Asklemmy

You’re taking one thought and extending it to try to interpret all of human society with.

That's absolutely not true. I'm saying that status-seeking is a part of almost all of our unconscious decision-making processes, not that it's the sole part of our decision-making process. A part != Interpret all with it. Of course there's other parts, like you say, survival.

I can not convey all my knowledge and thoughts in a single comment. Even though I tried to shorten it, you still find too long. The "it's only a part" I found obvious, thus I didn't stretch it, but you would have needed it to be included. You personally didn't need the other parts that you found too long. It's basically impossible to know what you need to talk about when explaining something without a conversation, because we don't know each other's knowledge base. It's even more impossible in a forum-style format, where one comment is read by potentially every human on Earth, each of which have vastly different knowledge bases. What is obvious/superfluous for one is not for someone else.

What you call status seeking can be called survival in some cases, enjoyment in some, and a waste of resources in some.

Do all these things not play together? Isn't having status a way to survive better? Aren't the activities that are enjoyable also the ones that allows us to survive (in a non-modern, ancestral world context in which we evolved)? Isn't having status enjoyable for most?