Loyalty
A Power Shot of Status in a Single Virtue
William Skeoch Cumming, Drummer James Roddick of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders, defending Lieutenant Menzies during hand-to-hand fighting in Kandahar, 1880, 1894, pencil and watercolor
This Substack has a practical bent, meaning it mixes personal and social observations with more abstract ideas for applicability. Not a program or package, just considerations to adapt or ignore as wanted. Bits of honest reality are refreshing. When subjective perspective and points of ignorance are openly recognized. Conclusions show the logic without hysterics or ideology. Personal anecdote details may or may not be slightly altered to protect the innocent, but they aren’t embellished. Interesting life != preposterous life. And there’s nothing refreshing about transparent tales of things someone didn’t do. Like talking to a person IRL, the reality → the value. Empirical observation and rational conclusions being source of what insight there is here.
Some earlier posts on high status socialization were relatively popular. It makes sense - the House of Lies offers inversion and degeneration where organic culture should be. So there’s interest in real social interactions and contexts. It’s been a bit since then and something came to mind today by chance. Probably the biggest high status social virtue of all after honesty. And the two are not unrelated.
Edward Burne-Jones, Honour's Prize from The Flower Book, 1882-98, watercolor and bodycolor with gold on paper, British Museum. A knight’s vision of the Grail from an album of 42 drawings
Loyalty is a subset of personal integrity - both are expressions of [truth to what you claim to be]. Which is being honest. Loyalty can soft-pedal honesty about some inessential things. But it’s also bluntly honest - in the appropriate setting - when needed. It’s placing personal high value on the well-being of someone else. So honesty on a higher level hierarchically. The honesty of true friendship or servitude.
All these truth-related qualities feed into honor. It’s what makes honor easy to detect but harder to define concisely. An overall character that’s a cluster or composite of more basic virtues. High status is essentially [being honorable]. It registers subconsciously even in dishonorable environments. And other honorable people won’t give you much time without it. It has to be self-motivated in the House of Lies though. Consider the faces of your ancestors.
Personal anecdote. A group of us left a college soirée before parting ways for our late night activities. Around midnight on a typical [crowded bars, crap food, convenience store, etc.] street where campus and town nightlife overlapped. Where, through an absurd chain of douchbaggery while waiting outside while college Alpha best friend got a slice…
[Congenial intervention to keep Gamma barnacle from getting curb stomped by drunk football players from a rival college ]
somehow →
[Me facing off with five of them while my party vanished like tears in the rain]
Frederic Remington, The Last Stand, 1896, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
This isn’t a personal hero tale. Individually, two toss-ups, one not impossible, and two no chance. The memory is so clear because neuroatypicality makes perceptual, physical, and cognitive patterns isomorphic. No psychokinetic translation drag. Hence the instantaneous reactions. In crisis, awareness shifts unconsciously to flow state and everything becomes crystalline. So in the seconds between getting my ass beat and the miraculous deliverance, I saw Alpha came out of the pizza place peripherally. He had his slice and this big smile that insta-vanished when he saw the situation. Recognition was instantaneous - that’s Alpha instinct. And the new expression wasn’t fear. It was resignation as he stepped up beside me with zero hesitation. Or even consideration. Just [this is going to suck] → [side-by-side] in a half-beat.
Loyalty.
Guess it is a hero tale…
John Jellicoe, William Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk, Scotland,
After the deliverance, I thanked him effusively. He waved it off. “If I’m there and you get your ass kicked, we went down together. You’re the same.” In maybe 20 seconds, our entire relationship changed. Hard to think of something more stirring than knowing someone has your back - no matter what. Ride or die. The guys who melted away were still friends, with one Γ exception. Nothing superficially changed. Another wacky Saturday night with the boys. But something real did change.
It’s also transitive. Had it been reversed, I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t have paused for a second before forcing myself forward. But I could afterwards. If you’re high status, demonstrations of loyalty galvanize reciprocity. But someone has to go first. There is some risk. You’re banking that the other really is worthy. A good Alpha is more reflexive - which doesn’t make it not a gamble.
Marian Kay, Diptych: Loyalty & Betrayal, 2022, oil on canvas
So who cares? To see it easily, go really wide. The base of a fulfilling life is accomplishing or attaining your priorities. The hierarchical status of SSH profiles and high-low social status distinctions correlate with personal fulfillment. Alpha, Bravo, and Sigma profiles are noticeable - among other reasons - for success in accomplishing or attaining dreams and desires. Obviously this sub-divides endlessly. Morality, context, personality, etc. The point is that SSH is fixed, but status can be improved. Worlds of difference between high and low Deltas. Gamma can be graduated. There are indications Omegas can as well. That’s the pragmatic reason to be mindful of these things. Improving character doesn’t guarantee life success, but it really raises the probability.
It’s also a choice.1
Ted Jones, Anger from The Seven Deadly Sins, limited edition print, Killarney Art Gallery
Since social positionality is relative, others have to be considered in any analysis. So much “advice” focuses on how you LARP while ignoring the real people in the audience. Dishonesty in general is a penthouse-tier way to piss people off and submarine a reputation. Consider that people will pay a premium for the stand-up mechanic or accountant. And loyalty is honesty at the level of active form or expression of true friendship. Objective practical integrity.
A pattern of loyalty leads to that most precious of bonds - trust. There’s no trait I value over trustworthiness.
Hugo Höppener, Loyalty, 1930, black ink on wove paper
It’s instinctive. Anyone who’s been intimate with high-status women is aware of that high number subset of shit testing. It’s Game 101 - unfamiliar anxiety over loss of the usual autonomy via uncontrollable emotion. Psychic security and mate fitness in one bundle. It’s why frame is so absolutely critical. And cucking so terminal. Because respect is the cornerstone. Commitment to moral responsibility in the face of desire or pressure annoys the solipsist in the moment. But the high-status female absorbs exactly what having that level of loyalty applied to them means. The foundation for the security that → blossoming.
The take home from all this is loyalty is pure status, but be careful who you give it to. It is a first step. Don’t get locked into a one-sided commitment. The vulnerability if you really are loyal is trouble backing out of bad situation. It feels disloyal. But that’s one of those Abstract/Material Reality conflicts. “Loyalty” the virtue has an abstract absolute quality with math-type purity. Loyalty in reality is a social manifestation. A messy translation into context. And like any contextual, context matters.
Marguerite Kirmse, Loyalty, before 1954, etching
I don’t dislike abstract art per se. It’s just that without a technical excellence component, the concept has to be really good. This one kills it.
"Loyalty is pure status, but be careful who you give it to."
There are also Alphas who, despite being Alphas, have no understanding that there are men in whom loyalty actually has to be encouraged, nurtured, and reciprocated. These Alphas, knowing they are Alpha, simply deem it their right and provenance to demand loyalty and recieve it without complaint. When they come up against a man (pretty much always going to be a sigma or another alpha) who does not freely give that loyalty, these Alphas have no idea what to do, and most often will lash out, whether through outright violence or gamma-like subterfuge. Behavoir becomes an inversion of the very characteristics they need to built loyalty. Complete distrust solidifies. In tandem with the definition of loyalty brilliantly laid out in this post, an obvious high status signal is that this same loyalty is not freely or easily given (for reasons beyond animal self-interest).
I didn't realize it was odd to have people who were once friends leave my life, and for me to maintain the expectation that when they were ready to come back they'd be welcome to have it out with me over the disagreements. Once I consider you family, the only thing that could cut you off is direct threat to anyone else in my circle. People are too valuable not to offer mercy when asked for forgiveness. I don't know where that puts me, but I don't see my position changing.