The Jordan Harbinger Show - 552: Will Storr | Understanding Social Position and the Status Game

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

Will Storr (@wstorr) is an award-winning investigative journalist and best-selling author. His latest book is The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It. What We Discuss with Will Storr: The evolutionary purpose of status and why it's always been important for human survival. How seeking status spurs innovation. The three kinds of status games we've been playing throughout human history: dominance, virtue, and success. The connection between low status and depression: why Will believes that Jeffrey Epstein did kill himself. Why you might choose a higher status title at work instead of a pay raise. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/552 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Coming up next on the Jordan Heart You know, we play status games with the people closest to us. We don't play status games with distant people so much. We don't compare ourselves very often to the King of Thailand or Michelle Obama. You know, if we did, we'd be very unhappy because we're not those people and we're never

going to be those people. That's a form of kind of torture. We compare ourselves to the people around us. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts,

and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional billionaire investor, former cult member, or money laundering expert. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. So if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we've got these episodes starter packs. These are collections of top episodes, some of your favorites, organized by popular topics. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or you can help somebody else get started. Of course, I always appreciate it when you do that. Today we're talking with my friend Will

Stor about status, social status, group status, our position in our tribe, whether we think we're in one or not. We often double down on these status games that we play, right? Losing sports teams fans will rationalize their team is still better or superior somehow. We're awash in tribalism, both political and otherwise. You've seen the super woke kids. We've seen the crazies online. We've seen the people who are unwilling to follow any rules of society because that's the tribe they're in and the other ones that adhere religiously to the other ones, sometimes literally. Even more damaging is that our brains hide these status games and these stories from ourselves. Today, we're going to learn how to spot and evaluate status in others and in ourselves, get status in healthier ways, and not resent

others for their status. In general, a fascinating conversation with Will Stor. And by By the way, if you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every single week, it is because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free, thereby building yourself some status as well. That's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And most of the guests you hear on the show, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course.

Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here we go with Will Store. I did read the book and I really enjoyed it. I think status is a, it's a funny thing to write about because we're all. sort of beholden to it, and especially the people online that go, I don't even care what other people, those people are the worst. They're the worst. The more of you back like you don't give a crap about status, the more for sure you're obsessed with it and you think about it nonstop and

lay awake at night wondering how to get more. I always think about this people say, I don't care, I don't care what people think about me. Even saying that is a state's claim because you're saying I'm above you, I'm better than you. Of course. Because I just don't care. You know, it's like, you so care. My favorite phrase from like this sort of sort of gen, maybe millennials, are the guys, because it's always guys that say, I just don't even give a fuck, man, I don't give, I'm like, no, no, no, you give all of the fucks. You give so many fucks, you're talking about it right now. That's how many fucks you get it. Exactly. You know, like, nobody else is sitting here talking about how they don't care. You made a post about,

you made a video about how you don't care. That's how much you care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why is status just integrated into the human genome brain, whatever it is, in a way that cannot be removed. Ah, well, that goes back to our evolutionary history. As I'm sure you know, and most, most of your kind of viewers will know, we're a tribal animal. You know, we're an ape that worked out how to work cooperatively. That involves being in groups and working with groups and working at how to sort of cooperate in groups. That was essential for our survival, but it wasn't simply a case of connecting into groups. That connection is really important. We all want to be connected to people. It wasn't just that. It's actually, you have to earn status within that group, because the more

status that you earn in that group, the more resources you get, the more food you get, the better access to mates, the safest sleeping sites. Like, everything gets better as your status gets better. So that's why the book is called the status game. Because, you know, to our subconscious mind, it is like it's playing a game, you know, in all the groups that we join in life, whether it's a, you know, sports team or it's our job or, you know, it's the podcast game against the rival podcast players. You know, we're playing a game of status. So it's this, Our subconscious minds has this kind of basic instruction. Join groups gain status because in that way we maximize our potential for survival and reproduction.

So it goes that far down into the core of our humanity. You know, it really is fundamental. It's the way we play at life. But it also pushes us to innovate and achieve, right? Because it's almost like the reason I work, well, not the whole reason, I'd like to think. But one of the main reasons why I'm like, okay, I've got to market the Jordan Harbinger show and it's like I want to make impact but that's also like well I want more people to know about it and I want them to use it and I want them to credit it with them getting a raise at work or changing their life and

I want better guests and I want to do a better job on this show as a host because let's be real if you get down to the base level this has to do with status I want people to listen it raises my rank and Spotify and then more people find you know and then I get more advertisers because they associate me with more people and more of a beneficial brand. So I get money because of that, which also raises my status, which makes me able to raise my kids and send them to better schools. I mean, like, every... And that raises their status, yeah.

Right, and it raises their status, right? Which is, like, my genes are now high status down the line just because I had a good conversation with Will Stor. Yeah. So it turns out to be way more important than any of us really want to admit. And it's like, you even think the most wholesome thing you can think of, like, doing a good job as a teacher, there's still status involved in that. Now, it might not be the main thing and it might not be the thing you think about, but it's there. And it's like anybody who says that it's not

there is lying to themselves, at least to themselves, probably to everyone. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the main takeaways from doing all the research for me was that you're right, we don't like to admit that we were interested in our own status. It kind of makes us feel a bit grubby because we tell this heroic story about ourselves. I just want to, you know, I want to change the world, I want to help people and all these kinds of things. We kind of swallow our desire for status. How I've started to think about it is, you know, when you think about it, you think, well, it's just status. But actually, it's the just, I don't really agree with. Status is really, really important. And dismissing it as though it's just status is to fundamentally misunderstand the

human condition. You know, we seek connection and we seek status. That's not a bad thing. It's a really good thing. And one of the things I do in the book is I delineate three kinds of different status game that people tend to play. There are dominance games. So we've been playing dominance games for millions of years. And most animals, you know, play dominance games. And that's physical. That's fear, strength.

So that's one kind of status. Another kind of status is virtue. Part of our being a tribal species is that we would compete to be seen as virtuous, generous, putting the tribe first. And you can see that in the storytelling of, you know, thousands of years. Heroes in stories are ones that put the tribe first. first, one to put their own interests behind and the interests of the people that they care about in front. That's a hero. And then there's success, you know, competence. You know, when we're

evolving being a competent honey finder, a competent storyteller, a competent, you know, tuba digger. This was really good and really useful to the tribe. So again, we've evolved to attach status to competence. And so your game as a podcaster, that's driving you. I want to be a better podcaster. You know, you've been talking to me about how the software that you've got is the best software. It's much better than all those other bits of software for the podcast that's before. It's true. I've known out that it's true. Podcast.com. Yeah, exactly. And that's all part of the status game. So you can see dismissing it as just status. No, the status is driving you to be a better man, a better person, more competent, more successful. That is a gift to the world. That is an entertainment

to all of your listeners. That is a gift to your family who are supported by your work. In the broader view, you know, it's taken Jeff Bezos and Richard Brancers to the edge of space this week, this drive for status, who's going to be the first? And these are fantastic things. You know, you know, the need for status, whether it's competence or success-based status or virtue-based status, all of the good that's done in the world is based on this strivings that people have for status. It seems to be an important, look, it's an important driver we've kind of covered this, but it also, it seems to be that there's almost like an appropriate, like a societally appropriate level of striving for status. So for example, I'd like to think that I fall into the category of like

normal people seeking status for the quote unquote right reasons and in the right way, right? Be really good at your craft. Help people out as much as you can, both because it makes me feel good, but also because then I'm seen as an authority in this area and then blah, blah, blah, advertising and dollars me and kind of talked about that before. I don't think the more I can shove mattresses down people's throats in this podcast, the more of a bigger car I'm going to get. But you see when sort of like the influencer bullshit goes wrong, right, where you see people on Instagram, and they're doing all of this very bizarre stuff to seek status where you just think, okay, this is a little bit over the line, right? They're not using it to make a better show for

their listeners. They're using it specifically and solely to make themselves look good, and usually that involves showing other people what they lack compared to that person. And then, and that's kind of where it gets toxic, right, where you're creating FOMO and almost downgrading other people's status, intentionally or otherwise, in order to bring yours up. And that, I think, is where it starts to get a little bit objectionable. And we can talk about this because in your book, you mentioned that status is relative, right? So decreases in our own earnings. If we're just going to talk about money, they have a detrimental effect. But a raise in my neighbor's standings have that same effect, even if my earnings are unchanged. Yeah. And I think this probably, so status is relative, right? But it causes

all sorts of problems, I would assume. I would assume this causes more problems because, look, instead of earning more money, I can just move to an area where everyone else has less. That's sort of a weird solution. But the other thing I can do is make other people look or feel like they have less and make myself look or feel like I have more, which I think we can all see where that can go wrong. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's absolutely right. And I think a lot of the toxicity that we see developing in internet culture and have been

seeing it totally because of the culture since the rise of social media is a result of this kind of relentless status striving. And, you know, since I've done the research, I, you know, I used to so have this kind of reflexive, you blame Jack from Twitter and, you know, Mark Zuckerberg for it all. And of course, they've not helped, you know, but you're never going to get rid of it. Because if you're connecting human beings together, to be together, they're going to play the status game. And sometimes that's going to get really rough. And, you know, one of the things I do in the book is I go back to the very first, the early days of social media, which to go back to the 80s, the mid-80s, Probably the first social media website, as we'd recognize it today, was called The Well.

You could only get on it by, you know, it was like a film war games where they put the phone and the modem and it had to dial in. And there was only sort of, it got to this, about 500 regular users and the first internet troll turns up and starts attacking them all. You know, it's incredible how little things have changed. They are having rouse about pronouns. They are exactly the same as the rouse we're having about pronouns today. Like, literally, they were doing this. And so you can see it just. It doesn't take Mark Zuckerberg or Jack, the Twitter dude, to create this toxicity. It just creates connecting people together and just setting them free.

And they'll start trying to boost their own status, trying to drop other people's status, and that's going to become toxic. And you're going to get this cancer culture that we're seeing today. You know, it's in our human nature. It's what we've done with the Internet. Status gives us meaning in many ways, and it's as necessary as oxygen or water, from what it sounds like. You mentioned, you start off the book, actually, with this story of a prisoner named Ben. this was a fascinating example I have to hand it to you to start with, because usually when we think

status, we think rock star or athlete that's up on top and goes down and then gets depressed about it. This is a guy who I think he'd done something really horrible, like murdered another child or something like this as a young man. Tell me about Ben, because this sort of shows us that no environment and no person is really exempt from this. Yeah, well, Ben is somebody that I met quite a few years ago now back in my days when I was still doing journalism, and he's a fascinating man. And so, yeah, I wanted to start the book there for exactly that.

reason. Ben was somebody who lost his rag. Again, it was a status thing. He told another child. He was a child. He was 14, I think, and this other boy was 11, told the 11-year-old, this secret about himself. He was panicked. He thought, oh, my God, if the world gets to know about this, they're going to laugh at me. It's going to be humiliation. So he lost his temper, and he attacked him, and this kid ended up dead, and Ben went to prison for that as a schoolboy. You know, so that's where his life was. He just had nothing. And he was, as this happens in prisons all over the world, he was bullied and victimized by the prison officers.

He tried to kill himself by starving himself, tried to escape. That didn't work. But eventually he kind of picked himself up. And what he started doing was he started researching the law and he started pushing back against the prison guards against what he perceived as these great injustices. And then he started helping other prisoners.

And he became known as this kind of jailhouse lawyer kind of guy. And he began playing this kind of game of status, which he kind of called fighting abuses of justice, I think. What happened was he kept coming up for parole. And every time he came up for parole, there'd be some misdemeanor that he'd get wrong and he'd get refused parole. And he ended up being, I think, the person who's served in Britain longest over there kind of tariff. And I think he was in there for that 30 years in the end.

And what happened was he fell in love? He fell in love with a visiting English teacher. Wow. Dave just fell head over heels and they were having sex in the stationery cupboard. And he was, you know, phoning on this secret phone and all this stuff. And, you know, it was all their waiting for him, literally. All he had to do was behave, and he could leave prison. He could move in with his Alex and into their beautiful cottage.

It's a place called the Cotswolds in England where all the rich people are fabulous place. You know, when you think of England, it's best. It's the Cotswold. He just wouldn't do it. And he eventually kind of had to admit to her, you know, well, I don't want to leave. And so I thought that was really interesting. Why didn't he want to leave?

You know, he'd lost everything. And I think it was a status. You know, he'd found a status game to play. And he said to me, you know, I was a lifer, and that gives you a certain status in prison. And I was this jailhouse lawyer. So I was the guy who was fighting back. And what enabled him to leave prison was Alex got him to start up a blog called Prisoner Ben, where he would talk about his life in prison.

And that blog became really successful. It won an all-world prize, very prestigious. So only when he managed to get a bit of status on the outside world would he leave. But even then it wasn't enough. And he had this huge collapse. He spent his life creating a status game, and he excelled at it. and then as soon as he kind of left it, he collapsed. And if you now look up Ben Gunn, you'll find him on Twitter very easily.

And he's now this big Twitter warrior that's constantly rowing with people and having fights. He's one of these, was one of these types. But, you know, you can see this is how he plays for status. And so, yeah, I thought that was a really fascinating kind of experiment in a way, like a one-man experiment. What do you do? What happens when somebody is thrown into hell in prison where they've got no status whatsoever? They've got no status whatsoever. Well, you find status.

If you've got a healthy brain, you find status. If you don't want to collapse, that's what you do. There's a connection between low status and depression. I would love to touch on this because anything that sort of explains why depression exists, I think is almost helpful for people that deal with it because you just, instead of thinking your brain is broken, you just realize it's in a mode that's not serving you. This doesn't go for all depression, obviously, but I'd love for you to shed a little light on this. Yeah, so there's a very strong link between depression and suicide and lack or loss of status.

One of the ideas when we become depressed is because we're doing badly in the game. We're failing to find status. And because status is such a fundamental need, when we feel we're lacking in status to the subconscious kind of evolved brain, that signals what we're doing badly in this tribe. We're going to start losing resources. We're going to start losing security. And so what happens is we kind of move to the back of the cave, as it were, and shelter. And the mind's trying to stop us going into battle with higher status people because it's

too dangerous out there. When people study the causes of suicide, again, you know, an incredibly complex subject. It's not as simple as people who've lost status. But certainly in a lot of cases, that's what is found. It's people who have, you know, lost significant amounts of status. And I think the people who are most vulnerable often are the ones who've lost the most status rapidly. This is why I think Jeffrey Epstein did kill himself, because he's just a textbook example of somebody who was up here and went down there with enormous. rapidity. That's why I suspect that I don't believe these conspiracies that it was a fit up. He's just a classic case of somebody that you could expect to take their own lives. And that's what they find. So

it's when people are going to rapidly lose status. It's why the financial crisis, lots of people ended up committing suicide. Again, it's incredibly important. And also when we're left behind, people become vulnerable to suicidal ideation. So when we stay still and all our friends and everybody around us accelerates on, that could be very bad for our mental health. as you say, it's not because there's anything wrong with us, it's because our brains are functioning correctly. Our brains are putting us into an emergency mode because when we lack status,

that's a dangerous situation for the human animal to be in. I want to sort of clarify this too. Plenty of super successful people struggle with depression as well. So I don't want people to think, like, oh, I have depression. Does that also mean I'm low status? Like, you know, screw me, what the hell? This sucks. I want to clarify that there are many reasons for it.

Yeah, and of course, status is relative. I mean, one of the sort of the dangerous things about status is that we acclimatized to it very easily. So, you know, we become this person and, you know, it's great for a while. And then, but after a while, we are climatized. We want the next thing. We want the next thing. And we want the next thing. And we want the next thing about super successful people is that from our lowly heights, you can look up at them and go, wow, you must be so happy.

But of course, we know, they're not happy. Often they're not happy. Because status is relative. They're looking at the people around them and going, well, you know, Jeff Bezos is looking at Branson and going, well, you've got to space before me. You know, that's annoying, you know, but perhaps. Right. So they're playing a game, you know, we play status games with the people closest to us.

We don't play status games with distant people so much. We don't compare ourselves very often to the King of Thailand or Michelle Obama. You know, if we did, we'd be very unhappy because we're not those people and we're never going to be those people. That's a form of kind of torture. We compare ourselves to the people around us. So people that you would consider high status are just as vulnerable to these mental health issues than people who consider low status because, they're comparing themselves to the people around them.

You know, so for a super wealthy person to suddenly live my life with my income, they could become seriously mentally ill, as insulting as that is to me. But that's the truth. You know, that's how it works. That's how human cognition works. Yeah, it is kind of sad. I feel bad for the guy who has to move into my house, which is probably the size of his, you know, 12-car garage.

Right. Yeah. And it's like no one in their right mind would feel bad for the hedge fund manager that's forced to downgrade into a 6,000 square foot. or whatever, house, and they only have two swimming pools. Not that I have this, by the way, but like, oh my gosh, there's another house in front of you before you get to the beach, you poor thing, right? Like, this is all relative.

Yeah, but that's the craziness of it. Nobody in their right minds would for sorry for that hedge fund manager, but he would be suffering sincerely and genuinely, not because he chooses to because that's the human brain. You know, like I'm a, you know, middle, middle class, I'd say. And if I suddenly had to go and live in a house that is significantly below where I'm living now, I would be feeling depressed and, oh my God, this life is not worth living, which is incredibly insulting to the people who are very happily living in those kinds of houses now. You've got to remove that kind of, the urge to morally judge people on this stuff, because it doesn't work.

And equally, you know, the people who are living in those houses are living in a kind of splendor that 100 years ago, they've got running water, television, electricity, you know, they can turn lights on and off. They're living by the standards of 100 years ago. Fantastic, amazing lives, you know, working class people in their homes. So it's all relative. As weird as it sounds, it's given me a new kind of empathy for super successful people. I don't wish I was them quite so much anymore because I understand that they experience the same pain as anybody else, even though, as you say, nobody feels sorry for them.

They still hurt and they still because it's all relative. It's the ones in the public eye that have it the worst. right, because you look at somebody like Kim Kardashian, you think, this person's getting so rich, they have so many things going for them, there's all this and that, but they're looking at, like you said, Beyonce or Michelle Obama, and they're like, man, how do I get to that level? I don't understand what's going on. And they're thinking, I didn't get invited to the red carpet at the Grammys this year. Does that mean that my status is lower? Meanwhile, I've never shed a tear over not being invited to the Grammys or the Oscars. And I will never do that, right?

And you, I assume, are on the same boat. You know, there's nothing that says, I can't believe I didn't get invited to the inauguration this year. That's ridiculous. What does this mean for my life? Well, yeah, exactly, exactly. But I've got my own things that if I think about the situation I'm in now, how it looks from when I was a schoolboy failing all my exams and just being hated by other teachers,

I'd be thinking, wow, you must be so happy. You write books for a living. You're invited on to these podcasts to talk about your ideas. You know, you're comfortably off. this must be amazing. And of course, it's not amazing because I'm just thinking, well, you know, how come I'm not on Rogan yet? And, you know, that, that, you know, it's like, everyone is like this. This is human life. This is the status game. It's what we all do. And we drive ourselves crazy with these things which rationally and objectively are pointless.

You know, they're symbolic. They're nothing. And yet, they're not. They mean everything to us. And sometimes it can feel demeaning to admit it. But you've only got to be honest with yourself. And it's true. Start talking about how aliens built the pyramids and how Atlantis is real and start doing psychedelics, and you have a much better shot at getting on Rogan. I'm just going to give you a couple pro tips there. That's how you get on that show, you know, if this book doesn't do it. Oh, I was invited on, but the corona, I couldn't go because of the virus.

Oh, really? Yeah, I had the date fixed and everything. Oh, man, you should definitely go. You should stop wasting your time with shows like this and gone Joe Rogan immediately. Get over there. Get that, wear one of those space helmets. so that you're not affected by the virus, you know, one of those ventilated ones that have like the, do it.

It's Joe Rogan would, you know, you, then you're going to hit the list. Then those teachers that thought you were an idiot back in elementary school are going to be, wow, Will Stor. Man, he turned around, he turned it around. But then it'll be the next thing and the next thing. I mean, it's the treadmill, isn't it? Rogan's probably one of the top for any author, but you're going to then wonder why you didn't get invited to the White House or something like that, yeah.

Oh, God, I hope I'd ever get like that. Yeah, well, you never know. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Will Store. We'll be right back. Now back to Will Store on the Jordan Harbinger Show. People often accept a higher status job title versus a pay raise. And I thought this is interesting, right? Because that sort of says, hey, status is worth more than money in many cases.

Now, money is status in many cases as well. But that sort of proves in many ways that status that's very visible and obvious to everyone around you who you're competing with might even be better than a raise, right? Because if I get a raise by five or ten grand, maybe other people in my office don't even know. Maybe it's confidential. But everyone's going to know if I get promoted to Sir Jordan Harbinger Intergalactic Podcaster, MD, PhD, right? They're going to be like, whoa, okay, he really got, the boss thinks a lot of him, the committee thinks a lot about him. They don't necessarily know that I got a salary bump. Well, that's it. Yeah. I mean, and this is one of the surprising things, is that when they do surveys,

they usually find that a good chunk of people would forego a pay rise for a job title rise. And that shows the importance of status. And you mentioned before that extraordinary study that the economist did where they looked at people's relative income. Well, firstly, people find that relative income makes us happier than raw income. So what makes us happy isn't the amount of money we get itself. It's the amount of money we get versus the people around us. That's what's connected to happiness, not raw cash. And the extraordinary study, the economists, did where they found that if you're kind of relatively poor in your neighbourhood, you're going to be relatively kind of more depressed and unhappy with your life. Your well-being is going to be lower.

And if the effect is greater, the more you socialise in your neighbourhood. So the more you're hanging out with your rich neighbours, the less happy you are. So it really is a powerful thing. And it kind of makes sense. You know, we're born into this world in which, especially in, you know, in the US and the UK, money, money, money, money. You know, we're kind of led to think that money is the big. all and end all and money makes the world go around. When our brains evolved, there was no money. Really, money is just another way of playing the status game. And our brains are not, didn't involve to want money. They evolved to want status. And so it's just another way that we play that game. And another sort of paper that I thought was fascinating that I quote at length in the book was by this US

lawyer, former big firm lawyer now a judge. And he writes an amazing detail about the process of corruption that junior kind of lawyers go through. And he writes that basically, you know, you join your big name law firm. And in two or three years, you're going to become corrupted. You're going to start lying and cheating as a matter of course. And he says it happened to me. I did it. And the reason for that is that you're going to be introduced to this world in which you're comparing yourself on the basis of money to all the other lawyers. And twice a year, the legal magazines post, you know, league tables of what everyone's earning and everyone gets obsessed with these things. And the thing about lawyers is they work just incredibly hard.

They work every hour, God sends and more, you know. So how do you get the edge? And so the only way you can really get the edge is by billing for more hours and you've actually worked, by making sure that, you know, sometimes not cooperating with the discovery process, making sure documents, you know, go missing and stuff. And he says this becomes such kind of part of second nature that it's just this inevitable process that happens for young lawyers. And he says there's a line something in two or three years you go from somebody who being

really genuinely happy about being able to afford your first cast stereo to somebody furious that you've only got a $400,000 bonus. That's what happens to you. And so that shows the power of the status game. And just this idea that money is just the way we keep scoring that game. That's what money is. A proxy, right? Yeah.

Once we've got enough to survive and raise our children safely and feed ourselves, the rest of it is just the status game. And it also shows the power that the game has to corrupt. You know, I thought it was very interesting paper because it just shows how easily the need for status can kind of nudge us into becoming less ethical people. Would you send that to me? I'm very interested in that. I used to be, well, I still am an attorney, and I worked on Wall Street. So I saw, I had a front row seat to all of that, right? It was like, even when I was in law school, I was like, oh my God, they're going to pay us 30 grand to come in for the

summer and eat like ribs and shellfish. This is ridiculous. And then after year one, I'm like, I can't believe I'm making this much. This is more than my parents made put together at the peak of their It's my first year. This is so amazing. Second year, it was like, I got a bonus on top of a raise. This is incredible. And then as I started, I left the law pretty early, but I remember thinking like, why are these guys who are seven, eight years, nine years in so miserable?

It doesn't make any sense. You have two houses. You have a boat. Your kids go to a private school. You know, none of this makes any sense. And it's because another guy or gal that they went to school with is making a little bit more at an investment bank. Or they moved to a different firm, which, you know, we're in law.

So, everyone knows what everyone's making. I know that they're making 20 grand more than me. Who cares? It will not improve your quality of life that $20,000. There's nothing you could buy that would make you happy with it. You're gonna invest it, hopefully. It's not even gonna let you retire any earlier at your current level of consumption,

but it's driving you crazy. And you're here on Sunday night, missing your kid's birthday, working on something that's not urgent, because you wanna make sure you hit your billable hours so that you get promoted to partner so that you can do that rat race. I mean, none of it really makes any sense, but it all makes sense when you look at status. Yeah, and one of the things he does in this paper is he takes on the idea that, you know, money makes you happy.

And he just talks about the rates of mental ill health, cocaine addiction, divorce amongst big firm lawyers. And it's off the charts. These people are not happy. They're not happy people. They're really rich. They're really successful. But by and large, they're stressed and anxious and unhappy because they're sucked into that game. And I think by nature, attorneys, lawyers are very competitive people, you know,

you've been through law school, you're smart, you know, competitive. So you've got a probably on average, you know, everybody's got a different need for status. And I think you're probably up there on the need for status if you've put yourself through all that. It gets worse, though, right? It gets worse when you get there because you're almost like, I have ascended the top of the mountain when you get there. But then, like you said, you acclimate and then it starts to become like, well, why am I at the bottom of this? Why isn't our firm paying us? Like this other firm does.

Oh, well, they work like a sweatshop. Well, I'm a hard worker. I don't mind working on Saturdays. I feel like I'm working half the Saturdays anyway. Maybe I should switch over there. And then it's, well, all right, now you're working seven days a week. So, yeah, I'd love to see that paper. I wonder, how did children spot and identify who to imitate and learn from?

Where are children coming into this and learning about status? They have to be learning it from somewhere. Yeah, well, again, so because this is so deeply rooted in us, we're born with this kind of basic instructions, you know, the wiring is there in the brain. And so there are various cues that we look for when we're children. and indeed adults, but these are kind of built into us. So the first thing to say is that when we're playing the status game, what we're doing is we're spotting higher status people

and we're copying them, we mimic them. And this is why fandoms happen. This is why people take on the kind of reading musical tastes of their idols and copy their dress, you know, because that's part of who we are. That's part of the game playing cognition. You know, we spot people in our game that we admire, that are high status and we copy them.

And we copy them because that's our story. strategy for becoming high status ourselves. I mean, it's a basic heuristic. I'm going to do what they're doing. Whatever they're doing, I'm going to do it. There are four cues that we use. Let me see if I can remember them. The first one is self-similarity. So we look for people who are similar age, same gender, and whatever other kind of similarity cues there are. And of course, this has lots of unpleasant side effects. The self-similarity cue is obviously very present in when we think about racism, sexism, or the isms, the self-similarity cue is we feel more comfortable with people like us and we do from, you know, from birth. Babies you can't speak, prefer to be with

people who have the same dialect as their mother's accent, you know, it's in us, unfortunately. So the self-similarity is the first one. The second one is competence. We look for people who are showing that they are good at tasks. So that draws us. The third one is we look at who other people are paying attention to. So that's another cue. So if lots of people are looking at one person, then we assume that that person must know something that we need to know. So we go and look at them too. And this can become a runaway effect. So again, it's natural to us. If we admire them and want to become like them, you know, we have to identify with them. We'll pay attention to them too. So psychologists call this Paris Hilton effect because it can run away. And these processes are built

for small groups that we evolved, not for the age of the internet and celebrity and, you know, international media. So these days, somebody like Paris Ilton, who has no observable talent, can become hugely globally famous because everyone's just looking at them. And then they get written about. And then so we look at them more. And they, you know, so that's part of the status game. And then finally, one of the cues is we look at the person themselves and see how they're presenting. So there are various cues that high status people use. You know, their head, they'll talk more. You know, high status people tend to present in certain ways. So that will also cue us to be drawn to certain people and begin copying them. Right, you mentioned in the book that

there's some high status behaviors. And I remember when I used to teach this kind of thing, these don't always work out perfectly well. But high status people tend to talk more. They tend to talk more loudly. They might have louder fashion, so to speak, or more of a unique and sort of zany fashion. Their vocal pitch can be different. They take up more physical space, but not too much where they look like they're trying, just a lot more than the average person. Yeah. And they might own stuff, right? And this is kind of the toddler example is like, toddlers are really, they're not subtle about the way that they try and gain status and they can't talk. So they will hoard toys or they will grab things. They don't want to share it. Adults tend to be a little bit

different with their ownership of things, but we certainly see it. I mean, how many people do you know, in Hollywood where I used to live, there are directors that are unmarried or they have adult children and they have one wife and they have like a 28,000 square foot house. They live in three of those rooms. They're never home. They work in their office. What do you need that house for? Status, right? That's all it is.

They got a view that they never even look at because they... Yeah, we have the same here with the old British aristocrats in their massive castles. And then you find out, oh, we just live in three rooms in the east wing. And everything else is just full of armor and tapestries. It's entirely pointless. That's funny. I can imagine that that's probably true, right? A giant manner.

And it's like, there's a door that never gets open and the rest of the house isn't heated. But in there is like old wagons and painting. and like, I don't know, a bunch of, yeah, like you said, suits of armor where the knights standing up in the corner, like stuff you see in a haunted house in the United States. Yeah, some ghosts just hanging around. Yeah, just ghosts and the occasional caretaker and make sure the rats aren't eating the ancient tapestries and rugs from your great, great, great, grandfather, you know, Lord, whatever. Yeah.

Different types of status, though, right? Dominant leaders versus prestige leaders. This is interesting because I think a lot of us, we look at apes and we look at dominant status, right? We look at kind of like, I would say more, what's the word I'm looking for that's politically correct here? You kind of see, not politically correct, but not offensive, I guess. Right, you see some sort of, there are elements of culture, especially in the United States where, let's say, like, big gorilla-ish type guys will use dominance games to get status.

And it works, especially within their sort of tier. And I don't play that game because I'm 5'10 and 178 pounds or whatever, right? or on a good day, you know, with my shoes on, I'm that tall. I can't do that, but I can, there's a different status game that I play that actually, I think works a little bit better, which is, you know, I use other things that work for me, like intelligence or success in other areas and leadership and things like this. So dominance versus prestige, these are two different types of status games. Most are being played at some level almost at the same time and in the same place.

Yeah, so that's it. So, as I said, dominance games is the oldest form of game. And, you know, it's very typical in the animal world. So, you know, the idea that chickens will peck at each other until a pecking order is established. Crayfish, you know, attack each other until they've worked out who's in this order. So dominance is very animalistic. And before we settled down into our tribes, you know, humans were much more into dominance games, fighting very violently one-on-one.

Dominantly is males, particularly. And our bone structures were different. We had much more muscle mass. We were much more aggressive before we settled down. But when we settled down, you know, all these... Alpha males going around beating each other to death. It wasn't going to work when we're all trying to live communally. So what happened was we evolved different forms of status game.

And these aren't unique to humans. You know, the more intelligent animals also use prestige. But the idea is that rather than having a fight one-on-one to show who was on top, you would earn prestige. So you would play a status game with your reputation rather than the actual self. So the important thing is that people thought well of you. And there are two ways of earning prestige in a group. and the first one is virtue.

So the idea that what they're both having common is that you're useful to the group. And the more useful you are to the group, the more status you're awarded, the more heroic people think you are. So there are two ways of being useful to your group, your tribe. And the first one is being virtuous, enforcing the tribe's codes, making sure everyone's taking part in their rituals or being, and indeed, you know, taking part in the rituals yourselves, believing it's sacred beliefs, being generous, being courageous in fights, in hunting. So that's virtue.

and then there's success, so competent. So, you know, you're also being very useful to your tribe if you're very knowledgeable and very skillful. So those are the three essential status games. And there are other ways we can earn status. Beauty is aware of earning status. Age is aware of earning status. Height is aware of earning status.

But they're not particularly interesting. You know, most of human life takes up these three forms of dominance, virtue, and success. And the easiest way to understand it is that if we want status, we can try and be idiomene, Mother Teresa, or Albert Einstein. You know, these were all people who are incredibly high-status people, and they earn their status through dominance in the case of Idiomene, virtue in the case of Mother Teresa,

and success in the case of Albert Einstein. So it kind of, the games we play form the kind of people that we are. That's interesting. I've noticed this on the other side of the coin as well, that we love to see people taken down a peg, right? We love to see celebrities just take a fall. love those, the video you mentioned in the book, we love those videos where someone's like, do you know who I am? And like, I'm going to get you fired. And then like the cut to them getting arrested

for something. I mean, look at the college admissions scandal, right? We're pissed off that those people bribed their kids way into college. But we're also kind of like, oh, Aunt Becky from full house is going to jail? Good. Not that I ever had anything against her, but like, if you're going to be a shitty person and you're famous and you're rich, I want to see you behind bars. I want to see you crying in the media, right? I mean, I'm, I don't need a brain scan to know that I'm petty as hell, but I know that something's lighting up in there when that happens, right? If I'm in an fMRI machine or whatever, I know that when I see that stuff, there's a part of my brain that I almost wish wasn't there that is just having a field day. I think that's right. And that's for a

couple of reasons. The first one is, as I say, you know, the game is an artifact of our kind of tribal background. And when these parts of our brains were evolving, that virtue game, part of that virtue game is punishing people who are breaking the rules of the tribe, being selfish, unfair. And so we've evolved to feel good about punishing them. You know, we feel like we are statusful. We earn status by punishing them because that's useful to the tribe. But there's something else is going on there too, which is the whole tall poppy thing. And I think it's exacerbated by the modern world because, you know, as I said, these tribes that we evolved in were pretty small. And we'd spend most of our time with 25, 30 people and those sort of little units would connect into larger

groups at certain times. But they were much smaller. We had no concept of other people in the world. Back in the days of the tribes, there weren't any millionaires. There weren't any landowners. we were comparing ourselves to somebody who had slightly more, you know, some of the leaders of the tribe who had marginally more status than us. So we've evolved to play these very small status games. What's happened is that we now play enormous status games, massive status games. People can become massively wealthy, massively famous. And that's not how we're designed to live. So, and a part of the one ramifications that is that we have this, we're constantly needled by these very high status people.

And, you know, sometimes we love them. We love them if we identify with them. So if we're a big golf fan, we might love Tiger Woods. But most of the time, we hate them. We really don't like them at all because they remind us how small we are. Status is relative. You know, our status is not in a fixed place. Turning on who we're with and who we're thinking about is bouncing around all over the place.

And so, yeah, the other thing that's going on in the college admission scandal is that we just love seeing these people who are much more statusful than us become much less statusful than us. It's pleasurable. You know, it's not necessarily a. a lovely part of the human condition, but it's an undeniable one, I think. But it's also like, look, back in the caveman era or even the tribal era, we would be self-policing. I don't really hate Aunt Becky. I kind of at some level understand why she did what she did.

I almost, and I have a level of pity for somebody who gets embarrassed on an international level. It sucks. But there's that other part of my brain that's like, yeah, you follow those rules, right, that everyone else, that you're breaking. We all have to follow it. How dare you? Right. but this makes sense because if I'm living in a group of 100, 150, or a couple hundred people, and somebody gets too big for their britches, I'm going to gang up on them and take them down a peg. I don't need to exile them or banish them to death or throw them in prison, but I'm certainly going to, the example you give in the book is there are songs that tribes will sing.

If somebody is a hunter and they're doing really well, they're supposed to downplay their success, and other hunters will do that. And if they don't sort of voluntarily do that, then everyone gets in their face and sings the equivalent of the opposite of the happy birthday song. Yeah, it's called a Song of Derision. It's funny that that even exists. I know. I thought that was hilarious when I read that, the Song of Derision.

I think it was an Inuit tribe that did that. Yeah, so that's it. You know, this idea of hotly policing what's known as big shot behavior is very common in early human groups in small societies and was probably been there for tens of thousands of years. The thing about prestige, virtue and success status, is that it's offered by other people.

You can't claim it for yourself. You can't walk in there and say, I'm this amazing dude, love me. People don't like it when people do that. It bit as everyone's backs up. And that's the kind of reflexive thing of it. I mean, actually, I think that the country that puts up with that the most is the US. Like the cooking competition shows.

And when you watch top chef, the chefs are like, I'm the greatest, I'm amazing. And the English equivalent master chef, they're going, I don't know if I'm going to win. I'm not very good. So, yeah, I think there's some cultural differences there. But still, in the States, you know, you can't go in and demand everyone loves you. That's not how it works.

And we tend to respond very badly to that. So, yeah, status is always offered. And I think that's why in the UK there's a cultural obsession at the moment with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. There are, I think it's fair to say, widely disliked by a lot of people in the UK right now. And I think a lot of that... Really? Yeah, a lot of that is down to the fact that they seem to have afforded themselves a level of status, which they don't seem to have earned.

I think that's the popular perception, at least amongst the people who don't. But that's the whole point. They were in the royal family. Like, they never earned that. He was born into it. And then he says, you know what? I don't want to be a part of this.

It's too much of a rat race and it's making me miserable. And then people go, how dare you? What are you too good for the royal family? And he's like, that's not really what my point was, people. And so now you've mad at him for that? I don't know. I don't get it.

Well, I think it's the fact that every game has its rules. Right. If you've ever watched The Crown, you'll know, the big thing about being, part of the royal family is it's not all that fun. It's duty. It's boring stuff. It's opening supermarkets and clubs and shaking hands with mayors and pretending you're interested in what they've got to say. It's a grind. There's a lot of work and it's pretty boring. And the other thing about the royal family is you're not allowed to have an opinion because you've got to unite the country.

You can't divide it. So you can't have political opinions. And so it's tough. It's not easy. I think the perception here is that he just, he rejected all that. So they're fine if you're going reject that, then you can't really be taking all this status from being a member of the royal family, which maybe ease a little bit. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Will Store. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to the show and supporting the show. Your support of all of those advertisers you hear. Look, I try to make the ads fun, okay? But I know some of you fast forward through them. I try to make them as cool as I can. Their ads after all. But I do appreciate it

when you consider those who support us here on this show. And I put all the codes and all those special URLs in one place. Just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals, and everything will be right there, so you don't have to write anything down while you're running or lifting or whatever. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for many of the episodes if you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during the show.

Those are all in one easy place as well. And the link to the worksheets is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Will Store. I mean, I kind of understand that, but also, isn't he like, I'm not a member of the royal family anymore or I'm not a royal anymore? I mean, that's like, I don't know. I feel bad. It sounds weird to say it, but I feel bad for the guy, right?

Because he basically said, this is freaking me out. I'm having a mental health crisis. And everyone went, how dare you take care of yourself? I think if he was taking care of, was doing that and was just going to get, listen, if he was going to go to the States and get a job, people would have gone, oh, fair enough. But he's completely trading off the factory. He's still relying on the royal family for his. status. He's all connected with that. He still calls himself Prince Harry the Duke of whatever he's the Duke of. Oh, I didn't know that. And he still, and he went on Oprah. Oh, yeah.

He doesn't work at Safeway. Oh, yeah. He doesn't work at Spotify. Yeah, well, he technically does. So, you know, where's his, um, virtue status coming from? Well, he doesn't seem to have done anything nice for anybody. Where's his competence? Well, he hasn't got any competence. You know, we admired him when he was fighting for the British Sharney in Afghanistan. But where's his competence now. So, I mean, again, I don't have come across to come a massively anti-Hari person. I'm just trying to kind of... I was going to say, well, we know where you stand on the issue. Shit, Will.

Yeah, no, but no, it's more of a case of positioning for him. I just think he's, you know, I also admire him for upping and leaving. If you don't want to be in it, brilliant. Go and live in Santa Monica. I wish I could live in Santa Monica. But wherever he is, he's in that part of the world, roughly, isn't it? Yeah, I think he is like, I think he actually is there. You can visit when you go on Joe Rogan.

You can check it out. I think he's being badly advised. And I honestly think if he understood a bit more about how status works, then he wouldn't be making a lot of the decisions that he's been making. I think he could be much better advised. What would you do if you were him? This is such a tangent, but I'm so curious, what would you do if you were hit, like, stay out of the limelight, you know, that kind of thing? Well, the first thing I would do is reduce the impression that you are sourcing all your status from attacking the royal family. And, you know, we're talking about how you can gain status by pulling other people down. And I think that's what's been happening a lot. But also, I just think it's people just admire him if he just went out and worked. Right.

Yeah. I think didn't he get a job at a tech company or something? Yeah. It's all very weird that he also took a deal from Spotify. And I think they've produced half an hour of content. Right. In a year. Yeah.

For like $32 million or something. Yeah. So all of these things, you just think, oh, God. You know, it's not going to play well with the majority of people in the UK who are just working their back sides off and struggling. You know, it's just, if I always see him, I'd keep the head down. I'd earn money that wasn't dependent. on my royal status. And then, you know, once you've got that separation and got that

earned that distance from the royal family, then you can come out with your books and your Oprah and say, you know what, being in the royal family was pretty bad. There was some problems with it. And I think if he'd have waited and I think if he'd have earned respect before he'd, he could still say everything he's been saying about the racial allegations and the whatever else he's been saying, people would have been much more receptive to it if he'd have earned that respect rather than just assuming that he has it. Yeah, that is interesting. That is very interesting. I never thought about this like that, but I also am not paying super close attention to it. I assume you're paying more attention to it now. One, you don't have a choice because you live in the

UK, but two, you're writing about status. I'd love to hear what you think about cancel culture, because that also seems like it's very much about status. It's not like a, well, I'll let you go off on this, because this to me seems like almost like a disguised status play or a thinly disguised status play on all sides. Well, it is. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think one of the most interesting sort of bits of research that I found that just, it suddenly made sense of council culture in a way that I'd never thought of it before. And that was how punishment worked in the tribes that we evolved in. And there was a really interesting fact. And the tribes that we evolved in didn't usually have leaders. That when you look at the world today,

there are leaders everywhere, political leaders, cultural leaders, bosses at work, leaders, you know, we have leaders and there are leaders and there are followers. When we evolved, there weren't leaders in that way. You know, there were high. status people, higher status people, but they would generally lead by consensus and they would generally be deferred to only in the kind of distinct realm of their specialism. So this isn't in all cases, but it's in most cases. So the question then is, okay, so if there's nobody in charge, who decides who gets punished? Because life in these tribes could be pretty rough. If you transgress the rules, you could be executed. And it's believed that capital punishment execution was once a

human universal. So that that was just how it worked. If you got it wrong, there was a charge. you were going to get killed. And so what would happen is that people would start gossiping about you and through that gossip a kind of consensus would build. And the people that would make the decision on what would happen, and the apologists called them the equivalent of the cousins. And they said, we didn't live under the tyranny of leaders. We lived under the tyranny of the cousins. And what happened with the cousins would get together and they would talk and again, a consensus would emerge. And once there was a feeling of consensus in the group, it didn't have to be a literal consensus, It's just a sense that most people were against this person.

They would attack, and often with, you know, deadly force. In the example that I quote in the book, the guy's done nothing wrong. Somebody died in the group. A sorcerer did a ceremony with some leaves, I think leaves, and decided this person was the killer. So people started gossiping about this person and, you know, what happens with gossip? When you recount everybody's past sins,

they can suddenly seem like a very evil person. And then the guy was killed, cooked and eaten. That's what happened to him. You know, this is in the Kaboosy tribe. That was escalated quickly. Yeah, well, it did. And you see that happening with council culture. And again, it's another example of the fact that we can't blame Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey from Twitter for creating these things.

They're just enabling people to do what people been doing for tens of thousands of years. Somebody transgresses the sacred rules of the group, but it's usually a political group. A group we've got very strong political views about race, gender or Trump or any other, you know, whatever it is that group. Somebody comes on transgresses their sacred rules. and the group kind of, you know, nobody's in charge of a cancellation. There's nobody that says, right, let's go and do it, or nobody can stop it. It's this thing that emerges, and it emerges in this atmosphere of gossip, consensus building, and attack in exactly the same way that it would have worked tens of thousands of years ago and still works

in some pre-modern tribes. So that's the key for me with cancel culture. It's part of our basic cognition. It's what we do. So it's going to be very hard to stop. Yeah, it's not something we can just sort of decide. not to do anymore, right? I mean, we are 100% wired to do this. And so cancel culture is only going to get worse as we are taking our brains that evolved to work in small groups and plugging them into

the entire world via the internet overnight. Like, we're not going to be able to adapt to this, right? So there are two things I'd say about that. First one is we might be able to stop it because the great thing about humors is that we can always come up with new norms. And I do think slowly this is happening. I think the more cancer culture is known, the more it's getting, frowned upon, the more it's becoming a more niche idea. It's still very mainstream and people are being cancelled all the time and it's still happening. But I think now that it's being highlighted, we can create norms against it. The other thing is that we can legislate against it. In the US, you have free speech. In Europe, we have, we don't have free speech, but we have effective free speech.

It's a lesser form of free speech, but speech is protected. People shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs, that kind of thing. And so I think I would like to see governments legislating against specifically against cancel culture. I would like to see laws brought in that companies aren't allowed to fire people on the basis of their political beliefs. It should be made illegal, the people should be removed from their positions of income generation because of their political beliefs. I think I would like to see legislation against that. Victimhood and status also play an interesting kind of mixed role here, right? Because we've, we've seen this recently faking an event or exaggerating something or even faking a

hate crime to gain victimhood status has happened in many instances. I wouldn't say it's an epidemic per se, but it does show that the players in this game are not trying to be the most moral. They're trying to be the most morally forceful in these specific situations, right? It's not about who's right. It's about who can sort of like signal the hardest at that level. Yeah, so when you understand morality as a status game, all of that stuff makes sense. And it says it's not an epidemic by any stretch the imagination, but it's happening. You know, it happens that people fake hate crimes, and there are some examples that I kind of list in the book.

When you understand morality is actually just a status game, that kind of makes more sense. When we become victims of a rival group, that can be a kind of status gaining situation because we get loads of attention from people in our group and they want to help us and they look at us and they raise us up and go, oh, you know, so victim can paradoxably be a kind of state of heres And especially if you stand up and go and say, I was attacked by this person, but I'm still standing and I will bring the fight to them.

You know, you become braveheart for your group. So that's an incredibly status-making pursuit. And you also see in the context of people whose kind of jobs or their social identities are dependent on these kinds of moral status-making incidents. So in the book, I talk about one, I think she was an academic and she was doing a speech at a university about hate crime and hate speech. and lo and behold, she left the talk and her car had been vandalized with swastikas, and it turned out that she did the graffiti herself, the police discovered. She did it all herself, the vandalism. So you can see in that instance, that's somebody that her sense of status depends upon their being horrific racists everywhere.

And so she's making it happen that they're horrific. I'm not saying they're on, but she's making it happen that this is, you know, and they're by kind of raising her status. So you can see that as kind of, yeah, once you understand that morality, virtue, is just one way that we gain status for ourselves. You understand that kind of the will to be seen as a victim because being a victim can be a very status-making thing with our own people who are the people that matter.

Right, because it causes our sort of tribe to defend us, but also the subtext is, look how important I am. People cared enough to commit crimes against me because of what I'm doing and what I am believing. Therefore, what I'm doing and believing must be so important that it is a threat to the enemy. It communicates all the right things.

if you're kind of a shallow status-seeking asshole who's willing to lie to people to gain status in that way. Well, that's exactly right. And also, I think, there's a fundamental thing about storytelling. And, you know, every tribe, every person in every tribe that we belong to, a group that we belong to has stories it tells about the world. You know, the stories are replete with heroes and villains. And those stories are never really true. They're always gross simplifications of the reality. I always think about Apple versus PC is a story about how PC people have just. silly nerds. And of course that's not wholly true, you know, but these stories make us feel good about ourselves. These stories basically say we are high status, they're low status. So somebody that

comes along and reaffirms that story that we are the good people and they are the racists, they're going to get all this status. Women are great, men are terrible or men are great, women are terrible. If you can tell your group and present your group with a story from your own life that affirms this, I had this terrible thing happened to me that these awful people did to me, that just by reaffirming their simplistic story of the world, you're going to gain status. Is there a way for us to tell what status game we're in and maybe dial it back a little? Because as with many psychological concepts, right, the more we become aware of it, maybe that's the first step anyway into toning it down or letting it affect us a little bit less.

Right? Like if I know other people are just trying to gain status by saying horrible things about my work, maybe I take those comments with a bit of a grain of salt instead of thinking like, wow, why am I getting attacked? There must be something wrong with me. It's, well, actually, I'm more visible now. I'm doing everything right with marketing. And of course there's going to be people who decide to try and take me down a peg because

of what we just discussed today. There are sort of practical exercises that people can do where things people can keep in mind in order to make this hurt less, I guess. Well, yeah, I think as you say, the first thing is just to know it's just a game, just to remind yourself that it's just a game. And the one I always think about from the book is there's this island in Micronesia where the status game of their players growing massive yams

and they don't know they do anymore. They just have this culture of all the men spend all their lives obsessing over who can grow the biggest yam. And of course, in their world, that's the most important thing. And they obsess over their yam. Their big yam, like I obsess over my writing and you obsess over your podcast. But it's just a fucking yam. You know,

it doesn't actually matter that much. And especially if it's people like being mean about you on Reddit or whatever, it actually doesn't matter. You know, it's just symbolic. As you say, they're just showing off to their group and trying to gain status. The other thing I think is really is important. You asked about how you can tell what kind of group you're in. And I think it's quite easy in a sense. So dominance games are mafias, armies, lawyers play dominance games. It's a game of force and coercion. So dominance games are usually pretty bad places to be, you know, unless you're on the side of a winning army or something.

Virtue games are about the enforcement of kind of moral rules. And so virtue games can be amazing. Charities, you could say, are virtue games because they're, you know, they're doing virtuous things. But churches are virtue games. You know, royal families are virtue games. They're not about competence of royal families. It's not about success.

They're about deference and enforcing the rules and enforcing the hierarchy and making sure everyone's performing the ritual correctly. And success games are businesses. They're scientific endeavors. Success games are those games you play that have a specific definition of what success looks like. And it isn't just winning. It's we're going to write a best-selling book. We're going to create a coronavirus vaccine with no side effects. It's that. And so, you know, success games really have transformed the world. When you think about modernity, when you think about how the world has become post, you know, the industrial revolution was a revolution of success games. It was a revolution in the sense that we stopped playing virtue games. we started caring much less about cast, social background, all that other stuff.

And we started playing games of who can build the best bridge, you know, who can create the best internal combustion engine. That's modernity. It's about success games. And I think probably that if you want to sort of change the world for the better, paradoxically, you don't play virtue games. You don't really want to go and be a priest. What you want to do is you want to play a success game. And if you really want to change the world, you want to play a, there are no kind of pure games. every game is a blend of all of the different forms of status. I think the very best game is a virtue success game. So if you think of a cancel culture mob, that's a virtue dominance game. They're the worst games because they're about people forcing you to adhere to the rules

with threat and pain and punishment. That's cancel culture. That's Hitler. That's the Nazis. That's all of that stuff that we don't like. That's Stalin. Virtue dominance games are we are going to use competence to increase to increase. to increase good.

So a charity is a virtue success game. Somebody running a marathon, you know, for lung cancer or breast cancer or prostate cancer is playing a virtue success game. Somebody working for a pharmaceutical company, assuming they're not one of these people that are charging $1,000 for an asthma inhaler are playing a virtue of...

The people who design the coronavirus vaccines are playing a virtue success game. You know, we've got this successful end game, but it's for a virtuous end. So I think those are the kind of very best games. So there's advice at the end of the book, there's seven rules for playing the status game. And I think two of the most important ones are.

The first one is reduce your moral sphere. And by that, I mean, as you've been sort of mentioning throughout our conversation, it's just really easy to make ourselves feel good by tearing other people down. It's really easy to turn on television, to go on Twitter or Reddit or Facebook and make ourselves our relative status increased by pulling other people down. And so, you know, reducing your moral sphere is just sort of consciously trying to catch yourself when you're morally judging other people and really try to focus that moral judgment into yourself,

how can I be a better person rather than how can I make myself feel better by nagging out and attacking all these other people? And a more practical one is about kind of ways of being, really. When you look at the literature on how people should present in order to succeed in life, there are kind of mixed signals in that literature. But the ones that make sense for the status game

are warmth, sincerity and competence. Like if you can show warmth, sincerity and competence, you're going to win it live. And that's because when you're warm, you are implying, I am not going to play a dominance game with you. You're not going to get any threats from me. I like you. You're in a safe place. You know, I'm not going to start attacking you or threatening you. So that's dominance. Sincerity is, I'm going to level with you. So sincerity isn't just being nice. It's being, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to tell you when things are going badly, and I'm going to tell you when things are going well. So I'm not going to be kind of morally unfair to you.

And then, of course, competence is just success. I'm going to be useful to the group. I'm going to show skill, and you might learn some skills from me, and together we're going to increase the status of our group. So warmth, sincerity and competence to me is that this kind of magic triumvirate that I think, of course, easier said than done. But I think as a goal to aim for, if you want to win in the status game of life, those are the three qualities which we should be working on.

Well, thank you very much for your time. I wish you all the success in the world with the book. and may you grow the largest yam among all of the other writers in your neighborhood. Thank you, Jordan. I wish you the largest yam in the world of podcast making. Thank you so much for the great chat and for engaging with the book. I really appreciate that. Now, here's a trailer with Charles Rue here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

When I was 14, I got my first opportunity to escape North Korea and go to China. Police camped her house. We are getting deported to North Korea. I got transported to a detention center. They are brainwashing us for nine months. I started working in a coal mine when I was paid only in rice. So one morning, instead of entering the mine, I walked up the path and began running. And in the distance, I saw a train come to stop.

This is my chance. I need to get on that train. I finally made it to the border town. I'm already determined. The next day, right, I walked into the river that divides North Korea in China, which is Yellow River. and then I slowly walked into the water. I slipped on a rock and I lit out a scream. A floodlight was on my back and I heard a soldier screaming at me. Oh, man.

Yeah, this shtiya, an dorova. Stop, stop, stop. Or I would shoot. The guard was kept screaming in me but he never flew the trigger. And then I went into the cornfield. I'm in China now. So I embarked another long journey to Sotheist Asia. I got to Thailand.

That was the best day of my life, going to Thai prison. And then I was trying to apply for South Korea, but they didn't recognize me as refugee. And they're like, we would have to send you back to China. Chinese government sent me back to North Korea, but you guys don't want to help me? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. He escaped the police. He had to run with secret police in China. I mean, this guy just has an absolutely amazing sense of survival and story.

And that's episode 84 with Charles Rue, Confessions of a North Korean escape artist, Part 1 and Part 2. episode 84 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Make sure you check it out. Status is a subject that has always fascinated me. I mean, look, when I was teaching the dating skills and all that stuff, status was the number one thing. And it's so nuanced. You know, we're not evolved for modern-day status games, but we are still wired to resent others because of the imbalance. And that alone causes so many problems in society. It causes self-esteem issues in men and women. And it's important to remember that status is always contextual, right?

the highest status monk has fewer fancy ties and cars than a junior investment banker does. So it's always there. It's always sort of omnipresent. Status is never ending. Paul McCartney famously had all these status issues about where his name appeared on the albums that he was creating. It's like, dude, you're in the Beatles. You're one of the most legendary musicians of all time and you're worried about whether

you come first or second. I think the thing is with status, it's never possessed, right? It's given and it can always be removed. the constant chase for it. This is precisely what makes it so freaking dangerous and detrimental to our sanity and to our society, right? I mean, we feel it when we thirst for revenge, when we're humiliated. Many of us only care about status when our status is threatened, never any other time. And of course, you get rid of this by raising your status. We have rivalries that can be destructive instead of encouraging people to compete in a healthy way for status. We also have cults and we

You have anti-vax groups, and these groups, they give status. And people in those groups increase their beliefs because of this status. Not because of sound science or because it's the best way to spiritual enlightenment or whatever the cult or group is promising, but because of status. And that makes it very, very hard to change beliefs when you're already in the group. And this isn't just for stupid people, right? Smart people are actually really good at rationalizing and supporting a belief that they already have.

And, of course, when you try and leave the group, you end up losing your status. and in places where status is given and taken away, we can be vulnerable to believe almost anything because status is so important to us as humans. So that's why a lot of us end up with these sacred beliefs, these weird sacred beliefs that are actually against our interests, right? They can be carriers of status. They're irrational. They're very hard to change. And it causes us to vilify outgroups with different beliefs, with beliefs that are not our own. The book also covers status drunkenness. Of course, there's some interesting examples in there of, you know, Zhong-un and Turkmen Bashi who renamed words and days after himself and calendars.

Emel de Marcos, Gaddafi, I mean, any dictator is really kind of a study in status drunkenness. Cults and status covered in the book as well. Of course, our minds seek certainty. Rules are absolute in the status path, right? When you're in a cult, it is supposedly, anyway, set in stone. So that is what's so comforting about a lot of this, right? Usually the reward in the afterlife is status above all other mortals. association with the cult leader. Of course, they're the highest status, right? So there is just so many

interesting elements that status touches in our society. A lot of things that are not totally gross and unhealthy, like the examples I'm listing here, but I mean, those are always the most interesting ones, right? Like who are we interested in more, right? The Boy Scouts or freaking ISIS, right? So one of these groups is legit going to be talked about more than the other, especially in this day and age. And humans do not seek equality. This is a myth. They seek status and they seek dominance. Even genocides aren't about cleansing the land of enemies and all this other BS rhetoric. They're about propping up the people who felt humiliated before. Communists, they are against the wealthier classes because they've been humiliated by them.

Nazis, they were supposedly humiliated by Jews and others, but really, this is always kind of a head fake. Rwandans were humiliated supposedly against higher caste, which were the Tutsi. So really, this can lead us down some dark paths. But remember, being different or original can get us status without playing the same game as everyone else. And that is why, not to be too cheesy here, but I do encourage you to follow your own North Star, right? When I created my career here as a broadcaster, this was not something that was even supposed to be possible. Right, I tried the other path, get a job on Wall Street, go to a great law school, and try and accumulate tons of money and buy accoutrements of the wealthy. None of that was for me.

That's a status game. I'm now in a different status game, but it's almost by accident. I can tell you right now that I am much, much happier than I would have been, and that anybody I knew who's still in that game is right now. So the key, the antidote to a lot of the misery caused by status is being different and original and realizing that since this game is never ending and since you can never truly possess it, the best thing to do is not try to ignore it or ignore your drive for it as a human, but to do what it takes to accomplish and achieve it and to a...

acquire that status in your own way. Remember, no one wins the status game. Life is just playing it. Big thank you to Will's store. Links to the book will be in the website in the show notes. Please use our website links if you buy the books. Those always help support the show. Worksheets for the episodes are in the show notes. Transcripts, those in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Our clips channel with highlights that never make it anywhere else is at Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips. A lot of cuts that don't make it to the show there. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same system, software, and tiny habits that I use,

the same ones that I use to book the guests, the same ones I use to build the business. It's a free course. There's no garbage. I don't need your money, right? All right, Jordan Arbinger.com slash courses where it is. It's free. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course. They contribute to this course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Get that status. This show is created. in association with podcast one. And my amazing team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty,

Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show, I want you to share it with other people. If you find something useful or interesting, you like the status thing, you think other people are chasing it too much, share this episode with them.

I hope you find something great in every episode of the show. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. We'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's

consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.