What I Love About Natural Selection

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I enjoyed taking notes while reading, because i started drawing diagrams. Whit makes me wonder how much you do this for yourself as you go in. I am the absolute dispassionate, unforgiving nature of natural selection. And your anthropomorphizing me right ow, because you can't help doing that either. But it'still very funny. The young the status displaying behaviours. It is all keyed into the yam thing where we have a brain that is eager to discover that which are indicators of status and then take that to the next level once we've indicated it. You talk about er studies, were your corporations where the high ranking people get a pen on their desks? What

In this episode we welcome back author Will Storr whose new book, The Status Game, feels like required reading for anyone confused, curious, or worried about how politics, cults, conspiracy theories communities, social media, religious fundamentalism, polarization, and extremism are affecting us - everywhere, on and offline, across cultures, and across the world.

What is The Status Game? It’s our primate propensity to perpetually pursue points that will provide a higher level of regard among the people who can (if we provoked such a response) take those points away. And deeper still, it’s the propensity to, once we find a group of people who regularly give us those points, care about what they think more than just about anything else.

In the interview, we discuss our inescapable obsession with reputation and why we are deeply motivated to avoid losing this game through the fear of shame, ostracism, embarrassment, and humiliation while also deeply motivated to win this game by earning what will provide pride, fame, adoration, respect, and status.