Credentials are the pheromones we secrete to professionally attract third parties. They are representative signals that we emit so that others can pick them up and form a positive professional opinion about us. Did you study Engineering at a public university? He is hardworking and good with numbers. Did you build a successful company from scratch? He is hardworking and intelligent. Did you enroll in financial economics? He is motivated in boring areas.
Credentials are a useful heuristic. With little information one is placed on who is in front. It's important because humans have a strong instinct to form opinions about people. Makes sense. The advent of speech imposed very specific power dynamics on humans. In a pack of wolves the alpha male rules, and the other members submit to his force. In a tribe of people, it is not the strongest that rules, but the one that arouses adhesion, since an omega male (or female) and two strays can conspire, set a trap and kill the alpha male. Gossip and conspiracy can mean the end of the strongest. It is a phenomenon that cannot happen in the animal world. Thus, those who cared about having a good reputation to avoid being relegated or expelled survived and procreated more and we, today, are their descendants. That's why reputation obsesses us all a little.
Each historical moment has its codes and credentials. In the United Kingdom of the 19th century, the highest credential was to have served with Wellington or Nelson and, in Spain of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to be a former minister. They also vary according to place: in the Barcelona of my university youth, no one knew what Icade was, a career listed in financial Madrid, and today in Madrid no one knows what Clúster was, a high-voltage credential in technological Barcelona.
So people try to create credentials that are considered good. This determines what we study, what jobs we accept and what parts of our lives we explain. It also encourages self-interested and even fraudulent use of credentials: taking a 15-day course at an American university and presenting it as a master's degree, or using a company's branding as a police badge, despite having I have only been a scholar. You also need to be aware that people hide their anti-credentials, toxic facts. No one puts "habitual liar and opportunistic thief" on their CV.
Also, don't confuse lighthouses with coast or credentials with capacity. Nor is it correct to assume, in the case of anti-credentials, that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. To have a serious opinion of someone, you need to know what their credentials really stand for; try to avoid the impostors, that mold that tries to infest everything; ask for references from reliable sources and don't jump to opinions.
A very similar thing happens with countries. These use credentials and avoid anti-credentials. We have, for example, the Houthi rebels trying to sink peaceful merchant ships and kill their sailors. Today, a country would never want such an anti-credential. It is known that the Houthis use technology from a third party, as land-sea ballistic doctrine and technology requires knowledge that Yemen does not have. Everything points to the fact that, in addition, they are following instructions from this third party with whom they have a synallagmatic relationship. If so, it would be the case of an omega male cunningly manipulating another to avoid an anti-credential, a very human machination. let's know
