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What are the consequences of social ambition?
The notion of generalized nepotism.

Our species, homo sapiens, functions in the wild in hierarchical social groups. Social ambition is the very strong instinctive motivation that individuals have, including in our modern urbanized societies, to try to rise in the social hierarchy. The basic strategy for this is to make alliances at various levels.
In fact, each individual finds himself at the center of various circles, with for each circle the individuals inside fighting against those outside. For example, the individual may fight against his brothers and sisters within the family, but is allied with his entire family to protect himself against the rest of society. The individual fights against his colleagues for a promotion, but is allied with them against competing companies, which themselves fight among themselves but are allied within corporations to defend their common interests. The individual is part of a social class which fights against others, but all these classes can be united within a nation state which fights against others, etc.
Ce système de multiples cercles autour de l'individu est ce que j'appelle le népotisme généralisé, et conduit à de permanentes luttes de type 'nous contre eux'. Un tel système est donc extrêmement violent, et même si la violence est contenue dans les périodes favorables par le droit, un tel système reste toujours anxiogène. En effet, un autre individu est toujours à la fois un allié quand on considère un groupe suffisamment grand, et un ennemi quand on considère un groupe plus petit.
Au niveau comportemental, cela conduit les individus à pratiquer intensément l'hypocrisie, c'est à dire afficher du respect et de la bienveillance vis à vis d'individu que l'on apprécie peu, voire déteste, au fond de soi.

Alliance strategies

There are two main alliance strategies. One consists of seeking allies through apparent benevolence (the Chester monkey from the report Caribbean primates). The other consists of terrorizing them to impose servile loyalty (the monkey Tony from the report Caribbean primates).
If the end of the 20th century brought down many myths, such as making little girls believe that their happiness would come from meeting Prince Charming, the myth which consists of believing that the problem of the game of alliances is linked to the behavior of individuals who practice it through terror remains.
The reality observed when we carefully look at the behavior of groups is that what poses a problem is the very notion of the game of alliances, as opposed to the way in which individuals practice it. Indeed, to be stable, alliances need to be based on dogmas. So that whatever the way in which it is practiced, the game of alliances leads to a lack of interest in the facts, in favor of respect for the dogmas which unite each group and favors us - who believe in the dogma - against them.

There are also secondary alliance modalities, all the more effective as human language is sophisticated, and allows effective action on the mental image of others:

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the lie. It consists of presenting to others a knowingly distorted, or simply truncated, reality in order to obtain more alliances. This is the modality that we implement when lying to oneself resulting from cognitive dissonance is not enough to create complicity. It is perhaps also, among humans, the main tool for conquering power and fame, even if the alliances thus produced are versatile.

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the pageantry. It is about magnifying the signs of a high social status (lifestyle, position, diploma, self-promotion, clothing, vocabulary, body attitude) in order to push others to seek an alliance.

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each other. It consists of displaying signs of recognition (dress, vocabulary, body posture) to facilitate the identification of potential allies.

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victimization. This is a variant of the search for allies through benevolence, where the driving individual does not seek an alliance with individuals lower in the social hierarchy, but seeks an alliance with individuals more high places. The goal is to obtain protection that is not motivated by the loyalty of the lowest-ranking individual, but by the empathy of the highest-ranking individual.

Main consequence of social ambition

Pour résumer, l'ambition sociale conduit à privilégier le respect de dogmes, et à en ignorer les conséquences négatives pratiques et la souffrance que cela génère. S'ajoute ensuite la seconde caractéristique des humains, la dissonance cognitive, qui leur permet de faire cela tout en conservant une bonne image d'eux même.

Go deeper

To better understand social ambition, and widespread nepotism, watch the document Caribbean primates by Jack Silberman and Jean-Christophe Ribot, available on Arte replay, then refer to chapter 2 'Widespread nepotism' from the book From capital to reason.

Voir ensuite la question 'Comment réussir sa vie ?' qui présente la grande alternative comportementale d'une vie d'humain, a savoir suivre le chemin dicté par l'ambition sociale, ou le dépasser.

 

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