The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It

by Will Storr

our reward systems are activated most when we achieve relative rather than absolute rewards; we’re designed to feel best not when we get more, but when we get more than those around us.

The trouble is, the New Left and New Right tend to see everyone who’s not for them as the enemy. And so the political centre, where the majority live, finds itself under attack from both sides, leaving many feeling alienated, baffled, angry and afraid as the world churns around them.