status

Political-social access distinct from wealth.

Prestige or distinction within a community; Jiang argues it precedes and matters more than class in most of history.

The desired top position in a hierarchy; Jiang uses it to explain fraternal and princely violence.

He says the sonnets show Shakespeare deeply impressed by aristocratic posture and experience, especially around Southampton, while also remaining wary of aristocratic self-deception and social manipulation.

The social motive for hypocrisy is to please authority, appear superior, and gain benefits without doing the inner work the words claim.

A student says it is hardest to accept the elevation of someone closest to you because their success lands as a threat to your own equal standing.

A student argues meritocracy is largely a label that measures society by the same prestige sticks such as money and status.

He argues most elites are incapable of imagining collapse because they are focused on preserving rank and defeating rivals, and even bunker-building does not solve the problem that their status may evaporate in real breakdown.

Jiang says boomer dominance in politics is not just a matter of numbers but of concentrated power, status, and wealth that bend the political system toward preserving their benefits.

He argues that games become socially central in patriarchal status orders where rank is zero-sum, whereas older matriarchal societies were more cooperative and oriented toward balance and harmony.

Consumerism is defined as proving value by making money, buying things, displaying status, and treating depression as an individual drug problem rather than a system problem.