On our universal obsession with status and how it distorts so much of human behavior.
Table of contents
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Competition for social status structures all human activity.
Everyone’s playing a status game, sometimes multiple status games, and if you’re not aware of that, you may not understand why you do what you do — or why you don’t do what you wish you would.
Social media has by instinct worked out how we play status games, and wrapped itself around status games.
🎨 Impressions
In this book, Will breaks down the evolutionary reasons for why status is such a major factor in our lives by explaining the science and psychological research. Once he sets up the foundation, he dives into so many important topics such as how social media has affected us as well as our desire to rise to the top by working ourselves to death. The author also covers the fight for status within political groups that make our current problems with polarization even worse. Overall, a very insightful and well-structured read.
🔍 How I Discovered It
Ali Abdaal's Podcast.
👤 Who Should Read It?
It challenged the way I think about the role of status in my own life and in some ways it made me feel less terrible about some of my unhealthy fixations. If you find yourself needlessly worried about status, it might shine some light on the problem for you.
☘️ How the Book Changed Me
The book is peppered with facts, parallels, observations, and historical references that really made me think. This hidden necessity is scarily missed by most of us. But status is one of the most important factors in life, we should educate ourselves on this, so we can each play the game in the least harmful way.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
To our brains, status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break.
The higher we rise, the more likely we are to live, love and procreate. It’s the essence of human thriving.
Humiliation can be seen as the opposite of status; the hell to its heaven.
📒 Summary + Notes
#1 Status-Seeking Mechanisms Lurk Behind the Scenes
If the conscious experience is organised as a story, this book concerns the subconscious truth that lies beneath it.
The gist of that truth? "The higher we rise, the more likely we are to live, love and procreate,” Storr writes. “It’s the essence of human thriving.”
The problem is that this fuels the best and worst aspects of humanity. While scientists and inventors wanting to solve problems or make a name for themselves can drive progress, people’s desire to get ahead of the competition also results in murders, wars, and even genocide. How do we make sense of this mixed scorecard?
One way is to analyse the two paths that can lead to high status: prestige and dominance.
Both appear to be equally effective ways of gaining status.
The crucial difference is that domineering players typically force people to respect them, whereas prestigious leaders have been freely chosen by their followers.
The latter, as Storr explains, is a sustainable strategy; the former isn’t
#2 Prestige is our most Marvellous Craving
We grant it to people with the expertise our group needs to succeed. Although prototypical forms of prestige have been identified in wildlife, such as elder elephants leading their herds to water, no other species has stretched the psychology of prestige as far as humans have. Unlike any other animal, we are a fully fledged cultural species. We need to be socialized from the moment that we’re born, and we rely on collective wisdom for our survival.
Success and virtue games help explain the psychology of prestige.
In success games, status is awarded for exceptional achievements that demonstrate skill and talent in established contests (think of professional sports and tech start-ups).
In virtue games, status is awarded to people who are conspicuously moralistic, obedient, and dutiful (think of religious or royal institutions).
The flip side of prestige is dominance, gaining status through intimidation, manipulation, and coercion. No surprise that this type of leadership traces back millions of years. We share with chimpanzees and our other primate relatives a psychology hypersensitive to dominance. Of course, these strategies aren’t mutually exclusive, and Storr suggests each of us configure a winning formula of prestige and dominance in the games we play.
#3 Humiliation is the Antithesis of Status
In the most serious cases, Storr says we sink so far down the rankings that we’re no longer considered useful players. The only way to recover is to start afresh and rebuild from the ground up.
However, there’s another option available for those who are slipping and can’t get themselves up: annihilation.
Storr highlights an African proverb: “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” “If the game rejects you,” he writes, “you can return in dominance as a vengeful God, using deadly violence to force the game to attend to you in humility.”
E.g. Storr spots this sense of entitlement and gnawing resentment in criminal behavior, notorious acts of espionage and sabotage, and among extreme political movements. Most poignantly, Storr draws parallels with the rise of Nazi Germany. “The Nazi catastrophe can’t be understood,” Storr writes, “without acknowledgement of why the Germans came to worship their leader as a god.”
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