The objective of this article is to present and support the statement that status anxiety does in fact play a significant role in the development of conflict at all levels of human interaction; that it can and should be considered in evaluating small and extremely large groups as well as individuals and, most importantly, that it may have a long term, generational impact at all levels of occurrence.

The required definitions for status and status anxiety are drawn from the work of Alain de Botton. Any statements from the work of Botton will be presented within quotation marks and preceded by (B). A model for individual or group human learning and concomitant world view, developed specifically for this paper, will be described in detail and will be the basis for discussion.

What is meant specifically by status and status anxiety? The following definitions will prevail throughout this discussion; (B) “Status … One’s position in society; … one’s value and importance in the eyes of the world. Status anxiety … A worry so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.”

It is not impossible, though in some cases very difficult, to relate these definitions to individual persons, small and moderately extended groups, states, nations, cultures, corporations and economically conjoined multi-national entities.

What then is the model for individual or group human learning and concomitant world view? In the field of computer science, the following paradigm describes the central function of every computer; Input -> Processing -> Output, referenced in this discussion by use of the acronym IPO. The human learning process will be modeled using IPO as a basic component.

The IPO cycles begin in utero and continue through final shutdown at death or brain dysfunction. In the case of humans, input includes data acquired from all of the functioning senses individually and in integrated packages. Processing is initiated by specific inputs but, for the most part in humans, is constant at varied levels.

Output is the result of processing and, for humans, is a complex, coordinated stream of verbal and body oriented language. Suffice it to say at this point that output or more probably the direct results of immediate or past output represent a significant component of the human input stream.

The database directly connected to and a primary subsystem of the IPO processing component, commonly referenced as memory, is a vital member of the learning system that is embedded in all humans. This model illustrates a principal fundamental to the premise that status anxiety can and does cause conflict.

The behavior of any individual human being at an instant in time is a function of the stream of inputs and subsequent processing that has occurred prior to that instant. More precisely, the actions and reactions of a particular person are functions of the intellectual world view produced from experience, from the IPO model presented here.

Human beings live in groups called families, neighborhoods, cities, counties, states and countries. In the past world, the inputs each person experienced came primarily from the members of the group to which he or she belonged. A Darwinian perspective on this subject introduces the concepts of food chain and food web, now common terms in the study of all forms of non-human life and, at the same time, provides a platform for viewing human beings from that same perspective.

A food chain is defined as (1) “A sequence of organisms linked by their interdependence for food … exist in all communities of organisms, and are cross-linked in complex food webs because many organisms eat more than one food.” (2) The National Geographic documentary Predators at War “ … shows the Darwinian struggle to survive … where food is scarce for predator and prey alike.”

A significant factor to bear in mind in the present world is the information stream to which a high percentage of people are now exposed. Globalization and advances in communication technologies have altered the IPO process for many human individuals and groups over the last decades and will continue to do so at increasing levels over the decades to come. That information stream and the capacity of the human brain to process it through the IPO model raise the human population to the top of the world food chain.

To focus this discussion on the objective topic that status anxiety has in the past and will continue to be a source of conflict in the future, the following comment by Alain de Botton will be of significant value.

“Different societies have awarded status to different groups: hunters, fighters, ancient families, priests, knights, fecund women. Increasingly since 1776, status in the West (the vague but comprehensible territory here under discussion) has been awarded in relation to financial achievement.”

In his “Thesis”, Botton summarizes: (B)

“ … status anxiety possesses an exceptional capacity to inspire sorrow.
   … the hunger for status, like all appetites, can have its uses: spurring us to do justice to our talents, encouraging excellence, restraining us from harmful
eccentricities and cementing members of a society around a common value
system. But, like all appetites, its excesses can also kill. … the most profitable way of addressing the condition may be to attempt to understand and to speak of it.”

To what end do these concepts lead?

As these thoughts are being recorded, new human life is in the process of conception and birth all over the globe in widely divergent surrounding environments. The IPO process specific to each of those individuals will click on as soon as a viable brain becomes operational.

Select a group of those individuals for study and comparison; perhaps the first born of an upper middle class couple in New York City, the third born of an unwed mother in East Los Angeles, the sixth child of a Palestinian family and the second born of a native Israeli family. Superimpose over those obvious geographical variations and the hint of financial distance between and among the members of this small, randomly selected group the presence or absence of the Abrahamic religions, national patriotism and political thought, racial and familial precepts, relevant past history and any of the countless differentiating inputs to the individual IPO processes that come to mind.

If these four randomly selected individuals were placed together on an otherwise deserted island inhabited only by wild animals and if their survival on that island is then solely dependent on their ability to work together in acquiring the essential food, clothing, shelter and protection from the existing predators, it is not unreasonable to assume that their differences would be ignored in favor of individual survival. The experience of survival on that island would itself represent a stream of input into the IPOs of all four of those random candidates.

From a different situational perspective, place all four of those randomly selected people in the Middle East, specifically Syria, during the years of the current conflict in that country. The upper middle class son from New York is there representing the multi-national petroleum firm that employs him. The young Israeli, now a soldier, is stationed on the Syrian/Israeli border. The young man from East LA, stationed at a U.S. military base in Iraq, is providing medical support for a handful of U.S. Special Forces operatives working in Syria. The young Palestinian waits in the dusty interior of a shack for news of his family displaced from their home by the Israeli military a few weeks before.

If they met at all, their relationship would be totally dependent upon their place in the “food chain”, so to speak. The Israeli soldier and the American corporate executive might shake hands because of the political ties between the United States and Israel. A likewise relationship might exist between that Israeli soldier and the American Medic. The Palestinian refugee might see the corporate executive as the cause for all of the grief he has experienced and the Israeli soldier as a practitioner of evil. He might view the American medic with respect and, perhaps, extend a friendly hand on behalf of his missing family.

The American corporate petroleum executive, although he holds a high degree of status and respect in the United States, is not free to walk the streets of Syria or other locations in the Middle East without the personal protection paid for by his firm and supplied by a privatized military force. The medic from East LA joined the military shortly after his younger brother was shot to death by a rival gang in a dispute over turf rights to market drugs. In response to his brother’s death, he shot and killed two randomly selected members of the opposing gang then joined the service to avoid possible retaliation or prosecution.

(3) All U.S. military personnel are subject to life-threatening attack at any time by individuals who are trained from birth to believe that death in the defense of their country and faith will be rewarded in the afterlife, not unlike the belief system supporting the Crusaders.

What specifically do these examples have to do with status and status anxiety? What is represented here can best be understood in the context of Robert Pirsig’s “Handful of Sand”, an excerpt from his work Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

“All the time we are aware of millions of things around us … these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road … aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think.

From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

Loss or absence of status is a judgment provided by a force external to self whether that self is a person, a group, a culture or a nation. If that message of failure is taken as input and processed, the output may begin a long process of internalized shame, desperation, anger and ultimately a need to reacquire status, whatever the cost.

Bar fights, urban gang wars and international conflicts occur because of perceived loss or absence of status. There are deep-rooted status configurations embedded in the global community, some of which are spiritual in nature while others are cultural or based in long histories of ongoing conflict. The Hatfield McCoy feud is a classic example of such a conflict.

In conclusion, status anxiety, especially when considered in the context of globalization, is a definite factor in the development of conflict at all levels of human interaction.

(1) Source: The New Penguin Dictionary of Science

(2) Source: Netflix summary of the Predators at War documentary

(3) Authors note: It is not my intention to support or in any way denigrate religious or spiritual belief in any form.

(B) Source: Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton