Over the sixteen years since I first articulated the SSH, there has been an almost comic insistence by the vast majority of people who believe in its legitimacy to misuse it as some sort of device intended for self-improvement. The problem is that, being a taxonomy and not a series of tests or objectives, the awareness of these behavioral tendencies and socio-sexual status indicators does not lend itself to self-improvement.
Let’s say we had observed that it was primarily height and shoe size that dictated where a man fell on the status hierarchy. Most people would understand that there wasn’t much that could be done about changing either of those things. Certainly one could adopt cosmetic measures such as lifted heels and giant clown shoes, and indeed, both measures have been adopted in various societies throughout the past, usually for status-related reasons......
....And more importantly, how can you transform those internal grooves carved into your psyche by nature and nurture when you don’t know what they are, how they were established, and particularly, when you have no idea what the internal reality of a different behavioral pattern are? I don’t know what drives me to develop a new sound, produce a music vieo, and record an entire album’s worth of songs in four days, and I also don’t know what would drive someone to sell their soul for a modicum of fame, money, and Instagram followers.
This is why it’s a mistake to try to use the SSH as a basis for “self-improvement” by climbing the status ladder. If you want to use it for self-improvement, first identify what is Good, Beautiful, and True, and then utilize your knowledge of where you fall on the SSH to pursue those things. Let the status take care of itself; it is something endowed from without rather than within anyhow.
