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What are the consequences of social ambition?
The concept of generalized nepotism.
Our species, Homo sapiens, functions in a wild state within hierarchical social groups. Social ambition is the very strong instinctive motivation that individuals possess, even in our modern urbanized societies, to attempt to rise within the social hierarchy. The basic strategy for this is to form alliances at various levels.
In fact, each individual finds themselves at the center of various circles, with individuals inside each circle fighting against those outside. For example, an individual may fight against their brothers and sisters within the family, but is allied with the entire family to protect itself against the rest of society. An individual fights against their colleagues for a promotion, but is allied with them against competing companies, which themselves fight among each other but are allied within corporations to defend their common interests. An individual belongs to a social class that fights against others, but all these classes can be united within a nation-state that fights against others, etc.
This system of multiple circles around the individual is what I call generalized nepotism, and it leads to permanent 'us versus them' struggles. Such a system is therefore extremely violent, and even if violence is contained during favorable periods by law, such a system remains perpetually anxiety-inducing. Indeed, another individual is always both an ally when considering a sufficiently large group, and an enemy when considering a smaller group.
Behaviorally, this leads individuals to intensely practice hypocrisy, that is, to display respect and benevolence toward individuals they barely like, or even hate deep down inside.
Alliance strategies
There are two main alliance strategies. One consists of seeking allies through apparent benevolence (the chimpanzee Chester from the report Caribbean Primates). The other consists of terrorizing them to impose servile loyalty (the chimpanzee Tony from the report Caribbean Primates).
If the late 20th century has dispelled many myths, such as the idea that little girls' happiness would come from meeting Prince Charming, the myth that persists is the belief that the problem of alliance dynamics is related to the behavior of individuals who practice it through terror.
The reality observed as soon as we carefully examine group behavior is that the problem lies in the very notion of alliance dynamics, rather than how individuals practice it. Indeed, for alliances to be stable, they must be based on dogmas. Thus, regardless of how it is practiced, alliance dynamics lead to disregarding facts in favor of respecting the dogmas that bind each group and promote us—who believe in the dogma—against them.
There are also secondary alliance modalities, which are all the more effective because human language is sophisticated and allows effective action on the mental image of others:
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lying. This consists of presenting others with a reality that is knowingly distorted or simply truncated in order to gain more alliances. This is the modality employed when self-deception arising from cognitive dissonance is insufficient to create complicity. This is perhaps also, among humans, the primary tool for conquering power and celebrity, even if the alliances thus produced are fickle.
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ostentation. This involves magnifying signs of high social status (lifestyle, position, diploma, self-promotion, clothing, vocabulary, body language) in order to encourage others to seek an alliance.
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in-group signaling. This consists of displaying signs of recognition (clothing, vocabulary, body language) to facilitate the identification of potential allies.
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bashing. This consists of denigrating an entity (civil servants, foreigners, men, etc.) so that the other person who shares this rejection perceives themselves as allied with us against them.
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victimization. This is a variant of seeking allies through benevolence, where the driving individual does not seek alliance with individuals lower in the social hierarchy, but rather seeks alliance with individuals higher up. The aim is to obtain protection not motivated by loyalty testimonies from the lower-ranking individual, but by empathy from the higher-ranking individual.
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Main consequence of social ambition
To summarize, social ambition leads to prioritizing respect for dogmas, while ignoring their negative practical consequences and the suffering they generate. Added to this is the second characteristic of humans, cognitive dissonance, which allows them to do so while maintaining a good self-image.
Further reading
To better understand social ambition and generalized nepotism, watch the document Caribbean Primates by Jack Silberman and Jean-Christophe Ribot, available on Arte replay, then refer to chapter 2 'Generalized Nepotism' from the book From Capital to Reason.
Then see the question 'How to succeed in life?' which presents the great behavioral alternative for human life, namely following the path dictated by social ambition, or transcending it.
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