Making Sense - Sam Harris - #294

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:38.940 today i'm speaking with will store will is an award-winning writer and his work has appeared

00:00:52.700 in the guardian the sunday times the new yorker and the new york times he's the author of many books

00:01:00.000 most recently the status game on social position and how we use it and that is largely the topic

00:01:07.660 of today's conversation we talk about the role that status plays in human life and culture we discuss

00:01:14.480 the taboo around caring about status egalitarianism the perpetual insecurity of status how we play

00:01:23.860 multiple status games simultaneously identity social connection dominance virtue success status urge as an

00:01:34.660 evolved mechanism gossip status and health the consequence of humiliation the role of social media

00:01:43.900 status and politics conspiracy thinking moral panics status and philanthropy and other topics

00:01:53.000 status is one of those things that once you begin thinking about it you see it everywhere and realize

00:02:02.720 that it was doing its mad work all the while without you thinking much about it anyway it's a fascinating and

00:02:11.100 all too consequential subject and now i bring you will store

00:02:15.900 i am here with will store will thanks for joining me oh thanks for having me sam so i loved your book

00:02:28.460 the book is the status game on social position and how we use it and i want us to just dive deep into

00:02:36.220 that topic but before we do perhaps you can summarize your background as a writer journalist

00:02:43.000 however you think of yourself what have you focused on and how do you describe your place in the world

00:02:48.300 at the moment yeah well i i was a journalist for 20 years and now i sort of focus on books really

00:02:54.340 and i guess most of my non-fiction focuses on you know looks at kind of how science can explain

00:03:03.180 the human condition really who we are and what other topics did you hit before status

00:03:09.880 oh so my first book was written in my 20s was about the supernatural it was like a you know kind

00:03:16.840 of a slightly light-hearted adventure with you know ghost hunters and people like this

00:03:20.840 it was really about um you know why people believe in you know crazy things you didn't find any ghosts

00:03:27.180 some odd things happened i have to say but no you know i didn't find any ghosts and um the next book

00:03:35.920 was the heretics which was published in the u.s as the unpersuadables and that book looked at the

00:03:41.660 question of how is it that otherwise intelligent people could end up believing crazy things so not

00:03:48.060 stupid people but really smart people so i did things in that book like i went on this really weird

00:03:54.520 holiday with the historian david irving who is you know no i don't know if you're familiar with him

00:04:00.400 yeah yeah but notorious please summarize yeah yeah i mean he was once highly respected historian of the

00:04:06.080 second world war we know most what we do about the fireballing of dresden because of david irving's

00:04:12.180 scholarship and at some point in his career he decided that hitler was in his words a friend of the

00:04:17.280 jews and had nothing to do with the holocaust and you know he's doggedly pursued this line uh this

00:04:23.420 belief and it has literally destroyed him it's destroyed his reputation it's destroyed him

00:04:27.560 financially he went to prison he was actually in prison he was given the opportunity uh in an

00:04:31.860 austrian court to you know renounce his views on the holocaust and he he refused and and went to

00:04:37.800 prison i think in his he might have been in his 70s um you know he was famously sued by an author

00:04:43.620 there was a film made about that court case uh so you know this is a guy who is you can say whatever

00:04:50.040 you like about david irving but he's smart guy he's intelligent and yet you know he has come upon

00:04:55.280 this insane belief that is you know literally to most people unbelievable i forgot how far his denial

00:05:02.300 went did he go so far as to say the gas chambers weren't gas chambers and examining the the ruins of

00:05:09.460 the crematoria and saying that none of this is as advertised well temporarily he did he went through a

00:05:15.860 temporary phase of kind of holocaust denial um when he read a paper like i think somebody somebody

00:05:22.380 went to auschwitz or somewhere and chipped some um material off the wall of a gas chamber and had it

00:05:27.760 analyzed its concentration of deadly gases that's it right and and they said you know this um this is a

00:05:35.600 weaker level that you need to kill cockroaches so it's impossible to think that millions of people

00:05:40.200 were killed this way but um it didn't occur to this person actually cockroaches are much more hardy

00:05:44.860 than the human beings so so so but you know to be fair to david irving he did then kind of walk back

00:05:51.480 that belief but you know also to be fair to the truth one of the things that i did when i was with

00:05:56.480 him i was undercover pretending that i was also a kind of you know a revisionist right-wing revisionist

00:06:03.100 historian and we went to um a former concentration camp in poland and you know he's walking past the

00:06:09.280 guard's tails and he was saying things like you know there's the box office and when we got into the

00:06:14.760 actual gas chamber it was extremely upsetting to watch there there was a school group of uh young

00:06:21.400 girls i think they were from russia um is my memory and he started and i mean the group started

00:06:26.260 barracking about how ridiculous they were believing this stuff and he he was saying that the doors on

00:06:31.440 the gas chamber were fake he said that these are just standard air raid blast doors that you know

00:06:35.420 i think somebody was saying that the the locks were on the wrong side and things so you know if you

00:06:41.660 call him a holocaust and i he'll he'll sue you but there's certainly lots of extreme revisionism going

00:06:48.900 on with him and his followers that's interesting i wasn't expecting to talk about this but um i'm

00:06:54.280 wondering what you think about the ethics of going undercover what was that experience like and

00:07:00.580 i mean it's just my generic take on this is that there are many stories that couldn't be told

00:07:07.500 uh or couldn't be told adequately unless some people were willing to deceive others about who

00:07:15.200 they are i mean to go properly undercover you know whether from a law enforcement point of view or

00:07:20.340 you know an espionage point of view or a journalistic one but what was that experience

00:07:24.340 like and what do you personally think about the ethics of it the ethics for me are straightforward

00:07:29.340 you know i'm interested in the truth i'm not interested in just dismissing these people as

00:07:34.520 they're evil that's the story i actually want to know what you know okay you know rather than

00:07:39.720 calling them names how can we explain these people believing what they do so that that's my

00:07:45.300 take on the ethics is pretty you know straightforward do you think there was no way to embed with the

00:07:52.200 heretics or the um conspiracy theorists in a truly above board honest way just saying listen i you

00:07:58.960 know i you know i don't want to demonize you guys i want to understand you i don't actually share

00:08:03.580 your beliefs but i i'm really here to have an honest conversation sure i mean most of the book

00:08:10.520 is is it was above board i think i think this was the only chapter i went undercover and that's

00:08:15.120 because as david irving is there's no way i would have got anywhere near him um if i'd have you know

00:08:20.660 and and you know i i didn't lie in the email to him i said i'm writing a book on people who have

00:08:25.900 the courage to stand up to the orthodoxy right and you know you're you're one of them so yes there

00:08:31.100 was some flattery going on but but but i and i actually almost went wrong because on the first

00:08:37.420 day of the sort of a seven or eight day trip i interviewed him and and and was obviously too

00:08:42.800 forthright in my views and he kind of stopped the interview and it was very difficult then to get

00:08:49.480 him to agree to sit down which he did eventually so so yeah i did almost give the game away i mean

00:08:55.720 the experience that you asked it was it was kind of surprising because you know aside from being

00:09:02.140 unbelievable anti-semites these were ordinary men you know and they when they found out that um david

00:09:10.460 irving wasn't cooperating with me anymore with my project every day after our kind of road trip we'd

00:09:16.680 sit down and have a you know there'd be a lecture from david and a question and answer session

00:09:21.100 and i found out towards the end that the guys had sort of conspired between them to ask lots of

00:09:28.660 questions i thought would be helpful for me and my my my project writing about heretics so so you know

00:09:34.080 they behave very kindly towards me so you know it's it again it's that that whole thing that they're not

00:09:40.420 monsters that they are people who've made a they've made a mistake yeah so what do you and again i wasn't

00:09:47.260 planning to hit this topic obviously i haven't read that book of yours but i'm just fascinated by

00:09:53.500 why people believe crazy things and what you know what especially why smart people and even well

00:10:00.960 informed people even you know too well informed people in some perverse way believe crazy things

00:10:06.660 what did you conclude about that process i mean how do you explain it to yourself obviously this is a

00:10:12.980 problem that has only grown in scope and consequence in recent years given the way conspiracy theories are

00:10:20.820 amplified on social media and given the the reaction to the ham-fisted efforts to contain the spread of

00:10:29.400 misinformation you know the blacklisting on social media or the shadow banning or whatever else twitter

00:10:36.560 and facebook currently do that freaks everyone out when they have unorthodox information they think

00:10:42.580 really must spread whether it's about vaccines or anything else politics so what what's your what's

00:10:49.180 your sense of the cognitive emotional social cultural conditions that we're trying to put right here

00:10:57.440 well i mean the answer that i got to in the heretics was was my introduction to the idea that the

00:11:02.460 the brain is a storyteller and you know in the book i described the brain as a hero maker it wants to

00:11:08.660 make a hit us a hero in the story of our lives and what tends to happen is that any kind of fact in

00:11:14.820 inverted commas that we come across that flatters that heroic story that heroic sense of who we are

00:11:21.340 we uncritically accept it usually and any fact in inverted commas we come across which challenges that

00:11:27.440 heroic story of who we are we're very good at rejecting and so the brain isn't particularly interested

00:11:33.180 in the truth the brain's much more interested in motivating us getting out of bed telling a heroic

00:11:37.460 story about who we are and you know what what's in store for us in the future in a specific case

00:11:43.260 of the holocaust deniers the people who were on the trip with david irving what was extraordinary was

00:11:49.580 the number of men whose parents had served on the side of the nazis in the second world war

00:11:55.760 in fact on the final night there was this gala showing of the film downfall the kind of hyper

00:12:01.740 realistic german film about the final days in the hitler bunker and one of these guys a australian

00:12:08.340 guy he didn't want to watch the film because his dad was in the bunker with hitler and he would found

00:12:15.420 it too distressing to watch the film so i mean to me that that it felt like these were men who'd grown

00:12:23.280 up with nazi parents and that they wouldn't they wouldn't allow themselves to believe the story

00:12:30.060 that the culture tells us that the nazis nazis a synonym for evil and the holocaust really happened

00:12:34.360 and they felt they were on this great cognitive kind of mission a lot of them to prove that their

00:12:39.880 mums and dads probably that you know who they loved weren't evil and all this stuff wasn't really

00:12:45.680 true so so that that was you know that that was a an insight i wasn't expecting to have when i could

00:12:52.380 have pitched up with these people yeah yeah well that leads us rather nicely to the topic at hand

00:12:58.060 which is status but uh before we go there i was wondering did you ever deal with the case of

00:13:03.160 david ike i've met david ike yeah he threw me out of his house yes what is going on there what who is

00:13:11.480 david ike for people i think he's probably more famous across the pond than he is here what's his

00:13:16.960 story david ike's an extraordinary individual so he was a footballer and then he was a famous bbc tv

00:13:24.240 sports presenter and then his father died and he had what i believe is a very profound nervous

00:13:31.600 breakdown and an episode of psychosis but his kind of brain dealt with this chaos by telling a story in

00:13:39.540 which he was kind of the second coming that he was basically god jesus and and i remember seeing

00:13:45.560 it i actually saw it in in the 80s he was on this big chat show wogan which is a bit like the letterman

00:13:50.760 show and wogan was interviewing him about all this stuff and the the audience was acutely

00:13:55.720 uncomfortable to watch because the audience were laughing at him openly and the things he was saying

00:14:00.480 so david ike has always been seen as this kind of absolute lunatic you know i mean and and you

00:14:07.000 know i i if you read his um memoirs i'm i'm sure he had a an episode of psychosis but extraordinarily

00:14:15.800 he's kind of reborn now as this conspiracy theorist who manages to sell out you know hundreds

00:14:22.440 theater uh seat theaters he sells huge amounts of books and and he seemed to really rise after the

00:14:29.220 after 9-11 wait and he's kind of mad genius is to take all the all the individual conspiracy theories

00:14:36.560 like illuminati and so on and connect them all into one grand conspiracy theory and it involves

00:14:44.160 basically high status people like the queen and jfk being secret shape-shifting lizards he believes

00:14:50.460 the moon is a space station a hollowed out space station uh but he's got huge amounts of followers

00:14:55.900 now so he's kind of reborn as this um kind of it's kind of like the british addicts jones but

00:15:01.380 much even crazier than that yeah i mean yeah that's that's what how how i have him pegged he's

00:15:06.700 like alex jones except the pedophiles are are actually lizard people lizard people shape-shifting

00:15:13.240 lizard people yeah yeah yeah and he yeah as i say yeah as i say he threw me out of his his house when

00:15:18.900 when he felt i was insufficiently um well read on his endless you know multi-thousand page books

00:15:24.900 wow okay well so status what what is status i think people have a gut feeling for the concept but

00:15:34.180 i bet many people would be hard-pressed to give it anything like a coherent definition how do you

00:15:39.780 think about status well it's simply the feeling of being valued sometimes when you talk about status

00:15:46.260 people think oh he's saying that everybody wants to be rich he's saying that everybody wants to be

00:15:50.760 famous and a celebrity and of course wealth and fame are part of status but but but but but all

00:15:56.060 status really is is the feeling of being of value so when psychologists you know look at our kind of

00:16:02.960 deep needs our deep cravings they find we have a craving for belongingness and connection that's one

00:16:09.920 thing you know we don't we want to be loved and we want to join groups you know we're tribal

00:16:15.900 obviously but once we're in those groups is there's a kind of urge to move up to feel not just

00:16:22.960 loved but valued and that's what status is i can hear there's going to be a subliminal tug of war

00:16:29.100 between my saying status and your saying status but i i think we should both stick to our uh respective

00:16:36.520 countries here i think so so yeah it's and yet desire for status is

00:16:45.280 taboo it isn't taboo it isn't taboo to say that you would want to be valued by the people in

00:16:54.560 your life or by your community and that you want to have a positive you want to be seen to be making

00:16:59.780 positive contributions to society etc but there's something tawdry or perceived to be tawdry about

00:17:09.520 people's concern about status and you know its hallmarks i mean certainly when you're talking in

00:17:16.920 terms of wealth and fame you know you know even virtue signaling now it's a is part of this picture

00:17:24.360 where you know any any self-consciousness with respect to how one is being perceived by others

00:17:31.060 is viewed as um you know venal or in in some other way something you should be able to rise above how

00:17:39.960 do you how do you think about the taboo aspect of seeking status i i think it's because we're all so

00:17:48.200 chippy about our own status that that that we just don't like it at all if anybody was to admit

00:17:53.140 that they were interested in it and we don't like it you know and and i think there's a taboo against

00:17:59.340 as you say against ourselves admitting it you know it's i think it's connected to the fact that we

00:18:04.760 people don't like self-aggrandizing people they don't like people who present as if they deserve

00:18:13.340 high status when anthropologists look at pre-modern groups hunter gatherer groups you know they're often

00:18:20.060 described as egalitarian but as people like the psychology professor paul bloom has pointed out

00:18:25.780 they're only egalitarian because the people in those groups care so very much about status

00:18:30.060 they're constantly jostling and there are there are constant checks and balances so if somebody you

00:18:35.180 know goes in there and claims to be a great hunter and comes in all proud of their catch then there

00:18:39.060 will be a an effort by the group to pull that person down and and to and to get them to act in

00:18:44.320 humility in the book i write about a pre-modern group in the north of canada who have a have a

00:18:49.560 tradition of singing of circling a person who's too hubristic and singing a song of derision

00:18:55.200 in their faces so so i i think the taboo against kind of admitting even to ourselves that we're

00:19:01.680 interested in status is connected to all of that stuff yeah although the you know one of the the

00:19:07.140 master hacks of that system is you can rise in status by not taking yourself too seriously

00:19:14.760 you only become an object of a successful object of derision if you can't laugh at yourself

00:19:22.980 and there are different careers that are more amenable to this than others but i mean how do

00:19:29.440 you view the insecurity of status i mean really this is a point you make in your book at some point

00:19:35.560 status is perpetually insecure really no matter who you are i mean you're always liable to slip on the

00:19:43.740 ice and fall in front of a crowd and it's kind of funnier the higher status you were you know if

00:19:50.260 you're an aristocrat in a top hat and an overcoat and you fall on the ice that's just hilarious and so

00:19:57.320 how do you view the perpetual insecurity of status and people's efforts to shore it up well yeah so so i

00:20:07.380 think that's why people get so chippy about status one of the reasons is because what is it you can't

00:20:14.480 own status it's not a material object you can't you know money is a symbol of status that you might use

00:20:20.080 to measure your status or you might not depending on who what you're like but you know it isn't money

00:20:24.280 you never own your status you can't take it to bed and lock it in a box so it's always up for grabs

00:20:29.720 it's always in question you know elon musk can be reduced in status in conversation with somebody that

00:20:35.900 he admires and respects if they treat him disparagingly michelle obama somebody as high

00:20:40.280 status as her or beyonce equally might feel very low status if they were treated with disrespect by

00:20:46.760 somebody that they admire so you know we're constantly measuring our status in the book i

00:20:52.920 write about um neuroscientists talk about how we how we have this thing in the brain called they call

00:20:58.120 the status detection system which is constantly measuring everything um in as a way of gauging

00:21:05.680 our status so it measures things like the amount of eye contact we're getting with numerical

00:21:10.560 precision in one study they looked at people being served measures of orange juice and they found that

00:21:16.360 if you serve lots of measures of orange juice to people but one person gets slightly less orange juice

00:21:21.200 than everybody else they're going to get preoccupied with it and get upset about it and of course we

00:21:25.680 completely understand that because as human beings with who all own status detection systems we know full

00:21:32.180 well that what you're upset about isn't the fact that you've got half a mouthful less of orange juice

00:21:36.320 than the next person it's that your status detection system has read that as an insult as okay so i'm not

00:21:42.500 as valuable as all these other people because you're giving me less juice yeah that that's connected to

00:21:48.940 and maybe it's really of a piece with a broader principle here which is that people's sense of their

00:21:55.340 well-being is so often anchored to comparison with the lot of others right and so it's not based on

00:22:02.920 some absolute measure of of well-being and that's why you know all boats rising with the same tide

00:22:09.360 doesn't really solve most people's problems because even if things get better and better for them they

00:22:15.220 see things getting better and better for their neighbor who already had much more than them and

00:22:20.560 actually this is a point explicitly made in your book by Karl Marx if i recall which i i never wasn't

00:22:26.880 aware that Marx hit on this and you know he's he was not a dummy uh for all the the chaos born of his

00:22:33.240 economic theories and uh yeah he said you know basically if you have a tiny little house that's

00:22:39.060 going to be fine as long as everyone else has a tiny little house but if there's a palace next door

00:22:43.900 your tiny little house is now going to be perceived as a a hut or a hovel and uh you'll be unhappy

00:22:49.760 well we'll get to any ways in which you draw lessons from this uh later on but um one point you

00:22:58.040 just made which um at least implicitly was that we only tend to care about others view of us and

00:23:07.180 therefore mark our status this way insofar as we respect the other people which is to say based on how

00:23:16.380 we perceive their status i mean the status they hold for us is the cash value of their opinion

00:23:23.100 of us and is the thing that can raise or lower our status or at least to some degree and yeah yeah i

00:23:30.320 just had a recent experience of this i you know perhaps you noticed it online i had a what purported

00:23:35.340 to be a a real conflagration and uh witch burning you know on twitter where i where i was the witch

00:23:42.620 but it took place in exclusively right-wing circles explicitly you know it was in happening in

00:23:51.600 trumpistan on you know among trump's most avid defenders and um what was interesting you know

00:23:59.080 psychologically in my experience is how little i cared about the you know the human sacrifice

00:24:06.600 you know that i had become because of how i view the people who were you know dancing on my grave

00:24:13.420 because in my world anyone who is defending trump to that degree at this point really has low status

00:24:23.120 like i basically i know i don't agree with almost anything that is underwriting their opinion of me

00:24:30.700 there and so it really it really didn't matter except i saw one writer whose work i admire sort of i mean

00:24:38.720 he didn't he wasn't all in on my uh auto de fe but he was he caught some of the the pleasures of

00:24:46.180 being had at my expense and like that one person you know that stung because i actually like that

00:24:54.880 person right and can and admire his writing so it was it was interesting just to see that

00:24:59.560 bifurcation in my mind and it was um yeah anyway that's uh perhaps you have some yeah something to

00:25:06.600 say about that yeah yeah that's absolutely right so so what what what they find is that we're not

00:25:12.380 playing a status game with everybody in the world we play multiple status games you know we have

00:25:17.280 these you know we we're kind of tribal in in the sense that we're members of lots of tribes all at

00:25:24.000 once and we care about what the our kind of co-players in these tribes think of us but people outside our

00:25:31.560 tribes i mean sure if anybody insults you you're going to feel something probably but as you say if you

00:25:39.020 have contempt for these people if you actually actively consider them low status it's no way it's

00:25:44.180 not going to sting anywhere near as much as somebody in your game with you who you you know a and b

00:25:51.040 especially if they're in your game with you and they're and you perceive them as to be above you in

00:25:54.660 that status game and those are the ones that really burn yeah and it really it's impressively

00:25:59.820 multi-dimensional and and it's it shifts because you can be it can be for the purpose of any specific

00:26:07.320 encounter or conversation who has high status and who doesn't so you can be an academic you know who

00:26:15.960 you know almost by definition doesn't have a lot of money or doesn't have a lot of fame but in a

00:26:22.220 certain dinner party conversation that person can be very high status when they're you know they're

00:26:27.820 opining on their topic and you know the billionaire at the table will feel lower status intellectually

00:26:35.300 when dealing on that topic but then things flip when you're talking about money or fame and it goes

00:26:43.800 round and round depending on what the the matter at hand actually is yeah and it's how you're measuring

00:26:50.340 status you know we we we're so amazing at playing these status games we can use anything as to measure

00:26:57.360 status it's certainly not all about money you know my wife and i have been to you know place like

00:27:03.820 santa pray in france places where we could you know we're surrounded we're in the bottom one percent

00:27:09.600 of wealth people in santa bay but even we you know we managed to look down our noses at a lot of them

00:27:14.680 because oh they're such oh they're so they're so gauche you know this oh look at that you know like

00:27:18.340 like it's not about money so it's you know we've got our own ways of measuring status they've got their

00:27:23.900 own ways of measuring status no they were looking us and seeing these you know scruffy

00:27:30.380 herbers who with with bad shoes who shouldn't be there and we were looking at them as these

00:27:35.440 ridiculously over the top you know orange skinned idiots so so yeah it it all depends on how you're

00:27:43.860 measuring status how you're how you're assessing status every game as it's different almost like

00:27:48.900 tokens you know like on the monopoly board you've got plastic houses and hotels every game's got its

00:27:53.840 different way of a different thing of standing for status and all this connects to the concept of

00:28:00.380 identity how do you think about identity in light of the sort of never-ending possibility of

00:28:08.900 finding new status games and having one supersede the next just how do you think of personhood

00:28:16.920 i mean perhaps a healthy sense of personhood in light of that landscape well i mean it's huge i

00:28:24.560 mean i i i think you know to to a great extent we we become the games that we play you know when i say

00:28:30.840 i'm a writer that i'm not talking about what i do for a job that's a massive part of my identity

00:28:36.580 because that's 95 of the source of the status in my life which is an unhealthy you know um amount

00:28:44.980 really so you know we join groups the groups have rules of behavior and we follow the rules and the

00:28:51.520 better we follow the rules the higher we climb in status you know we begin to dress like those kinds

00:28:56.280 of people talk like those kinds of people read the kind of books and consume art in the way that those

00:29:00.940 kinds of people read books and consume art you know identity is fluid and multiple we can be one

00:29:07.400 one person when we're engaged in one status pursuit maybe at work and then at the weekend when with our

00:29:13.560 you know cycling friends we can be another kind of version of us playing another status game

00:29:18.840 so you can't separate the status game from identity you know as i you know i really do believe that

00:29:25.400 that to to a great extent as i say we we become those games that we play you know we become conformist

00:29:31.780 in that group context and and in terms of you know how should we pursue these games and this is where

00:29:41.020 i become a bit hypocritical because i'm not very good at doing this myself but but the research is

00:29:46.000 that that we're kind of happier and more stable emotionally the more groups we belong to so i

00:29:51.640 think the more status games we play the more sources of status do we have the more we hedge

00:29:56.380 the better place we are you know i'm in a vulnerable position because my life is devoted to my writing and

00:30:02.360 if and if that was to go wrong i mean you know my my career will peak and decline like anybody's does

00:30:07.280 it's going to be more than just a disappointment for my career it's going to be an assault on my

00:30:13.340 identity and an assault on my sense of who i am yes it's also interesting how some of the the markers of

00:30:20.520 status can flip so i was thinking as you were speaking about um what's happened just with

00:30:27.160 dress as a a social signal in certain contexts dressing in fancy expensive clothing is a marker

00:30:37.140 of high status but in other contexts it's actually a marker of low status or certainly lower status

00:30:45.400 when compared to the billionaire who just shows up in a hoodie because he can you know like there's no

00:30:51.960 reason if you're mark zuckerberg you know i guess if you're you're dragged before congress you put on a

00:30:57.360 on a suit but but but when you're in every other situation the fact that you just roll in in a hoodie

00:31:05.040 is a sign that well you don't have to play the game of wearing nice clothes right i mean like you know i don't

00:31:12.860 think this is necessarily conscious on his part or anyone else's part and i now as i complete this

00:31:18.100 sentence i'm forced to reflect on the fact that i've been wearing hoodies with disconcerting

00:31:21.940 regularity but um there is something about just being when you're of sufficient status in a certain

00:31:29.960 context you don't have to try you know you don't have to put on airs you don't there's no pretense

00:31:35.580 that you need to have because you're the genuine article well i except i'd say there is there there are

00:31:41.760 and there is there is pretense it's just that i think dress is an well all of the kind of status

00:31:48.060 cues that we adorn ourselves with it's always an arms race you know we're always looking at what

00:31:52.520 other people are doing and wanting to one better and i think i think when you get to the to the very

00:31:56.840 top that's that's the way that you can do it i mean my wife um and up until recently was the editor

00:32:03.280 of l magazine the the fashion magazine in the uk and she would always tell me that um the people in

00:32:08.980 the fashion industry don't wear all that very expensive stuff they just they tend to dress in black

00:32:14.060 and have the hair pulled back and that always made me think of weirdly of hitler because because

00:32:19.700 hitler was the same wasn't he he just wore he didn't wear all his military stuff he just wore you

00:32:23.620 know with medals and all that stuff like um hermann goering did he just wore a plain uniform

00:32:27.260 because because because you know what do you do when all the people at the when you're above the

00:32:32.420 people at the very top of the status game who are all adorned in their finery we just go the

00:32:37.240 other way you signal that i don't need you know the pose is i don't even need that but of course

00:32:41.840 it's still a pose you're still marking yourself out as separate from the other you know elite

00:32:48.580 people around you so but in your book you you describe some other principles here which can

00:32:55.940 balance this out i mean it's like for instance connection what's the relationship between social

00:33:01.700 connection and status well i mean it's linked when you when you think of the concept of the status

00:33:08.880 game you know when i talk about status games it's just a proxy for tribe you know we're a tribal

00:33:14.300 animal and that's why we crave connection and status we time and time and time again collect into

00:33:21.320 groups those groups have rules and then you know the better we play by those rules and that you know

00:33:27.560 the the better we play in the context of of that group the higher we rise in status and the better

00:33:32.740 the conditions of our life get within that group so you know connection is is an indivisible part of

00:33:39.920 the status game but but as i say in the book it's not enough we like to think about connection a lot

00:33:46.020 because it's it it feels like it's something nice about humans that we love belongingness and we love

00:33:51.420 being loved and and that's true but once we've connected into any group we're rarely content to be

00:33:58.100 to kind of flop about on the bottom rungs considered likable but useless you know we want to feel

00:34:04.300 like okay they like me but do they value me you know did it did they do that do i impress them is

00:34:09.140 there are there things that they look at they think well well he or she is good at that so so so you know

00:34:15.080 and when you think about that you know the concept of the status game of of the groups and and the

00:34:20.640 contest for status that that is all of human social life outside the family that's religions that's

00:34:26.420 corporations that's cults that's you know football teams that you name it that's what we're doing

00:34:33.700 we're gathering into groups playing by rules and rising and falling in status depending on how well

00:34:39.220 you know we serve those rules that you know that you know connection and status is kind of what we do

00:34:44.700 as human beings i mean for you now as you've thought about this at this sort of depth what i'm hearing

00:34:52.100 is that there's really you're not envisioning an alternative to caring about status i mean there's

00:34:59.460 obviously the the embarrassing and petty and tawdry end of this but there's also the idealistic

00:35:08.620 ennobling you know virtuous end as well am i hearing you correctly that it's not a matter of getting out of

00:35:14.520 the status game it's in finding a healthy life-affirming connection inducing creative

00:35:23.280 version of it well it's about playing the right game so you know i i think there are there are

00:35:28.860 basically three different genres of status game that that humans generally play there are three

00:35:33.180 kinds of status game the first kind of status game is the dominance game and we've been playing

00:35:38.100 dominance games for millions of years since before we were human you know dominance is aggression

00:35:43.900 or the threat of it so when hens peck each other to establish a pecking order that's a dominance game

00:35:49.600 we still do that you know obviously we still do that it's not it's not just physical violence it's

00:35:54.160 also any kind of coercion bullying ostracization any kind of threat anytime somebody is forcing you to

00:35:59.920 attend to them in kind of humility as if they're a high status person that's dominance so that's

00:36:05.700 dominance there's also the virtue game you know when we became human and became tribal you know one of

00:36:12.420 the ways we could earn status is by being virtuous and so virtue is all about knowing the rules following

00:36:17.820 the rules enforcing the rules and it's also about belief you know how well and how sincerely do you

00:36:23.520 believe the stories and myths and legends and laws of the tribe um so that's that's the virtue game and you

00:36:30.180 can you can see people like the pope the dalai lama michelle obama these are kind of superstars

00:36:36.760 global superstars of the virtue game you know they're famous for being good you know over here

00:36:42.240 in the uk the royal family is a kind of virtue game uh it's all about deference and respect and believing

00:36:47.340 in all your heart that the queen and a fucked up family are really special and important and you know

00:36:53.460 so that's a virtue game but there's also the success game you know the other way that you could earn

00:36:59.020 status and be a seen as a valuable person in the tribal context is by being good at stuff

00:37:04.200 being a good storyteller a good tuber finder a good warrior um a good sorcerer and so on

00:37:10.280 and you know that's modernity that's civilization even as i say in the book even you know adam smith

00:37:16.800 the father of capitalism recognized that it wasn't pursuit of money that you know made the world go

00:37:22.300 round and that made progress happen it was the pursuit of what he called esteem is that people

00:37:27.540 want to feel like important in the eyes of their peers so you don't want to get rid of the status

00:37:32.880 game you know i'm i really believe that we make a fundamental mistake when we condescend to the

00:37:39.300 status urge like it's certainly the very worst of human nature and in the book you know i write about

00:37:43.860 status and its connection to everything from serial killers to genocide to kind of incel

00:37:50.300 misogynist culture and spree killers yeah but it's also the best of human nature you don't get

00:37:55.040 modernity without the status game you don't get progress you don't get science you don't get

00:37:58.660 technology you don't get vaccines and so on and so on and so on yeah it just seems like having a

00:38:04.020 social process that reinforces value right the value people create for others the value people

00:38:13.100 get in being recognized for creating value for others and there's just a positive feedback loop there

00:38:20.240 i mean that is the healthy form of esteem is the social mechanism that inspires people to

00:38:28.360 do more and more that other people value right i mean apart from just being paid for it obviously is

00:38:34.460 the material version of that but contributing to society and having society tell you they want more

00:38:41.280 of that and to feel better as a result that is a virtuous piece of machinery that i think we would

00:38:48.500 yeah i mean perhaps there's there's a way of psychologically uncoupling even from that and

00:38:55.020 being happier still i mean that's there is certainly the notion of self-transcendence within you know an

00:39:01.960 explicitly contemplative context would argue for that and i mean perhaps we could have a sidebar

00:39:09.660 conversation on that topic but you know short of that what it means to be a good person in a healthy

00:39:15.900 society entails actually adding to the well-being of others in addition to i mean we're finding a mode

00:39:24.400 of fulfilling one's own desires that is actually positive sum with respect to the desires of and

00:39:30.960 well-being of others yeah i mean i i think it's incredible and fantastic that our species has evolved

00:39:37.300 this instinct to reward ourselves and other people when they prove that they are they are of value

00:39:43.060 you know when we you know we even do it to ourselves you know sometimes that you know

00:39:49.480 researchers write about what they call the imaginary audience that have it on their head

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 31, 2022

#294 — Status Games

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