107 - Will Storr - Status Games

Two for Tea Podcast

Will’s website: https://willstorr.com/ Follow Will on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wstorr References Will’s two previous Two for Tea appearances: https://soundcloud.com/twoforteapodcast/17-will-storr https://soundcloud.com/twoforteapodcast/30-will-storr-the-psychology-of-stories Buy Will’s book Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selfie-How-West-Became-Self-Obsessed/dp/144728366X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1551697010&sr=1-1&keywords=selfie+will+storr Buy Will’s book The Science of Storytelling: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Storytelling-Will-Storr/dp/0008276943 Buy Will’s novel The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone: https://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Howling-Killian-Lone-ebook/dp/B00B73VMCE Buy Will’s book The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B7N26DS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i3 Buy Will’s latest book The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Status-Game-Will-Storr/dp/0008354634 The Rise of Victimhood Culture by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Victimhood-Culture-Microaggressions-Spaces/dp/3319703285/ ‘Who Is the Bad Art Friend?’ - by Robert Koller New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html ‘Tight and Loose Cultures: A Conversation with Michele Gelfand’ - by Dave Nussbaum, Behavioral Scientist: https://behavioralscientist.org/tight-and-loose-cultures-a-conversation-with-michele-gelfand/ Timestamps 2:03 Iona waxes lyrical over Will’s reading voice. 3:16 Iona reads an excerpt from The Status Game on “the tyranny of the cousins”. 6:18 The three different types of ‘status games’: dominance, virtue, and success. How these still influence our social life today. How we share these games with other animals. 10:23 How Will’s concepts link with Jason Manning and Bradley Campbell’s delineation of three types of culture: honour, dignity, and victimhood. How different types of status games have been dominant at different periods of history. How we have returned to virtue games after a period dominated by success games. 13:14 The Bad Art Friend controversy and its relation to the ideas in Will’s book. Why status matters to us as much as food and water. Why we become annoyed when other people claim status: the relativity of status. 19:52 Will further explains the concept of “the tyranny of the cousins”. How this applies to today’s social media and cancel culture. Social media just changes the landscape within which our instincts act. 26:10 Have we improved morally over time? The Pinkerian view à la Will: progress as a story of our overcoming how beholden we are to primitive status games. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution replaced virtue games with success games: status rewards for knowledge. Success games = progress. Status-seeking in science. 30:08 Michele Gelfand’s ‘tight’ vs. ‘loose’ cultures and how Will applies these concepts: tight vs. loose games. Tyrannies and cults as tight games. ‘Tight virtue games’ on Twitter: conformist, punitive. 34:34 Do we need tight games such as religion to function as a society? Has there been a decline in the quality of the kinds of status we can aim for today? Lack of pride and dignity as a hidden form of deprivation in the post-religious world. Is our obsession with virtue nowadays a result of the lack of meaning in our capitalistic lives? 41:52 The shift away from in-person interactions to online interactions. ‘Being listened to’ as a form of status that we now seek online. ‘Inflation’ of online status in this regard. How the online world negates our brains’ complex, evolved social systems. 45:52 Why do smart people believe stupid things? Why do ordinary, decent people do evil things? And how does all this relate to status? How does the status game perspective explain the Nazis? and more on full version.