a background and/or knowledge in the thing. I have two brothers and one is an investor in the family business, the other does not have money to invest but was angry at me for not making the offer for him to invest.
I keep thinking that much of what is causing so much social turmoil in our society these days is not so much the economic gaps, but the feeling of being left out of mainstream society. The inexplicable part of that is the people that seem motivated to divide us more... make people even more resentful at about being locked out of the mainstream. But you helped me explain that with this quote:
"In short, humans domesticated themselves to be kind, loyal, and cooperative with their in-group. And absolutely vicious to outsiders, to the out-group."
This is where our current and last President has been so terrible for the country. Both have taken a strategy to appeal to their base at the expense of "the others". Both have been divisive instead of helping the majority of the county feel like respected stakeholders in the country. They both created the in-group and the out-group and, with the help of a broken and corrupt media, revved up the conflict between them.
Hopefully this next election we get a true leader that understand stakeholder analysis and this innate negative human response to feeling rejected.
I'm reminded of the lyrics to the song "My Girls" by Indie Pop band the Animal Collective:
"I don't mean to seem like I care about material things
Like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls."
How true are these lyrics?
Since dominance status is defined by inspiring fear (which bullies certainly do), wouldn't bullies technically have dominance status according to your framework? I find it hard to see them as only having power and not status, precisely because people comply with them out of fear of consequences – which seems to be the very definition of dominance status presented here
Outstanding delineation and sorely needed considering the CRT - Marxist crowd has decided that ONLY power alone is the enzyme that governs all else. Spooky that so many can be so uncurious. But how can messages like this, that should and could lead to breakthrough understanding be more widely disseminated. Bar bouncers have power for sure and Mother Teresa has prestige for sure. Whom did she cheat to gain her prestige (or power). But the indoctrinated and uncurious Left have no interest in such puzzles; they know enough to change the world and that's all that's needed to a true zealot. I'd love to see a survey of how many on the far Left have even heard of Big Five Personality Factor tests and conclusions. It's doubtful the numbers would be consistent with such a related yet critical body of thought (or simply inquiry). The Left hates "deplorables." Liberty lovers need to prepare and relate in the strongest manner to those who feel qualified or entitled to judge who is "deplorable," because if you're read this far in this comment and agree even in the smallest measure, they're coming for you too.
This was great. I’m going to incorporate this into my leadership class.
Thank you for the very thoughtful and thought-provoking article. I enjoyed it very much. I wonder, however, if this kind of analysis would benefit from a less teleological view of evolution ( https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/crossbill-finches-evolution-and-bisexual ), and a recognition of the very messy (and nonlinear) evolutionary history that gave rise to modern Homo sapiens. Often, we think of the characteristics of humans with which we are most familiar and then make a post-hoc assumption that some hypothetical, pre-modern group benefited from having "evolved" those characteristics. My sense is that the story's a bit more complicated. Thank you again for a great essay. Sincerely, Frederick