When less becomes more, the hard becomes easy.

Everyone seeks happiness. No one wants to be miserable and sad.

But we do what we've got to do to survive, and it's only after those basics are achieved that we can begin to focus on raising our level of happiness. For nearly everyone who would ever be reading this, their needs up to, and including, 'social needs' are already taken care of. This leaves us grappling with 'esteem/status' needs and 'self actualisation/ self- fulfillment needs according to this classic Marlow 'hierarchy of needs' model. That this model is fundamentally correct is obvious, and no one with any knowledge about our species disagrees. I would argue that his model is more accurate for most females and would actually look slightly different for most males, but that's splitting hairs and makes little practical difference to the usefulness of the model. My bigger gripe is the lack of clarity around 'self actualisation'/ 'self realisation'. But this is typical, as there's a universal reluctance to define these terms because doing so would quickly get us into conflict with our desire for status/esteem.

What jumps out, when we look at that model, is that status needs come via others, while 'self actualisation' (presumably) comes from ourselves. We have ourselves a conflict, or at least potential conflict, as , on one hand, we are dependent on other people giving us respect to experience the pleasurable feelings, and to avoid the painful ones from lack of respect, but on the other hand, we also crave self-fulfillment, but surely self- fulfillment is impeded if we're so influenced by how our actions are judged by others. If both forces are aligned and, more or less, pushing us in the same direction, then all is good, but how do we reconcile the conflict when they're not aligned, and how can we actually even identify which motivational forces are status based and which are innate?

It's an issue, and these days, a very common conflict, as the demands of the modern world - to achieve the basics - push us ever further away from the life we evolved to live. Often, we can get some status and have our basic needs catered to, but can't raise our happiness beyond that level because our reality isn't emotionally satisfying from the self-realisation perspective. In other words, the path our culture and schools put us on to make $$ and earn respect, is often a very different path than what we'd choose if we hadn't been schooled so intensively.

There were significant survival advantages, and therefore evolutionary pressure, for primates like us to become social primates - to live in groups. Not least of the pressures is that small groups have the power to eliminate individuals, and big groups have the power to eliminate small groups. But groups need some kind of organisational ability, they need a structure. Someone has to make the decisions on behalf of everyone else, and the rest of the group must accept that authority. I.e. there needs to be a hierarchy, and the higher one is in the hierarchy the more power they have. Increased status translates to more security and more privileges which gives them, and their children, a higher chance of surviving and thriving. Therefore, attraction to status was selected for, as that relatively strong motivation was beneficial.

Both our ability to feel empathy and our motivation for status, and the fact that status is bestowed by others, are powerful forces that are needed for humans to be able to cooperate and live in large groups. As we are dependent on others for status/respect, we are conscious of their particular values, as those are the values we'll be judged on. This, obviously, has a large influence on our decisions and actions and therefore, as adults, we're highly likely to automatically subscribe to the same values/hierarchy, especially if life is good and we're getting respect from that hierarchy.

Why change what is working well? There's no reason, and so we rarely do unless, or until, it's not working well for us. Obviously, if we want to change our reality, we need to change our actions but, as our actions flow from our decisions, and our decisions are heavily influenced by our beliefs and values, we cannot make significant changes without first subscribing to a different, or at least adjusted, hierarchy. But this is not easy, especially when we're older, as we likely have significant momentum along the path we're on and we're emotionally integrated with the only hierarchy we've ever known. We rarely see our hierarchy as just another hierarchy, we see it as the hierarchy, or at least the only right hierarchy. This is because we need to believe our hierarchy is actually solid and real for it to exist in the first place. A subjective hierarchy is no hierarchy. For us to reap the pleasant feelings available from status, we need to believe our hierarchy is objectively the only one, or at least the superior one .

why we don't want to see we're primates etc.

So we're hardwired to get a buzz from being complimented, from being respected - looked up to - and we feel pain, we definitely don't enjoy being disrespected - being looked down upon. This is true, even though why would we rationally care what someone else thinks of us in most contexts. Many fights happen, and many guys are in jail, or dead, from the violent responses to perceived disrespectfulness from complete strangers. Rationally, what does it matter? but emotionally it does matter. The world abounds with status symbols; the car that costs a lot of money, but gets the owner from A to B no quicker, or in any more comfort, than a much cheaper car. Label clothes and handbags, expensive watches etc etc, have their allure in the fact they signal relatively high status. Virtue signaling is motivated by the urge to demonstrate high virtue as defined by the hierarchy the group subscribes to. A big attraction to being 'offended' is that it automatically implies we would never do that, thus we're superior.

Given the importance that status has for social primates like us, it's not surprising that we dance to the crack of it's whip, even when it's contrary to our own individually defined interests. Indeed, if we don't understand how our species operates, then we're not even aware we're influenced in this manner, and so don't seek to manage it.