Why We Give So Much Attention to Status, and What We Lose in the Process

I am touching on something rather fundamental: why do people confuse the position someone occupies with the value of the person who occupies it?

A person becomes a doctor, a mother, a president, a professor, a husband, a successful businessman. Suddenly, other people are expected to treat them differently, sometimes without knowing a single thing about their character.

And the most peculiar part is that we often accept this arrangement without even questioning it.

I don’t understand it. I really don’t. Yet, I think there are several reasons for this, and they are not all equally unreasonable…I have the philosophical hat on…

1. Status is a shortcut for the brain

We live in a world too complicated to evaluate every person from scratch. Status gives us a ready-made label. A doctor must be intelligent. A rich person must be competent. A person in power must know what they are doing. An older person must be wiser. A parent must deserve respect. A person with a prestigious job must be worth listening to.

These assumptions are convenient. Sometimes they are even useful. If I need surgery, I would generally prefer a qualified surgeon to an enthusiastic amateur with a kitchen knife and bro-YouTube-science.

The problem begins when we extend competence in one area to superiority in every other area.

A brilliant surgeon can be a terrible father. A successful politician can be a moral coward. A loving mother can be wrong about practically everything concerning her adult child. I saw these in real life.

Status tells us something about a person’s position. It tells us remarkably little about the person.

2. Status is a form of social currency

Status is not merely about what we possess. It is about how other people perceive what we possess.

Money buys things. Status buys attention, deference, access, and sometimes obedience.

And this is where the matter becomes more interesting.

A person may pursue a prestigious position not because the work itself is meaningful, but because of the social recognition attached to it. The title becomes a certificate of importance.

We see this in professional life, politics, social circles, and even intellectual discussions. Sometimes people are less interested in being right than in being recognised as the person who is right…let that sink in…

There is a difference between wanting to do something well and wanting to be seen as someone who does things well.

The first is an aspiration. The second can become an addiction. And, like every addiction, it requires increasingly frequent doses. Yesterday, being successful was enough. Today, one must be more successful than one’s neighbour. Tomorrow, the neighbour’s success becomes a personal insult.

And let’s not forget that with the social media our “neighbours” can be miles away.

3. Status gives people a sense of identity

Here I would be a little more sympathetic.

Not everyone who cares about status is vain or manipulative. Some people need social roles to understand who they are.

“I am a doctor.”

“I am a mother.”

“I am the head of this family.”

These statements can provide purpose, belonging, and a stable place in the world. Human beings are social creatures, and our identities develop partly through our relationships with others.

The difficulty arises when a person becomes so attached to a role that they can no longer distinguish between the role and themselves.

What happens when the doctor retires? When the children grow up? When the boss loses the job? When the family no longer obeys the person who has always been in charge?

If the role is the foundation of the self, losing the role feels like losing the self, am I right or?

This is one reason some people defend their authority with such extraordinary ferocity. They are not merely protecting a position. They are protecting the only identity they know how to inhabit.

Understanding this does not mean excusing their behaviour.

4. And then we arrive at the family

Probably the wors of all.

This is where your example becomes particularly revealing.

“Love him because he is your father.”

“Respect her because she is your mother.”

“Help him because he is your brother.”

“Forgive her because she is your daughter.”

Notice something about these sentences: they use the relationship as an argument in itself.

They do not say that the person has behaved lovingly, acted responsibly, or demonstrated any consideration for you. They say that a particular biological or social connection should produce a particular emotional response.

But why?

A family relationship is a fact. Love is an emotional and relational reality. They are not interchangeable. Being someone’s father establishes a relationship. It does not automatically establish that he has been a good father.

Being someone’s child creates a history and perhaps obligations of care, but it does not mean that the parent is entitled to unlimited access, unquestioning obedience, or unconditional forgiveness.

And being related to someone does not magically transform cruelty into love…let that sink in too…

There is, however, an important distinction here. A person can love a relative who behaves badly. Love does not require admiration, approval, or trust. But the mere existence of kinship does not manufacture love where none exists.

Kinship can explain why a relationship matters. It cannot, by itself, determine what that relationship deserves.

Family relationships often involve vulnerability, dependency, shared history, and obligations that strangers do not have. Those things can justify particular responsibilities. They do not justify pretending that every family relationship is healthy or that every relative deserves the same degree of closeness.

5. Status is also a mechanism of control

This is the darker side of the subject.

Social hierarchies become easier to maintain when people believe that the person above them is entitled to obedience.

A boss says, “I am your superior.”

A politician says, “I was elected.”

A parent says, “I brought you into this world and took care of you.”

A spouse says, “I am the head of this household.”

Sometimes these statements are relevant to legitimate responsibilities. A manager really may need authority to organise a team. A parent really does have responsibilities toward a young child.

But authority over a particular function is not the same as superiority as a human being.

The manager may direct the work without owning the employee’s dignity. The parent may protect a child without owning the child’s future. An elected official may exercise public power without becoming morally infallible.

Whenever someone uses a position to avoid scrutiny, we should become suspicious.

A healthy hierarchy assigns responsibility and makes cooperation possible. An unhealthy one turns rank into a shield against accountability.

And the most effective hierarchies are not always enforced by threats. Sometimes people enforce them upon themselves because they have learned that questioning the arrangement is somehow disrespectful.

That is when status stops being merely a social convention and becomes a belief system.

I think, we are all guilty of that.

6. But is status itself dysfunctional?

Not necessarily. I would challenge that conclusion a little.

We need distinctions, responsibilities, and forms of authority. A society in which nobody recognises expertise, responsibility, or legitimate authority would not automatically become more humane. It might simply become more chaotic, with informal power replacing formal power. Isn’t that where we go now?

Just asking.

The important question is not whether status exists.

It is what we believe status entitles a person to receive.

Consider three different things:

The distinction is between recognising a person’s position and surrendering our independent judgment to it.

We can respect a function without worshipping its occupant.

We can recognise a relationship without romanticising it.

We can acknowledge someone’s achievements without allowing those achievements to dictate how we should feel about them.

7. Perhaps the deepest problem is that status replaces individual judgment

I suspect this is closest to what troubles me.

When people say, “You must love this person because they are your mother,” they are asking us to subordinate our actual experience of a human being to an abstract rule.

The rule has already decided what we should feel. Our experience is expected to comply.

But genuine relationships are not administrative procedures. There is no form to submit, no stamp of approval from the Ministry of Kinship, no legal clause that can compel the heart to produce affection.

And the same problem appears outside the family.

People defer to the title rather than examine the argument. They admire the uniform rather than the conduct. They trust the reputation rather than investigate the facts.

In each case, a label does the thinking for them.

There is a certain irony here: the more strongly someone relies on status to establish their importance, the less certain we can be that they possess the qualities that would make them important without it.

Not always, of course. But the question is worth asking.

One final distinction I find essential

I would separate human worth, social position, and relational merit.

• Human worth: A person’s basic dignity. It does not increase with wealth, authority, or achievement.
• Social position: The role a person occupies, which may legitimately confer specific powers, responsibilities, or recognition.
• Relational merit: What a person demonstrates through their conduct and how they treat others, which influences the trust, intimacy, and affection they can reasonably expect in a relationship.

These three things are constantly confused.

A person with high social status may have little relational merit. A person with no prestigious position may be extraordinarily admirable. And a person may deserve basic dignity without deserving your trust, friendship, admiration, or love.

That last distinction matters. We do not have to dehumanise someone to refuse them a place in our intimate lives.

Status becomes dysfunctional when it is treated not as a description of someone’s position, but as proof of their superior worth or as an entitlement to other people’s feelings.

We cannot choose our relatives. We can sometimes choose our obligations toward them. We certainly cannot always choose whom we love.

But we should be able to judge people by what they actually are and do, rather than by the labels attached to them.

Otherwise, we are not relating to human beings. We are relating to their titles, their family trees, their uniforms, and their reputations.

And that is a rather absurd way to spend a human life: surrounded by people, yet constantly looking past them to see what they represent.