TRIGGERnometry - Cancel Culture Explained with Will Storr

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:10.100 I'm Constantine Kissing.

00:00:11.080 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:17.020 Our brilliant guest today is a journalist and the author of this brilliant book, The Status Game.

00:00:22.560 Will Starr, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:23.700 Thanks for having me.

00:00:24.680 The word I was also looking for is best-selling author and my brain sort of malfunctioned,

00:00:28.800 But you are, in fact, this is your sixth book, as you were just telling us.

00:00:31.820 Before we get into the show, tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are,

00:00:36.780 what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:00:40.240 Well, obviously, I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for about 20 years, you know, just over 20 years now.

00:00:47.020 And I've been writing books, yeah, since I was in my mid-20s.

00:00:50.840 And I've always been interested in, you know, what makes people tick, you know, what drives people,

00:00:57.260 what makes people believe kind of crazy, irrational things.

00:01:00.540 And that's been the theme throughout a lot of my journalism and certainly my books.

00:01:06.300 Well, yes, indeed.

00:01:07.500 And, you know, the status game seems to me to be going to the very fundamentals of what makes us tick.

00:01:14.420 We were talking before we started about our former guest, Dr. Mike Martin,

00:01:18.820 who wrote a book called Why We Fight, which is all about testosterone

00:01:21.820 and the desire to seek status and all of that.

00:01:24.280 So for anyone who's uninitiated, unfamiliar with this subject, what is the status game?

00:01:29.800 Well, the status game is the subconscious reality of human social life.

00:01:34.800 That's how I see it.

00:01:35.920 You know, lots of my previous books, I've been focusing on the conscious experience of life, which is a story.

00:01:42.800 The brain processes reality and turns our life into a story.

00:01:46.180 And we're the hero at the center of our lives.

00:01:48.200 And we're surrounded by this cast of characters.

00:01:50.420 And we're on these amazing missions.

00:01:52.280 and you know so that's that's why we tell stories in the way that we do because we've been making

00:01:56.020 these newer processes and in this book I wanted to wanted to sort of take it a bit further and go

00:02:01.080 okay so if the conscious reality of life is a story what's going on subconsciously what's the

00:02:06.480 truth and so the status game is is my attempt at answering that question like what's really going

00:02:13.240 on under under the hood and and I think a lot of a lot of human social life is about two things

00:02:19.840 So connection and status. So because of our tribal evolution, we're compelled to connect into groups of like-minded people.

00:02:29.380 And then once we're in those groups, compete for status.

00:02:32.100 And we see that all the way through our society. And in particular, one of the things that you focused on was virtue, people competing to be the most virtuous.

00:02:43.560 Absolutely. So, yeah, I think to understand this, you've got to sort of understand where the kind of the status game comes from.

00:02:50.920 And that's in our tribal evolution.

00:02:53.440 You know, Dr. Mike Martin talks a lot about kind of dominant status, which is the oldest kind of form of status very probably.

00:02:59.640 And we've been competing for status of dominance since we were before we were human.

00:03:03.120 You know, it's fighting, it's threat, it's violence, it's bullying, ostracization, all those kinds of things.

00:03:08.860 but once we settled down and started living in you know communities um competing with violence

00:03:15.500 wasn't very useful so we had to you know evolve new ways of competing for status and those news

00:03:21.200 new ways were all about kind of group life and so what happened was we started competing for

00:03:26.460 status with the reputation and um the way you earn stated with reputation is you prove that

00:03:32.280 prove that you are valuable to your group you're useful to your group and there are two ways of

00:03:36.880 being useful to your group one of the ways is by being virtuous so generous and selfish and

00:03:42.040 courageous in battle but also following rules and enforcing the rules when other people don't

00:03:46.840 you know don't follow them and then the other way the hardest way is success by being competent by

00:03:51.660 being um you know a fantastic uh you know storyteller hunter honey finder but but but

00:03:58.200 yeah i think i think what we're going to be talking about today is a lot of that kind of

00:04:01.360 virtue status, because we're not used to thinking of connecting virtue and status. But of course,

00:04:07.100 they're completely linked. Mother Teresa is a superstar. The Pope is a superstar. You know,

00:04:12.100 people see people like Michelle Obama as this kind of virtuous superstar. You know, it's not

00:04:17.040 really about competence with these kinds of characters. It's all about their kind of virtue.

00:04:21.520 And people have been exploiting that, like you said, from time immemorial. You know,

00:04:25.160 if you think about the scribes, the Pharisees, people like that, people who position themselves

00:04:30.240 as being virtuous, but it's not always religious people now 0.99

00:04:33.500 who are trying to be virtuous.

00:04:35.120 No, no.

00:04:35.700 I mean, you know, this urge to have status from virtue

00:04:40.300 is built into us.

00:04:41.820 You know, we all have it to a certain degree.

00:04:43.720 I mean, of course, we're all on the spectrum.

00:04:46.100 And, you know, I think it's really interesting

00:04:47.940 in this kind of post-religious society we've got now,

00:04:51.260 because for centuries and longer,

00:04:54.340 religion was the way that we principally yearn status.

00:04:57.500 Even people in very kind of low caste groups before the Industrial Revolution, you know, if they were like a peasant working on a farm, they could still feel like they had status because they were a good Christian and they were doing all those good Christian things.

00:05:12.100 And now that's declining, people still want to pursue virtue status, especially the ones that haven't really got what it takes to achieve the competence forms of status.

00:05:20.380 and I certainly see that playing out you know a lot online a lot in social media and a lot in what

00:05:26.580 we think of as cancel culture well before we get into that I actually I think your book and your

00:05:31.220 work is so much more fascinating than just a conversation about the culture wars uh Francis

00:05:36.180 and I've always been interested in talking to evolutionary psychologists and biologists and

00:05:40.440 various people about some of the underlying stuff that makes humans who they are so let's start by

00:05:46.520 talking about that and let's talk about bullying a word that you just mentioned I've never thought

00:05:51.920 about it but as we were waiting for you to come I was sort of thinking what is the social function

00:05:57.460 of bullying because it exists in every society I think pretty much so there must be some purpose

00:06:02.580 to it and is that is that for the majority or certain people to assert their dominance so that

00:06:08.200 they become higher status is that what it's about yeah I guess it depends on what context you mean

00:06:12.520 bullying but certainly one-on-one playground bullying is about dominance and um you know

00:06:18.120 children start competing for status as soon as they start learning how to play with other people

00:06:22.200 when they fight over who gets access to the toy that's a symbolic status battle and that's certainly

00:06:27.400 true um uh in the context of bullying there's a study that i cite in the book that looked out

00:06:32.920 that looked at looked at why school children um um you know pre-adolescent school children tend

00:06:38.380 to be bullied and ostracized from their social groups and it's very often when they um when they

00:06:45.200 when their behavior or something about them makes them a threat to the status of that social group

00:06:49.720 when they embarrass people or make them feel uncomfortable and and that kind of negative

00:06:54.440 status kind of feels like it's leaking out into the into the other the people around them they'll

00:06:58.300 start bullying them and ostracizing them so and of course you know this kind of bullying is is

00:07:05.000 always about status it's always about taking somebody that's there and pushing them down there

00:07:09.400 and and and with your kind of active that's the dominance you know act with the act of dominance

00:07:13.820 you know raising yourself up so that ties then into what you're talking about which is online

00:07:19.320 and you know cancel culture has become this very politicized word but i actually think you know

00:07:25.820 people will be tempted to think that cancel culture is what people who are right of center

00:07:30.560 let's say, say about what happens to them from people left of center, I sort of see it as a much

00:07:36.200 more universal thing that's going on and the harassment and mobbing and bullying happens from

00:07:41.200 everybody. So is that what's driving it? It's a bunch of people who you sort of hinted at it,

00:07:48.340 don't have the ability to achieve status through competence, don't have the ability to achieve it

00:07:54.580 through dominance force violence etc but here is this great tool you know you've got a twitter

00:08:00.700 account and you can go and harass a celebrity what you know today it's dave chappelle tomorrow

00:08:06.680 it's going to be someone else yeah is that what it's about it's low status people achieving status

00:08:11.920 at the expense of someone famous it is but but but but the only thing that i'd say about that is

00:08:17.300 that it is dominance behavior because dominance isn't just about physical violence it's about the

00:08:20.980 threat of violence but it's also about the threat of ostracization you know we don't dominance is

00:08:27.380 about is about you know is partly about one-on-one physical competition but it's also about competition

00:08:33.960 with reputation and you know a person's reputation that's their kind of avatar that's their you know

00:08:38.640 what they're playing the status game with so if you attack someone's reputation you're attacking

00:08:43.500 their identity you're attacking the core of who they are and everything they've worked towards

00:08:47.900 the kind of locus of the meaning of their life so so so you know it isn't violence when we attack

00:08:54.400 reputation but it's something you know close to it it's a it's a dreadful thing that we do

00:08:59.420 it's it in the book i thought you know i kind of explained that there's no pure games there's no

00:09:04.880 there's no pure success game and pure virtue game they're kind of mixtures always this called

00:09:09.280 mixtures um and i think kind of cancel culture and you know the worst of human behavior even up 0.98

00:09:15.720 to and including genocide which I also write about is virtue dominance play it's virtue play

00:09:20.480 because it's about you will follow the rules you will not insult our sacred beliefs you will not

00:09:24.620 insult our sacred symbols and if you don't we will get you so that's that that's that dominance

00:09:29.960 kind of virtue play and and it's fundamental it's human behavior you know we're very good at blaming

00:09:35.320 you know Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for causing all these things but they haven't caused

00:09:40.180 it they've just connected people together and when you connect people together they're going to play

00:09:44.160 status games and this kind of thing is going to happen but now we've got the status game with

00:09:49.440 virtue and then we destroy people whilst at the same time being hashtag be kind yeah which to me

00:09:57.160 is just the most mind-blowing thing i've ever seen but but but that's again it's just consistent with

00:10:02.620 you know that that's part of the storytelling brain we have this conscious experience of life

00:10:07.320 and you know in previous books i've described the brain as a hero maker it's very good at making us

00:10:12.740 feel heroic and justifying all our all our acts and it's thought that the strongest bias of all

00:10:18.140 is the moral bias so so the brain is very good at saying you know you know fundamentally you're

00:10:22.860 a good person and you're a better person than all these other people um and and and that's what the

00:10:27.940 be kind thing is all about that's people's brains doing what brains are supposed to do which is tell

00:10:31.620 a story about your own virtue and your own superiority whilst playing this rather cynical

00:10:37.260 status game subconsciously so and that's not unique to the internet you know the the nazis

00:10:43.940 thought they were on the side of the good the communists thought they're on the side of the

00:10:47.140 good that's just what brains do and even when presented with objective facts like you're

00:10:52.340 literally ruining someone's career yeah you are you are impacting on their mental health you are

00:10:57.620 causing and creating suffering but they deserve it right that's the argument they deserve it yeah

00:11:02.060 Exactly. So that's exactly right. I mean, you've got to kind of understand a bit how the brain

00:11:07.500 works. And one of the things that I write about kind of continually in my books, which, because

00:11:12.280 I think it's just extraordinary, is the fact that, you know, the brain is constructing a story

00:11:17.540 constantly about the world. And that's literally, you know, information comes in from the world

00:11:21.540 and it constructs this like storiescape for us to live in. And a lot of it is delusional. A lot,

00:11:29.200 you know it's kind of designed to again make us feel heroic and we really and it's really good at

00:11:34.740 kind of being very shifty with the objective truth and twisting it and turning it to make

00:11:39.620 us feel that we're heroic and as i said you know before the nazis thought they were the heroes of

00:11:43.340 that story they genuinely thought they were and so did the communists they genuinely thought they

00:11:47.520 were the communists thought they were punching they said we're punching up you know they're

00:11:50.540 obviously not using our contemporary phrases but they were punching up at the you know the

00:11:53.600 bourgeoisie and the czarists and all this stuff um and in the same way the people online are

00:11:58.480 convinced that they're punching up too. And there's a chapter in the status game that looks

00:12:03.940 specifically at the culture wars. And what I thought was interesting is when you look at the

00:12:07.640 narratives of the left and the right, you know, the two sides of the culture war, they both tell

00:12:12.080 a story, which is in part convincing about that they're punching up. And so the classic, you know,

00:12:18.360 the kind of extreme left cancel culture of people. So they're punching up, you know,

00:12:23.560 essentially white people, especially white men, especially straight white men. And the argument

00:12:29.800 is they've hoarded all the status, they've hoarded all the power, and it's not fair. And we're

00:12:33.660 destroying this evil elite that doesn't deserve to be there. But if you look at the other side,

00:12:38.520 the right wing view, it's like, well, when they look up, they don't see straight white men,

00:12:43.420 they see educated people, they see, you know, highly educated elite people, you know, people

00:12:48.080 who went to kind of Ivy League universities and Oxbridge, people who were running the BBC and

00:12:52.060 in the New York Times. And they're both ways of seeing the status game that have some validity

00:12:57.360 to them. And I think that's when these stories become really dangerous, because they have this

00:13:01.460 kind of kernel of truth. But they're stories. They're not real. They're massively simplistic.

00:13:06.280 It is true that historically, in white-dominated countries, white men have had an advantage. 0.87

00:13:11.920 But it's definitely true now that if you've been to Oxford, Cambridge, or an elite university,

00:13:16.420 or you work at the BBC, you've got a massive advantage

00:13:19.340 over an awful lot of straight white men who don't have those advantages.

00:13:24.060 So the brain tells this heroic story, which is usually really simplistic,

00:13:29.440 but it's never true.

00:13:30.660 It's always much more complicated than the kind of warriors would admit to.

00:13:34.680 Let's come back to the culture war in a second.

00:13:37.000 Sorry, Francis, I just want to stick with the human society part of it first.

00:13:43.280 So clearly in our society now,

00:13:46.140 if I was seeking to achieve higher status

00:13:48.740 through physical force,

00:13:50.540 that would be considered unacceptable.

00:13:52.400 So societies have developed over time

00:13:54.420 rules and regulations, unspoken and legislative,

00:13:58.260 about controlling the way that people play this game.

00:14:03.320 Where are we now in terms of that?

00:14:05.640 In terms of, you know, how do we,

00:14:07.580 is this nature of ours,

00:14:09.480 which I doubt is ever going away realistically right how do we regulate that in a way that sort

00:14:15.340 of makes sense in modern society well yeah that's a really good point I mean because I think you

00:14:20.560 know for tens of thousands of years we've been we've been regulating principally male violence

00:14:25.300 and that's been going on for thousands of years and to the extent that we physically changed

00:14:31.720 before the psychologists call the process of self-domestication we domesticated ourselves

00:14:36.220 we became much more feminized we had you know bigger eyes and we control the world much more 0.93

00:14:40.920 by controlling other people understanding how minds work and being able to manipulate them

00:14:45.280 um and so and and that's that that's why that we are for for a primate um within the people

00:14:51.800 within our group incredibly peaceful compared to even bonobos who are famously you know a peaceful

00:14:56.600 um primate we're much more peaceful than that so it's uh where our aggression is is group versus

00:15:02.140 group um but but but but you know we're much less good at regulating those other forms of aggression

00:15:08.360 which are the forms uh which both genders use um but but but certainly you know women use them 0.98

00:15:15.620 every bit as much as men and that's bullying ostracization it's the reputation destruction

00:15:20.240 forms of aggression which which we don't really have the checks and balances there um at the

00:15:26.780 moment. And I think that's what needs to happen, you know, especially online, that we need to

00:15:32.700 evolve new norms that are kind of against this kind of, you know, reputation-based dominance play.

00:15:40.280 Do you think the problem there is, Will, that with physical aggression, we are inevitably

00:15:46.180 confronted by the consequences of it? The Nazis who you mentioned, even Himmler wrote about how

00:15:53.140 unpleasant it was to have to put all the Jews in gas chambers. So you are physically confronted

00:15:59.400 with that reality and it becomes impossible to, if you start asserting your physical dominance

00:16:04.260 over me, you have to see me suffer, bleed, et cetera, cry, whatever it would be, even though

00:16:10.500 I would never cry. But you know what I mean? Whereas with this online stuff, there is that

00:16:15.440 sort of windscreen effect where you're sitting in your car, someone else is in another car

00:16:19.160 and you are in a safe bubble and you don't have to see them suffer yeah you can do whatever you

00:16:23.840 want yeah totally yeah and that's a huge problem and i also think it's a huge problem just just

00:16:30.040 that form of communication like one way of seeing social media is as a gossip network and in you know 0.86

00:16:36.860 in the book and in previous books i've written about the importance of gossip to human social

00:16:40.860 life you know gossip are the first forms of story um and gossip was there you know gossip is universal

00:16:47.600 or it plays a crucial function in human social life

00:16:51.420 and it's there to regulate it.

00:16:53.000 So back in the days of the tribe, 0.82

00:16:56.280 there was no police force, there was no judiciary,

00:16:59.500 there was no prison system.

00:17:00.920 So we controlled social behaviour by gossipings

00:17:04.980 and if people got a bad reputation, they'd be punished

00:17:07.400 with ostracisation, all of the ways we're familiar with today

00:17:11.480 up to and including execution.

00:17:14.360 But if the gossip was positive, this person did an amazing thing

00:17:17.320 they'd raise in status and become heroic so it's an essential component of you know we've all

00:17:22.980 evolved to gossip children begin to do kind of tattletale forms of gossip almost as soon as they

00:17:27.420 can talk it's baked into us and then you got to look at the grants of human history so so that's

00:17:34.460 how we were regulating our societies for thousands of years and then when we settled down and

00:17:39.220 communities started growing so big that we couldn't know everybody personally so we couldn't gossip

00:17:44.660 about everybody individually we invented the big god religions and and so religion is a gossip

00:17:49.280 network but god knows all the gossip and you're going to get punished or rewarded after life so

00:17:54.200 and and it was the feeling that god was watching you that that controlled your you know largely

00:17:58.980 controlled your behavior um and then you know in our kind of post Nietzschean age when now god is

00:18:06.080 dead journalism did that job journalism became our gossip network that's how we tattled about 0.57

00:18:11.920 especially high status people and and you know moral outwaves was raised and they will be punished

00:18:16.360 and you know we're living in a kind of post-journalistic age now and I've lived and

00:18:20.220 worked through it where where the norms of journalism have just collapsed because of the

00:18:23.600 internet and social media is our new gossip network and so so it's not just this thing

00:18:29.180 that people do you know for a laugh on their phones the gossip network is as I said is an

00:18:34.300 essential component of human life it plays a crucial role and it's a pathological form of

00:18:39.200 gossip network because you know there are barely any consequences for spreading malicious gossip

00:18:44.800 I think back in the days of the tribe you know people you know if you spread malicious gossip

00:18:48.340 you were going to get gossiped about and bad things could happen to you um you know in the

00:18:54.140 glory days of journalism yes of course there were left-wing and right-wing newspapers fine but but

00:18:59.240 there was still pressure on journalists to get it right to get the truth and if you didn't get the

00:19:02.960 truth you got a bad reputation or you worked for a crappy tabloid and everyone looked down their

00:19:07.480 knows at you anyway um but but but those norms just don't exist on they're scarily hard to find

00:19:13.640 in traditional journalism these days um and they barely exist on social media you know and not only

00:19:19.140 do they not barely exist they they also exacerbate and encourage yes these worst tendencies in people

00:19:26.100 that's the problem isn't it yeah exactly everything you attach status to we're going to

00:19:30.180 flock to it i mean in in the book i talk about this status game that um anthropologists found

00:19:34.520 on an island in Markenesia which is based on yams and the idea was whoever brought the biggest yam

00:19:40.260 to the feast was declared number one in the feast and that was the thing and he's raising status and

00:19:45.900 so what happened on the island was that it was a kind of a male game this all the men just became

00:19:50.720 obsessed with growing yams and they became amazing at growing yams they would crawl out their bed at

00:19:54.780 two in the morning to go into their secret yam pit in the forest to tend to it and stroke it and

00:19:59.080 feed it fertilizer and and there were stories there of yams that were so big it took 12 men

00:20:03.820 to carry them into the feast on a special stretcher so that's that's humans you know if you

00:20:08.040 attach status to something we're going to do it and we're going to do it big and and you're

00:20:12.080 absolutely right you know these days you're attaching status to these extreme political

00:20:15.920 beliefs um you're attaching status to to the ability to to to tear your kind of ideological

00:20:21.160 enemies down so that's what we're going to do and that's what we're doing so so so it's yeah it's a

00:20:26.440 it's a pathological gossip network that incentivizes this kind of virtue dominance form of status 1.00

00:20:32.420 game. But it's also made the status game worse. It's made it more toxic. Much more toxic. Yeah,

00:20:39.300 absolutely has. I mean, one of the things that I write about, again, in the book is this idea of

00:20:46.000 the moral panic. I kind of readdress what is a moral panic. And I look at the satanic panic in

00:20:52.040 the 1980s as a form of moral panic. But actually, I think when you look at it from the status point

00:20:56.780 of view, it's not really a moral panic. I call it a status gold rush. Because what you've got is

00:21:01.160 this is this small group of therapists um that hit upon this way of becoming incredibly rich

00:21:07.520 incredibly famous and um you know interviewed on oprah um hosted at big conferences and um

00:21:14.480 you know interviewed by academics um uh and you know perhaps more important than even the money

00:21:21.380 and the fame is is that kind of story they're allowed to tell themselves that we're saving the

00:21:25.260 world you know we're saving the world's children from the forces of evil and so what happened

00:21:29.560 during that was that was that flocks of people were drawn to this satanic panic um status game

00:21:35.040 in which uh you know the idea was that these therapists was and police officers were seeking

00:21:40.160 out secret satanic sex abusers um uh and you know and it was a disaster it spread throughout

00:21:45.780 the us it came to the uk you know dozens of people had long prison sentences for doing 0.86

00:21:50.780 things they couldn't possibly have done like you know throwing children at sharks and stitching

00:21:55.680 their eyelids shut during a kindergarten and then somehow returning the kids to their parents

00:21:59.900 unharmed at the end of the day like mad stuff and and and you know i think it makes much more sense

00:22:05.900 when you see that i see the idea of a status gold rush that it wasn't a moral panic that was that i

00:22:10.640 don't think it was driving the satanic panic it was a status gold rush all these people with

00:22:14.680 ordinary lives just therapists just family experts suddenly became famous rich and um that they felt

00:22:22.360 that they were saving the world from the forces of evil and I think that's what we see on social

00:22:26.360 media too it's a it's a you know it's a status gold rush there are millions and millions of just

00:22:31.060 ordinary people with ordinary lives who suddenly feel that they're fighting the good fight against

00:22:34.800 the forces of darkness and you know we're going to tear down Dave Chappelle or whoever it is or

00:22:39.280 Kathleen Stock or whoever it is and and and you know you've got to understand that status is an

00:22:45.420 immeasurably valuable resource it's a basic human need if we don't feel that we have status we become

00:22:50.840 mentally unwell depressed even up to feeling suicidal if our status is taken away from us

00:22:57.100 in a kind of dramatic way we even become physically ill if we don't feel we have

00:23:01.280 sufficient status so it's an immeasurably valuable resource and what social media has given us

00:23:06.980 is enabled us to do is is is to gather that resource um and in such a way that we have so

00:23:13.860 you know we have more status in our online lives than we do in our real actual lives

00:23:18.660 So that's really valuable to people. And that's, you know, that's what their brains want. Their brains aren't particularly interested in finding out the truth. Their brains are interested in how do I get status?

00:23:28.200 Will, and is this why people are so fearful of humor and comedy? Because comedy is one of the most powerful ways to take status away from things. When you mock something, even playfully, you are taking away the significance from it.

00:23:45.020 and we saw it you know the comedians i grew up watching in the in the 90s there were the bill

00:23:50.120 hickses the george carlens yeah they went after religion because the religious right at that time

00:23:54.900 had quite a lot of cultural significance and dominance and these people were taking that

00:23:59.360 away and now you see that when it's flipped and it's the far left that's got this uh cultural

00:24:04.840 dominance they fear comedy they they're terrified of it and they're fighting against it because it

00:24:10.160 takes away the significance and the status that they've tried to give to their beliefs is that

00:24:14.300 why that yeah absolutely i mean a basic you know a basic way that back in the days of the tribe

00:24:19.580 that we would we would manage people's behavior social behavior is if we were gossiping about

00:24:24.560 them and the gossip was bad you'd begin by mockery and you know a bit of mockery and humiliation you

00:24:30.460 know that that so that's that's that again that's a that's an elemental kind of form of human

00:24:34.120 behavior so and it's a way of it so it's a way of drawing people down and that's exactly right i

00:24:39.520 grew up you know in the 90s i'm a gen xer i remember watching bill hicks on channel four

00:24:44.160 late one night and having my mind just blown and and you know i grew up in a catholic family and

00:24:49.220 in those days it was that you know especially in america the catholic right that were dominating

00:24:53.820 and and judging people's moral behavior and i was a big metal fan and they were trying to ban

00:24:58.280 all the records that i that i liked and it has flipped these days it's the it's the you know

00:25:02.800 i've always identified as a left-wing person i still do but it's it's the left that are doing

00:25:07.520 that these days it's a section of the left well it's a section of the left absolutely yeah and

00:25:11.960 you know I don't think it's a as you as you point out it's a coincidence that these are the people

00:25:16.300 now that the comics are going after and we talk about humiliation you used a very powerful example

00:25:23.080 of the power of humiliation when you were talking about I forget his name Elliot Rogers yes Elliot

00:25:29.860 Rogers and what happened to him if you could go into that a little bit yeah so I mean when I was

00:25:34.940 thinking about the book and whether whether there was a book in this I kind of set myself a test and

00:25:38.660 that test was okay if you're going to argue that status is so important then what happens when our

00:25:44.040 status is taken away it must be pretty bad so so you know I started looking into that and the idea

00:25:49.320 of humiliation because that you know one of the technical definitions of humiliation is it's the

00:25:53.260 it's not only the removal of your status it's the removal of your ability to claim status in the

00:25:57.460 future you're so you're so down there that you're just gone basically nobody wants to have anything

00:26:02.420 to do with you ever again. And it turns out that that is a catastrophic thing for humans to

00:26:08.840 experience. If it's serious and it's chronic, it goes on and on and on. One researcher described

00:26:15.700 humiliation as an annihilation of the self. And humiliation is found in the backgrounds of lots

00:26:21.700 of serial killers, terrorists, honour killers. I mean, if you think, you know, it's implicated

00:26:26.920 in genocide the humiliation of the nation or the racial group and they fight back so if you think

00:26:33.700 about the very worst of human behavior you'll find humiliation in there so that that to me was like

00:26:38.960 okay this is I think this is right about status I think it is this important and so I tell the

00:26:44.300 story of Elliot Rodgers in some detail because he's a so he's a spree killer he's one of these

00:26:48.460 kind of incel spree killers but before he died he left a he uploaded to the internet 108,000 word

00:26:55.500 autobiography which is um was called my twisted world um and it's an extraordinary it's a truly

00:27:01.980 extraordinary document i mean you know it's chilling but he's it's fascinating because

00:27:08.100 you know so in the book i say that the most dangerous people probably on earth

00:27:13.480 are narcissistic people so people who believe that they're entitled to high status and they

00:27:19.240 expect to be treated as if they're important and they're humiliated so when you humiliate a

00:27:24.620 narcissist it's it's bad because because they they're dropping down a hell of a long way and

00:27:29.840 and and and if they're male and if you're male you're much more likely to respond with violence

00:27:33.900 that's another you know factor so so grandiose male and humiliated are this kind of you know

00:27:40.780 these three kind of red flags and Elliot Rogers was definitely an example of that I mean

00:27:45.880 his book uh is is sort of greasy with its descriptions of his wonderfulness he describes

00:27:52.500 himself as a beautiful gentleman and things like this and thinks he's gorgeous and wonderful and

00:27:57.440 can't understand why we're not falling at his feet. But he's also unflinching in his depictions

00:28:03.100 of how miserable his life was and how he was bullied and hated by everybody that he essentially

00:28:09.440 went to school with. And after he did his spree killing, the narrative across the media, left and

00:28:16.520 right was that the cause of what he did was his obsession with the game world of warcraft um and

00:28:22.680 i said because it's a violent game and you're killing stuff so that's you know makes sense

00:28:26.040 right um but i argue in the book that's actually not true that actually world of warcraft was his

00:28:31.500 only source of status and if you actually read his book it's only when he stops playing world

00:28:36.420 of warcraft that he goes completely insane and so so he describes basically achieving the enormously

00:28:43.440 least statusful experience of achieving the kind of top level of world of warcraft and when he's

00:28:47.780 playing world of warcraft it's he's not worrying about school he's not worrying about girls and

00:28:52.420 being popular he's happy um and then he finds out that the people the friends who he's playing world

00:28:58.160 of warcraft with he discovers that they've been meeting up in secret behind his back to play

00:29:02.600 without him which is just heartbreaking for him because you know and he describes playing the

00:29:06.680 game with tears rolling down his face because he's so crushed by this realization so he stops

00:29:12.000 playing and literally the day he stops playing he confides to his last remaining friend this

00:29:17.440 bizarre vision he has of the world now in which he he wants sex to be abolished completely

00:29:23.280 because as far as he's concerned um the the problems of the of the world are the fault of 0.96

00:29:30.160 women because women choose who to have sex with and they keep choosing you know jock aggressive 1.00

00:29:35.600 types so that they keep procreating with these people and giving birth to more aggressive jock 1.00

00:29:40.540 types so his solution is he hasn't seen millennials yeah yeah well this is pre this is pre then and so 0.68

00:29:47.200 he and so he wants to wipe out all the women um keep a few in in a lab um to um uh artificially 1.00

00:29:54.640 inseminate to keep the to keep the um to keep the to keep the population going well at least he had 0.55

00:30:00.120 a vision yeah yeah but but so when i read that so when you hear that you just think that's mental

00:30:04.700 that's mentally ill like that is gone right um and um it's about as misogynistic as you can get 0.98

00:30:10.900 it is you can't really get many much more misogynistic than want to annihilate all women 0.98

00:30:14.640 um but then when you look at that in the context of the second world war

00:30:19.240 that is exactly the sort of story that the nazis told about the world when when the german nation

00:30:24.660 which is a grandiose nation you know the most successful nation in continental europe before

00:30:29.160 the first world war utterly humiliated by the treaty of Versailles um and that's the story that

00:30:34.920 that you know it's not a nation of Germans because they weren't all Nazis but but that was the story

00:30:39.500 that the Nazis told about the world was the Elliot Rodgers story but it's instead of women it was 0.99

00:30:43.480 Jews so when that kind of connected for me I just thought that that's extraordinary because

00:30:47.740 it I think it shows you that it's something innate in us when we feel that our status has

00:30:53.700 been unfairly taken from us that's when we're i think our most irrational and our most aggressive

00:30:59.680 and you've never very neatly brought us back to the culture war there because one of the arguments

00:31:05.260 that you laid out and this is something i've been very concerned about for some time now

00:31:08.280 you know you talked about how people on the right and the left have their own simplified versions of

00:31:14.400 of what's happening and it makes perfect sense but particularly the far left one is the one that

00:31:19.560 troubles me um and the reason it troubles me more is that the narrative of the far left as you put

00:31:25.160 it yourself is that there's this group of people who've been historically very privileged they've

00:31:30.440 got all the advantages they've had hoarded all the status yeah and we must now humiliate them

00:31:35.540 i mean that is the narrative right yeah so you've got a very large group of people uh who are as

00:31:42.000 you've said for physiological and biological reasons are much more prone to violence and other

00:31:46.480 than other groups men they are the vast majority of society uh white people in the in the country

00:31:54.120 in the uk certainly and in america uh and you have a a driven campaign that at least to me seems like

00:32:02.440 that is supported by media organizations by institutions of government by uh authorities

00:32:09.340 the police the health cases everywhere there seems to be that it's at least allowing that to

00:32:15.320 happen right those systems now given what you've said to me that seems a very dangerous game to be

00:32:23.180 playing it is i think it is a very dangerous game to be playing and you can see a little bit of it

00:32:27.660 in the trump and brexit events of 2016 you know i think it's it's been it's been commented before

00:32:34.980 it's not news that the the lots of the people that voted for those things were white working

00:32:39.720 class and lower middle class people whose living standards have declined in in the last few decades

00:32:46.560 but also their sense of status has declined you know you know there used to be respect in being

00:32:52.660 a working class person um and now that you know the media decries them as you know deplorables 1.00

00:32:58.140 and trailer trash and you know you've got labor politicians tweeting union jacks and going oh

00:33:03.160 you know and i think it's true that trump and brexit was a reaction against that it was like 1.00

00:33:07.180 no you fuckers you know you've got to stop treating us like this and that's that that's 0.99

00:33:12.000 their story of you're the educators elite who you're looking down looking down your noses at us 1.00

00:33:16.360 and there's a there's a definite truth to that and i and i and i do i i do worry about this and

00:33:22.200 i do think it's true that there's there's a generation of young men that are being raised

00:33:27.920 today in canada the us and the uk who are being raised in in a world in which men are white men

00:33:35.780 know just bad they're responsible for all the bad things in the world and the morally correct thing

00:33:40.760 to do is to put them to the back of every queue um and to not give them any of the important jobs

00:33:46.140 and you know and and to hold them back and that's dangerous and because because because what's going

00:33:52.820 to happen well one of two things you know either they're going to internalize those ideas and and

00:33:58.360 just suffer terrible self-esteem uh and and depression thinking i'm a white man i'm terrible

00:34:03.300 I'm awful I'm a disaster I need to I need to just step back and let everyone else have a life and 0.94

00:34:10.600 not me or more likely they're going to become really fucking angry and they're going to push 0.91

00:34:15.300 back and you know I do think we're going to be seeing that increasingly I mean you know I I'm 0.93

00:34:21.160 in this kind of small world of publishing there was a very interesting story that was published

00:34:24.740 in the observer um a few weeks ago that talks about the kind of the female domination of the 0.79

00:34:29.060 publishing world. And I think it's absolutely true that's happening. The bookseller, the trade,

00:34:34.120 the trade paper of the book industry a few months ago, two months ago, published their list of the

00:34:41.140 rising stars of the book industry. And somebody worked out they were 85% female. And I don't know

00:34:46.380 if that's true or not exactly. But if you look at that cover of the bookseller magazine, it's Hunt

00:34:50.680 the White Man. I mean, I think there's one there in this huge constellation of faces. And no one 0.81

00:34:55.880 was talked about that it was just accepted as this is the future you know so if you're a young

00:35:00.220 white man that loves reading and loves publishing and is desperate to become a publisher and you see

00:35:04.480 that how are you going to react and I just think if I say if it continues it's I think it's going

00:35:10.640 to continue because no one's pushing back against this you are I think in a few years going to see

00:35:14.920 the resurgence of a significant men's rights movement I mean at the moment the men's rights

00:35:19.280 movement is a joke because people just laugh at it um you know often for good reason but I think

00:35:24.100 it's going to stop being a joke, you know, at some point in the coming years.

00:35:28.560 Because what it needs, that movement, is someone charismatic, someone to come in,

00:35:34.040 someone who can, you know, get people together, someone who can mobilise a group. And then once

00:35:38.940 that happens, you know, it's ready to explode, isn't it?

00:35:42.460 It is ready to explode. And, you know, I don't want to say that Jordan Peterson was, you know,

00:35:47.960 you know yeah I mean he he wasn't a men's rights activist I don't think in in that sense but but

00:35:54.240 I think what Jordan Peterson did show was two things one was as you say there's a huge feeling

00:35:59.180 out there that you know men absolutely flock to him and the other thing I thought about the Jordan

00:36:04.060 Peterson kind of phenomenon was that was that in my journalistic career I've written I've written

00:36:08.500 about men's issues I've written about male suicide I've written about male survivors of sexual

00:36:12.560 violence. And so, you know, I've thought a lot about male pain. And, you know, in my corner of

00:36:18.820 the world, a left wing corner of the world, a very kind of feminist kind of focused corner of the 1.00

00:36:23.040 world, the idea of male pain is something to be laughed at. It's like, are you joking? It's

00:36:27.380 ridiculous. I mean, you don't talk about it. You know, it's a kind of thing to be mocked. 0.97

00:36:32.160 And I think, you know, I think what was fascinating about Jordan Peterson was that he

00:36:35.400 actually understood male pain. You know, he said, I know that you're hurting. And I understand that

00:36:41.380 you're hurting and i feel it and i care and and that was just you know electric and and so it was

00:36:47.400 a you know when he was at his peak um before he got sick it was extraordinary to see and i think

00:36:52.720 and i think what he did was he just pricked at that uh that that growing feeling of upset that

00:36:58.720 there is in the kind of in the masculine world at the moment because we're in this weird situation

00:37:03.020 where you're not supposed to talk about it because if you talk about it you're the enemy

00:37:06.500 but it's there but the other thing jordan did which i thought was very important is that he

00:37:12.560 emphasized for men and women because his message resonates with people of i nearly said of all

00:37:19.300 genders fucking hell all 960 his message resonated with him my point was that he forced people to 0.94

00:37:30.060 understand that in a society that we live in now competing on dominance and competing on virtue 0.99

00:37:38.720 are not really routes to happiness the best way to compete and be happy is to compete on competence

00:37:45.320 yeah that's the point that i think he always emphasized which is why i i was very frustrated

00:37:51.260 at the reaction to jordan from people of the persuasion that you were describing earlier

00:37:57.180 because I don't think he was saying

00:37:59.320 or trying to lead a movement of men

00:38:02.380 to recapture their primitive state and go in.

00:38:06.180 What he was saying is

00:38:07.420 if you want status in a society

00:38:09.680 that, yes, looks down on you at the moment,

00:38:12.180 the way to achieve status is competence.

00:38:14.600 Be better.

00:38:15.840 Be better.

00:38:17.220 Take responsibility.

00:38:18.560 Achieve more.

00:38:19.720 Create more.

00:38:20.920 Show the world that what you're doing is valuable

00:38:23.000 and the world will reward you for it.

00:38:24.740 That's what he was saying.

00:38:25.660 and to me the reaction to Jordan Peterson was so disappointing precisely because of that because

00:38:31.320 I see him as an agent of detoxifying all of that anger and all of that unpleasantness that you

00:38:39.920 refer to but instead he was treated as being the very head of that movement yeah I just thought

00:38:45.460 it was such a catastrophic misinterpretation of it yeah I don't think I've ever seen a public

00:38:50.340 figure so misunderstood to Jordan Peterson I have to say I mean I became aware of him again because

00:38:56.300 of my interest in the storytelling brain and my book before the status game was the science of

00:39:00.080 storytelling and I was researching that and and so I came upon his videos which talks about the

00:39:05.280 psychology of storytelling and this was kind of before he you know the c16 stuff and so when all

00:39:10.700 that happened I just thought this isn't this I've not seen any I've watched all the hours of his

00:39:14.220 videos and I've not seen any of this kind of weird you know version of Jordan Peterson that I'm now

00:39:18.740 being told um um is there and i completely agree i mean you know in the in the book i take a sort

00:39:24.380 of broader view and tell kind of the history of the world from the point of view of the of the

00:39:28.200 status game and and i talk about the idea of modernity modernity is when the emphasis shifted

00:39:34.640 from playing virtue games to success games that that's what that's about so before the industrial

00:39:39.160 revolution revolution before the um enlightenment um most of us are playing virtue games it was it

00:39:44.740 It was honor, duty, religion, stay in your lane, be respectful to your superiors.

00:39:50.600 You know, that was life for centuries.

00:39:53.080 And then it all changed, you know, post-industrial revolution.

00:39:57.400 We started specifically attaching success to things like discovering useful knowledge, making things more efficient, creating inventions, bigger, better, faster, more.

00:40:09.740 And, you know, like with the Yams, when you do that, we're going to do it. 0.80

00:40:12.500 Wherever there's status, we're going to flock to that thing.

00:40:14.740 And so, yeah, I think, you know, it's counterintuitive. But in the book, I argue that if you want to, if you really want to save the world, if you want to do good in the world, if you really want to be a virtuous person, actually, you should play a success game. Because success games are the things that have, you know, saved billions of lives through vaccinations. Success games have lifted billions of people above the poverty line.

00:40:36.100 it's people you know solving problems that have done those things not people in churches not

00:40:42.220 royal families which is another kind of form of kind of virtue game um so yeah you know it's

00:40:49.040 playing those success games um that i think is is the real answer the real way to do good in the 0.71

00:40:54.700 world but isn't the problem as well i'm such a negative bastard isn't the problem as well that 0.81

00:40:59.500 virtue games are just much easier to play than success games it's easier to write a tweet guy 0.98

00:41:06.020 Like, Dave Chappelle is a transphobe and he should be castrated for trans rights, right? 0.99

00:41:10.780 Okay. 0.98

00:41:11.340 It's far easier to write that tweet than it is to go. 0.90

00:41:14.340 To actually castrate him. 0.88

00:41:15.400 Yeah.

00:41:15.880 Or to be Dave Chappelle.

00:41:16.680 Or, number one, to be Dave Chappelle.

00:41:19.240 Or to go to university to study biochemistry and then go on and do virology and then become a virologist and then work in whatever field it might be.

00:41:29.200 That is far more difficult.

00:41:30.880 It requires discipline, hard work, years of study.

00:41:34.260 100%.

00:41:34.860 Yeah.

00:41:35.240 i mean virtue is the easiest form of status to to gain and again you know write about that in the

00:41:40.080 book and and i think that's also why social media is so toxic because all you've got to do is to

00:41:44.960 make yourself feel a bit better is to retweet somebody with a sneer a little comment and all

00:41:49.400 your followers go yeah yeah you feel good about yourself so it's so easy it's like popcorn status

00:41:54.540 you know you're just shoveling it down your neck um and yeah but competence is really hard it's

00:41:59.840 difficult to become good at something um um but but you know and again as somebody that's

00:42:05.920 instinctively left-wing that that was kind of that was took me a while to get there because

00:42:11.140 because as a left-wing person you're kind of drawn to this virtue stuff about the to the campaigners

00:42:15.920 and and the people who who you feel are motivated purely by virtue but but it's not really true i

00:42:22.160 mean those people are important they need to be part of the mix but it's the it's the competence

00:42:26.680 people that really are saving the world hey constantin do you love trigonometry of course

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00:43:29.840 See you there, guys.

00:43:32.080 Will, one of the things you've referred to a number of times now

00:43:34.580 is left and right,

00:43:35.380 and I've actually tried to steer this conversation

00:43:37.200 as much away from that as possible

00:43:38.940 because I think the moment anything becomes about politics,

00:43:41.280 it makes it more difficult for people to hear.

00:43:43.900 So you, as an instinctively left-wing person,

00:43:47.360 actually, I think both from Francis are in many ways as well,

00:43:49.860 But what is the difference between left and right on these issues?

00:43:53.940 Because it's often said that people on the right think that people on the left are wrong

00:43:57.820 and people on the left think that people on the right are evil.

00:44:01.040 That argument is often made.

00:44:03.240 But I don't know that that...

00:44:04.500 I don't know.

00:44:05.220 I think that's a bit simplistic.

00:44:06.640 You know, I think you haven't got to go back very far in history

00:44:09.640 to see right-wing people viewing left-wing people as evil.

00:44:13.000 You know, I think...

00:44:13.800 Because they are. 1.00

00:44:14.080 You know, I think that, you know, in the kind of most stupid form of commentary, 1.00

00:44:19.860 you see, you know, right-wing people 0.98

00:44:23.580 just assuming all left-wing people are basically communists

00:44:25.580 and left-wing people seeing all the right-wing people

00:44:27.440 are basically Nazis and, of course, you know... 0.80

00:44:29.500 What I'm getting at is there a difference

00:44:31.440 because I think it would be fair to say

00:44:33.780 that left people prioritise emotional experiences

00:44:38.480 often more than people on the right,

00:44:41.120 certain parts of the right, maybe.

00:44:42.860 So not offending people is more of a sacred value

00:44:46.920 on the left, at the moment at least,

00:44:48.820 than it is on the right.

00:44:50.500 Although, as we talked about earlier,

00:44:52.200 30 years ago, not offending people

00:44:54.260 was very much a right-wing thing.

00:44:55.480 Yeah, I mean, that's right.

00:44:56.100 I mean, it just depends.

00:44:57.220 I mean, so for these exact reasons,

00:45:00.200 I try to take it away from left and right

00:45:01.740 as much as possible in the book.

00:45:03.380 And I came across this really useful concept.

00:45:07.240 The psychologist most known for it

00:45:08.880 is Professor Michelle Gelfand,

00:45:10.940 an American psychologist.

00:45:12.060 And she writes about tightness versus looseness.

00:45:15.540 And she writes about it in the context of cultures.

00:45:17.820 but I expand that to groups to games that we play and and so you know it's fascinating because she

00:45:24.220 says that there are there are tight cultures in the world who are kind of what she calls rule

00:45:28.820 makers that they're all about the rules and being punctual and doing things correctly so Germany is 0.69

00:45:33.000 relatively tight the UK is relatively loose the northern states of America relatively loose the

00:45:37.800 southern states are relatively tight and so you know the the tighter that you are the more

00:45:44.160 conformist you are the more hostile you are to outsiders um i think it's true to say that the

00:45:50.380 more likely you are to kind of fall for the kind of wild stories of your group so so the southern

00:45:56.400 states of america of course more much more religious than the northern states much more

00:46:00.400 kind of atheistic um and you know she's got some extraordinary statistics you know even down to

00:46:06.880 the things like the trains run on time better in in in tight cultures well we knew that yeah

00:46:11.320 but also like when you look at the the clocks in public spaces are much more likely to be in sync

00:46:17.260 in a tight country yeah but but but you can apply that to groups too and in the book i do and i write

00:46:22.300 about the kind of the tightest form of the very tightest form of a status game is a cult and and

00:46:27.700 so so so what a cult is is we are your only group we are your only source of status no other forms

00:46:34.840 apply um we are your only identity and that's why they get you to cut off contact with friends and

00:46:39.380 relatives and all that other stuff because that's it and we're going to give you a very precise set

00:46:43.480 of rules to follow and if you follow this very precise set of rules you're going to have amazing

00:46:48.220 status so you know the famous most the most obvious example is Scientology but because I'm

00:46:53.340 scared of them I talk in the book about the Heaven's Gate cult and the Heaven's Gate cult

00:46:57.180 with things like you literally telling you that you take your vitamins every day at 7 22 telling

00:47:01.960 you how much toothpaste you can have on your toothbrush and how much how much water you can

00:47:05.780 have in your bath so that's the tightest form of tightest form of game and then you can loosen out

00:47:10.940 and you can see well you know political groups like like political groups could be tight and

00:47:15.640 loose and i think left and right the ones that are going after each other they're tight groups

00:47:20.860 they're they're living a tight world they're playing a tight game which is about conformity

00:47:24.820 and hostility to um outsiders uh yes i thought it was useful partly because it takes it away

00:47:31.340 from left and right and you can see throughout history left and right that you know things change

00:47:36.520 as you move through as events i mean look at now you talk about the southern states and the northern

00:47:40.600 states and whatever being tight and loose but look at covid actually the democratic states have

00:47:45.480 been much stricter in terms of vaccine passports vaccine mandates all of that so i guess what what

00:47:51.140 i'm hearing out of you is it flips over time and it changes depending on maybe who's got the physical

00:47:56.400 power the cultural power or whatever yeah i mean a group yeah i guess groups can can change in

00:48:03.000 in terms of tightness and looseness but but but it it all depends on on on who whose rules that

00:48:09.120 you're following you couldn't necessarily say that the tight southern states are looser because

00:48:14.180 they're not following rule following the mask rules it's just that they're following their

00:48:17.540 own rules that it's their internal rules which are saying we are liberty freedom loving people

00:48:21.720 we don't care about the government so so that they're still conforming to rules but it's their

00:48:25.740 own particular rules that they're conforming to and certainly you're seeing very aggressive

00:48:29.520 um anti-mask people in the southern states of the u.s um you can see some of the behavior

00:48:36.520 the kind of the anti-vaxxer communities you know um you're also seeing very aggressive behavior

00:48:42.400 in the pro-mask yeah yeah yeah and they're going to be tight people too playing a tight game and

00:48:48.620 and that's what unites them is their tightness it's their inability to deal with other people

00:48:53.480 not following their rules and their compulsion to kind of police those rules.

00:48:59.120 So again, it's not a left or a right or a vax or anti-vax.

00:49:03.020 It's how tight you are compared to how loose you are.

00:49:06.720 And how do we get away from that?

00:49:08.900 How do we get away from those extremes to a world that is more balanced

00:49:13.120 when I personally feel that we've become more extreme?

00:49:17.240 Yeah, I mean, in the book I write about justice,

00:49:20.300 i think what's really important is is that we play many games for an individual so so as i said you

00:49:27.160 know like like the most pathological way of living your life is in a cult and that's dangerous not

00:49:32.940 only because it makes you very vulnerable to very strongly irrational beliefs but also what happens

00:49:38.720 if you're kicked out of the cult or the cult collapses that's your whole identity everything

00:49:43.060 that you've ever worked towards you know goes away um uh so in the book i write about sort of

00:49:49.680 playing a hierarchy of games this idea that so we know that people with a variety of identities

00:49:55.200 tend to be happier and healthier um because they've got it's like a hedging they're hedging

00:50:00.060 their status so they've got that you know you've you've got lots of different ways of owning

00:50:04.180 status i'm you know i'm interested in politics i've got this hobby of building i know rockets

00:50:08.940 or whatever it whatever you whatever you're doing i love i love architecture i've got my job i like

00:50:14.060 to be a good parent there's lots of different ways that you can feel good about yourself and feel

00:50:17.320 feel statusful and i think that's that's the that's the maximally healthy kind of psychological

00:50:22.300 lifestyle and so so i think on the individual level i i think that's what we should be trying

00:50:27.320 to do playing this kind of hierarchy of games where you've got one main game because competence

00:50:31.580 is hard as we've been saying you need something to focus on but also hedging it so so that you

00:50:36.840 haven't got all your all your eggs in that kind of um one basket but i think societally i you know

00:50:42.400 i i you know i i think it's i think it's happening slowly i think i think slowly we are going to see

00:50:49.560 new norms you know new kind of cultural status game rules that the the start sort of turning

00:50:55.640 against that kind of cancel culture narrative you know i think at the moment you're seeing

00:50:59.580 although he's wobbling the netflix guy you know netflix very well has the the the head by the time

00:51:04.580 this goes out the company could have gone bust chapelle could have been like hand drawn and

00:51:10.140 yeah and yeah and so you are seeing you know glimmers because i think what i think what the

00:51:16.200 problem has been is that we've seen an absolute failure of leadership i think we've seen

00:51:21.140 institutions and leaders completely fold because it's dreadful it's it's terrifying the idea that

00:51:27.960 you're going to be that you or the company that you lead or the organization that you lead

00:51:31.220 is going to be the target of a cancel culture mob and your personal reputation and the reputation

00:51:35.460 of all the people that you care about is at risk is terrifying so it's quite glib to say oh they're 0.81

00:51:40.380 just a bunch of cowards but i can understand the cowardice you know i'm not saying i'd be any

00:51:44.660 better if i was if i was there heading up a university or a big corporation but but but i 0.93

00:51:49.260 think what's going to hopefully going to happen is is it's going to be that that that thing where

00:51:52.540 the more people stand up to this and get away with it and actually earn status by getting away with

00:51:57.380 it earn respect and esteem by by standing up for their staff and going no we're not having this

00:52:02.140 We're not going to allow, you know, our team to be treated like this.

00:52:06.300 And the more leaders see other leaders achieving that, I think slowly you're going to see finally these institutions sort of standing up to this, you know, this small minority of people who are often dominating the narrative at the moment.

00:52:19.700 And coming back to just because we're sort of in the advice for people phase of the conversation, one of the things that interests me the most out of what you were talking about as someone who's, you know, I've been extraordinarily wealthy.

00:52:36.840 When my father spent a few years being very wealthy

00:52:39.880 for a very short period of time,

00:52:41.700 we lived in a former Soviet boss's mansion.

00:52:45.380 Whoa.

00:52:45.960 Which had, you know, hectares of land around the mansion

00:52:49.380 and servants, all of that crazy stuff.

00:52:52.120 And then within 10 years, I was sleeping in a park in Edinburgh

00:52:55.220 with nowhere to live and no money to pay around and whatever.

00:52:57.860 So I've been up and down.

00:52:58.820 And I think actually, while my experience may sound extreme,

00:53:02.940 most people have been up and down in their life.

00:53:04.920 All of us have been, quote unquote, down and out.

00:53:07.720 Almost everybody.

00:53:08.580 Almost everybody's had the experience of being bullied,

00:53:11.400 of being humiliated, of loss of status, of loss of future.

00:53:15.420 The loss of the future is such a terrifying thing

00:53:17.400 to anyone who's ever felt like,

00:53:19.560 I don't have a future that I thought I had.

00:53:22.300 It's horrific.

00:53:23.980 How does one as an individual deal with constructively

00:53:28.840 loss of status, humiliation,

00:53:31.220 finding yourself in a position

00:53:33.080 where you feel like you have no future?

00:53:34.920 How do you rebuild yourself?

00:53:37.220 Because as you talked about, and Jordan Peterson has talked about this,

00:53:40.380 physically, physiologically, that has an impact, right?

00:53:44.280 But since it's something that we're all going to experience,

00:53:47.240 there has to be a way to get yourself out of that situation.

00:53:50.400 How do you do that?

00:53:51.740 Yeah, I mean, it's easier said than done, obviously,

00:53:53.680 because, you know, obviously status is incredibly important.

00:53:56.500 When we lose it, we really genuinely suffer.

00:53:59.400 And in the book, I talk about this idea of depression,

00:54:03.760 which is often depression comes from this loss of status,

00:54:07.280 this feeling that I don't have any status

00:54:08.740 and I can't think of a way to get it.

00:54:10.360 And you kind of scuttle back to the safety of the cave

00:54:12.820 and you kind of protect yourself

00:54:13.860 by not taking part in society and not trying anymore.

00:54:16.900 And I think that's the danger,

00:54:19.200 is that back of the cave kind of feeling.

00:54:21.880 Because I think, you know, the good thing about human life,

00:54:25.140 especially modern human life in the West,

00:54:27.620 is that we're surrounded by status games

00:54:29.860 that we can choose to play.

00:54:31.240 There are opportunities everywhere to earn status.

00:54:32.940 and you know we've talked a lot about success games but virtue games can also be really good

00:54:37.080 you know you can become a meditator which is a kind of virtuous thing you can you know become

00:54:41.880 a religious person if that's if that's the way that your kind of brain is leading you so so i

00:54:47.420 think it's getting over that trying to pull yourself out of the back of the cave and think

00:54:52.100 if i can't restore my status in this particular game from which i've been excluded what other

00:54:57.780 games can i can i you know can i can i choose to play you know you could volunteer for the samaritans

00:55:03.260 and and you know literally help save people's lives that's that's that's virtue play um but

00:55:09.060 you could do that tomorrow you know that if you can do that that surely is an amazing um source

00:55:15.880 of potential status for somebody so yeah i i think i think that's really the answer it's just

00:55:22.220 pulling yourself out of the out of the caves as hard as that is as bloody painful as that is

00:55:27.880 and and as much courage as that takes and getting out there and just trying to find another game to

00:55:33.420 play and that is a wonderful place to finish the interview on an upbeat note as well

00:55:39.220 but it's brilliant before we do a couple of uh questions for our local supporters our final

00:55:46.020 question is always what's the one thing we're not talking about but we really should be i've already

00:55:51.460 touched on it in the chat actually but i've been thinking more and more about the coming the return

00:55:55.760 of the men's rights movement you know i really think it's coming i think it's coming and it's

00:55:59.680 going to be serious this time and it's going to be people younger than us um when they're hitting

00:56:04.220 you know it's the people who are maybe 13 14 now when they get 18 19 and and they're going into

00:56:09.380 this world and and if they're still being treated like the enemy and and if it still feels like

00:56:14.220 especially the professional world i mean the arts world that i live in if it still feels like it's

00:56:18.000 hostile to young white men i i think i i think it's going to come out of the realm of the kind

00:56:24.260 of incel joker the men's rights movement it's going to start becoming a serious a serious force 0.97

00:56:29.720 so i i think that's that that's the thing that that if we're not talking about it now i think

00:56:34.000 we are going to be talking about it soon and we just went depressing again sorry well that's why

00:56:39.380 i'd like we talked about jordan peterson i think that's why his message and the message that other

00:56:44.900 people like him try to send out is very very important which is find the right game yeah

00:56:51.660 because you know even even in dating right people you know young men complain that oh most young

00:56:57.740 women are woke and all yeah sure they are but they still want a man who's he's going to know 1.00

00:57:02.720 how to whatever it is bleed the radiator take out the rub they still want that yeah subconsciously

00:57:08.600 because that's that's how we're wired so if you are a man who is competent you're going to be

00:57:13.380 desirable one way or another yeah so if you work on your competence you don't need to be angry

00:57:17.680 you're going to be rewarded for that you know and i just think that's such an important message and

00:57:22.980 i i hear what you're saying and i hope that if that sort of movement starts to emerge then it

00:57:29.500 has the right people in place who rather than harnessing that anger and taking a negative

00:57:33.620 direction can take those men young men and point them towards the thing that the things that have

00:57:39.520 always made men successful yeah i mean i think that's right i mean you know i'm my wife is a

00:57:45.240 is a women's magazine editor she was editor of cosmo she's an editor of l and i think she's a

00:57:49.700 she's a great embodiment of the positive form of feminism which is not about she's not about 1.00

00:57:53.420 bringing men down attacking men going on about the patriarchy she's about empowering and encouraging

00:57:57.500 women so how can we help women be amazing it's all positive and and she's found great success

00:58:02.960 in the world in the magazine world by you know she's found that when when you put that message

00:58:07.860 rather than negative message magazines.

00:58:09.400 People buy the magazines more.

00:58:10.940 That's what women want. 1.00

00:58:11.760 People want to feel, I'm going to have status.

00:58:14.900 An optimistic, positive message will respond to that much more.

00:58:18.300 And I think you're absolutely right

00:58:19.400 that if a new men's movement does emerge,

00:58:22.660 it's really important that it just doesn't become a mirror

00:58:25.640 of the worst forms of feminism, 1.00

00:58:27.640 which is just man-hating, negative, unfair portrayals

00:58:31.860 of what men are and this kind of paranoid view of the world.

00:58:36.360 Because that could easily happen.

00:58:37.860 that kind of, you know, incel-lite kind of thing.

00:58:40.600 Much better is the vision

00:58:44.160 that I suspect Jordan Peterson would endorse,

00:58:47.500 which is actually, you know,

00:58:49.280 how can we just make...

00:58:51.000 How can we encourage men to get out of that negative space

00:58:54.160 and not be paranoid and not become misogynists

00:58:56.840 and become better men, you know, more competent,

00:59:00.200 stronger, more courageous,

00:59:01.560 and not be ashamed of those, you know,

00:59:04.020 those qualities which are kind of, you know,

00:59:05.960 traditionally associated with masculinity there we go made a positive again boom boom all right

00:59:11.040 everybody make sure you get the status game we barely touched on many of the things that you've

00:59:15.300 covered in here so make sure you grab that uh thank you so much for coming on we're going to

00:59:19.000 do a couple of questions for our locals but thank you for being here and thank you all for watching

00:59:23.380 and listening at home we'll see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one

00:59:26.980 or roshow and they always go out 7 p.m uk time 2 p.m eastern standard or for those of you who

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TRIGGERnometry - November 11, 2021

Cancel Culture Explained with Will Storr

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