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

by Will Storr

But just as consequential are the accumulations of damage we can cause with subtle moments of dominance. The glowers, the sighs, the wails of complaint: such twitches of animalism might help us achieve some immediate goal, but they’ll lead to our being de-ranked in the minds of others.

It’s easy to forget we have status to give, that it costs nothing and it never runs out.

Whether we’re asking a favour or issuing a task to a subordinate, it’s advisable to resist even subtle markers of dominance, allowing them to reach the ‘correct’ decision without putting them under pressure. If they sense they’ve had no choice in the matter, they’re robbed of the gift of feeling good about their action.

tyrants don’t succeed by telling people they’re wrong. Instead, they start by saying what we already believe. Their arguments make moral sense.

The Communists, Nazis and Satan-hunters each offered a game that felt virtuous and hopeful. Their leaders told their players a story that they wanted to hear – they were right, they were moral heroes and they were on a glorious path to a promised land of elevated status.

Perhaps the best mode of protection is to play many games. People who appear brainwashed have invested too much of their identity into a single game.

Psychologists find those with ‘complex,’ multiple self-identities tend to be happier, healthier and have more stable emotional lives.

Some forms of status are easier to win than others. For those of us who aren’t pretty, virtue is probably the easiest to find of all.

Many of us could benefit from consciously reducing our moral sphere. How much time do you devote to the judging of other people? How much cheap and tainted status do you grab for yourself by doing so?

Morality poisons empathy.

Life in the status game can be tough, not least in the hyper-individualist, neoliberal world in which we play today. Research suggests it’s changing us: we’re more sensitive to signals of failure in our environment and that makes us more perfectionistic.

we’re continually offered new and shifting symbols of what it is to be a winner: thinner, larger, whiter, darker, smarter, happier, brave-and-sadder with this career triumph and that many likes. I remind myself that these symbols we chase are often no less ridiculous than giant yams and that none of us are competing with everyone in the world, no matter how much it can feel that way.

I believe we can all take consolation in the knowledge that nobody ever gets there, not the superstars, the presidents, the geniuses or the artists we gaze up at in envy and awe. That promised land is a mirage. In our lowest moments, we should remind ourselves of the truth of the dream: that life is not a story, but a game with no end.

Nobody wins the status game. They’re not supposed to. The meaning of life is not to win, it’s to play.