>The reason most people are so unwilling to do these things is because they feel like it is beneath them, and that doing them is a demonstration of their low status.
>Maybe some people. Not others.*
Well, parent already said "most people", not all.
(But even if they haven't said "most", one should assume they allow for exceptions in any general statement in a casual conversation. Unless of course they used the universal quantifier and insisted on "absolutely everybody, no exceptions whatsoever". But I digress).
>It has nothing to do with status. Most maintenance work isn't done in front of people
It doesn't have to be to be associated with low status though. It's merely enough that it's considered as stopping one from doing the things they think would raise their status (what they "should be doing" that's not beneath them).
> Well, parent already said "most people", not all.
What I meant is, while I can't read minds, "most people" disagrees with the ad-hoc statistical sample of "people I know". What I perceive is people differing in the amount of resistance they have towards doing unwanted things that still need to be done, but I maybe once saw it being considered a status issue.
> It's merely enough that it's considered as stopping one from doing the things they think would raise their status (what they "should be doing" that's not beneath them).
Do people really think this way? "This task is beneath me", "that other task is not beneath me"?
I consider chores to be stopping me from doing things "I should be doing", but it has nothing to do with status; it's just about having better things to do with the time. I hate chores as much now as I hated them in the days I had trouble making ends meet; the only difference is that nowadays I can afford reducing some of them (e.g. I have a dishwasher now, and I can afford a little bit extra to buy something that's easier to clean than the cheapest option). Rich people are able to outsource more.
Maybe the picture is backwards? Outsourcing chores is a status signal in the sense that your ability to reduce maintenance burden is correlated to your wealth. That doesn't mean people hate maintenance because of status - what makes this a good status signal in the first place is that chores are a waste of life.
>I consider chores to be stopping me from doing things "I should be doing", but it has nothing to do with status; it's just about having better things to do with the time.
I think the difference in our opinion is that I see those two phrasings as being more or less the same. "better things to do with the time" I understanding as not very different from "those are beneath me, I'm here for a higher calling".
As opposed to enjoying e.g. cooking and tending the house, and not considering them a waste of time.
Kind of like people tend to look down on garbage men and cleaning persons, even though their work is essential.
Still don't see that much of a similarity. "I don't like doing X" != "X is beneath me", it just means I don't like doing X. So e.g. I don't like cooking because I'm bad at it so it doesn't give me much enjoyment (chicken and egg, I know). And I don't like cleaning the house because I consider it to be a waste of life that's necessary only because we don't have self-cleaning technology. I'm not even sure what the frame of mind looks like that allows one to enjoy household chores.
> Kind of like people tend to look down on garbage men and cleaning persons, even though their work is essential.
Ok, I've seen people thinking like this; I actively changed the mind of or filtered out people like this from my social circle. It's a proxy for looking down on poor / less successful people. Still, these are jobs associated with less well-off precisely because the tasks are unpleasant, and everyone who can avoid them, will.
(Then again, maybe it's self-reinforcing at this point, and the factor that poor people do these jobs makes for an extra incentive to avoid doing the same, even if one is poor too.)
Well, parent already said "most people", not all.
(But even if they haven't said "most", one should assume they allow for exceptions in any general statement in a casual conversation. Unless of course they used the universal quantifier and insisted on "absolutely everybody, no exceptions whatsoever". But I digress).
>It has nothing to do with status. Most maintenance work isn't done in front of people
It doesn't have to be to be associated with low status though. It's merely enough that it's considered as stopping one from doing the things they think would raise their status (what they "should be doing" that's not beneath them).