The Status They Hold for Us Is the Cash Value of Their Opinion of Us

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People's sense of their own well being is so often anchored to comparison with a lot of others. And that's why all boats rising with the same tide doesn't really solve most people's problems. We only tend to care about others' view of us and therefore mark our status this way insofar as we respect the other people, which is to say, based on how we perceive their status.

Sam Harris speaks with Will Storr about the role that status plays in human life and culture. They talk about the taboo around caring about status, egalitarianism, the perpetual insecurity of status, how we play multiple status games simultaneously, identity, social connection, dominance, virtue, success, status as an evolved mechanism, gossip, status and health, the consequences of humiliation, the role of social media, status and politics, conspiracy thinking, moral panics, status and philanthropy, and other topics.

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