#2102 - Will Storr

CNN. at one point in time, when Bourdain had a show on, they were doing some very interesting things. They were trying to do shows, not just the news, right? So they had, No Reservations. was the best one of them.

They just told Anthony Bourdain, just be you and do your best version of your show. And they really just got out of the way. And it was fucking amazing.

But W. Kamal Bell was really good at being calm. United Shades of America. United Shades of America. Really good at being calm.

Like talking to KKK people. And he's black. And he's a comic. But he's just a very nice guy. He's a very nice guy.

Like a genuinely nice guy in real life. And so when he's doing a show, even when he's confronted by the most ignorant racists, he can have conversations with them. And they're like, well, you're not like the others.

That one gentleman who... Reza Aslan, is that his name? That was another good show. They did some interesting stuff. They did quite a few interesting shows.

Where they were just shows. It wasn't what it is now. Which is this? like bizarre version of news TikTok. Just grabbing you with everything that's going to terrify you every day.

And there's so much to terrify you about today.

You know?

And that's why I wanted to talk to you here. Because it's just... I think your book is The Status Game.

Mechanisms that make people understand, like behavior patterns. In a way, instead of just accepting them. Because I think a lot of people fall into accepting behavior patterns. But what you're showing is like these status games that human beings play. They're sort of wired into our being.

And we don't recognize them. They can get hijacked by far right movements or far left movements. A lot of different things can happen that can really screw your life up. If you get hijacked by these just normal mechanisms of human thinking.

We have to be a good Christian. And that means following certain rules. And that's what brains just want to do. Brains don't really care about what's true. Brains are always asking this question.

Who do I have to be? And what do I have to believe? In order to earn connection and status. And we're all vulnerable to this stuff. And that's how people end up believing fucking crazy things.

Because the brain is just believing what it has to believe.

It's like changing genders. Like you can't go male to female and back to male again. It's fucking too complicated. It's a one shot deal. So you get one shot.

If you start out a liberal, you're a lifelong liberal. And then, at 36, all of a sudden you become the most hardcore right-wing Republican. That seems like, well, what did you believe before? and what happened? Did you take mushrooms?

Did you fall on your head? Did something happen where you just radically changed your ideology? Or did you get captured by the idea of being accepted with much more vigor by the other side? That's one thing that they really do enjoy. when someone bails on the other side.

And then, again, you can only do it once. But you get really embraced.

We don't argue about these beliefs. But there are certain categories of belief that possess us. And these are the beliefs that we form our identity around and the beliefs that we plug our status into. So, you know, like if you're a Christian, it's like I believe. Jesus died and in three days later, got up.

And, as I said, you know, these beliefs are kind of dangerous because they take us over. It's not enough just to believe them passively. You have to act them out with your life. And so these are the beliefs that drive things like the satanic panic, cult movements, communism, Nazism.

These are beliefs that sort of possess people and take them over. It's like a parasite. They're kind of scary things. But, as I said, you know, we're all vulnerable to these kind of active beliefs.

They were having so much fun. And I think of myself at 21. And I had no real confidence in my view of the world. I was 21.. I was a young dummy.

I did not know, you know, what was correct and what was incorrect. I had a general sense. My family was very left wing. My parents were hippies in San Francisco. So I had sort of an ideology attached to that.

But I had no idea how anything in the world worked. And if I ran into the wrong yoga teacher.

And this set of beliefs a hero has. And once we've plugged into that group, we orient ourselves towards becoming that person. And, you know, cults are interesting. Because cults are like, all human groups, are kind of cults. But looser.

So every human group is a status game. In the sense that it's a group of people who believe the same things. And there's sort of rules for being part of that group. And the more, the better you become at following those rules and becoming its ideal of self. The higher you rise up that status game.

The only difference between cult and a religion and a business and a political group is that it's much tighter. So the rules are much stricter. Like there's a zillion rules. Like, you know, I've written before about what they call, what was the cult that they castrated themselves?

He's probably like 35, you know, back then. But had gone through a lot and was a strong leader. Was someone that you admired as a leader. And maybe in these tribal times, that's baked into our DNA. And when someone comes along and speaks confidently, I am never confident.

I'm never confident. If you're so confident about all these thoughts and about what life is about and where we're going and what awaits us. And if you follow these rules, God, that's so confident. I'm not that confident. So I could get sucked in.

Yeah. Any human could get sucked in. But is that what it's from? Is it from tribal times?

And what do you think?

And so we're very good at channeling those stories. And, as I said, every story has its design of what is a hero. And we try and become that kind of hero. So that's that holdover from the tribal day. But, more fundamentally, again, it's that brain question of who do I have to be?

What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do in order to achieve connection and status. And that's what a cult does. And that's what a charismatic leader does. It tells you this is what you've got to do.

These are the rules. This is who you have to become. And that's really seductive to us, subconsciously, because those two things of connection and status are so incredibly important to us.

Is it something you think should be taught very early on? It seems like this is information we should get to kids as young as we can, so they can recognize these patterns that people fall into.

What matters is what do I have to believe in order for people to like me and respect me.

And you can come up with some radical ideas and get people to subscribe to that. Especially if you attach things like death for people who leave.

Like, if you offered 72 virgins to a Christian, they'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm not fucking any virgins, you crazy psycho. How old are they? What are you saying? I'm not a pedophile, dude.

I just like women.

And again, I think it's a really good example of how human beings value status over their lives. I mean, that's how much we value status. We're the only animal that kills ourself, which is just a weird thing in itself. An animal would voluntarily end its own life. And very often the reason that people kill themselves is because it's a sudden drop in status or they feel completely isolated and alone.

So it says they're lacking in those essential kind of psychological resources, to such an extent that they end their own lives. And that's how much we value these things. And suicide bombers are another manifestation of that. Like, if you're going to consider me a hero and if Mohammed is going to consider me a hero, strap me up, brother. That's how much – that's how crazy we become about these social rewards.

You know, a young child – you're getting – I mean, what is the youngest suicide bomber they've ever used?

I mean, I've been – when I was a journalist, I've been meeting kind of crazy people, including Nazis, as part of my journalistic career. That's one of the things that always strikes me is that they really believe it, this crazy stuff. They believe it. So it's not evil in the sense that they're doing anything calculating by talking their children into being suicide bombers. They think they're doing something heroic.

Yes. They think they're doing something amazing, as did the Nazis, as did the communists.

And it can get – it can be really stupid. Yeah. It can be really stupid. We're fucking way more vulnerable than we like to believe. That's one of the things that I was saying when I watched those cult documentaries.

Part of me is like, thank God, I didn't run into those people. Thank God.

So they've got no identity. They've got no tribe. So they're really vulnerable to these cults, which – because what cults offer is absolute certainty. Yeah. If you cook your scrambled eggs this way, if you only put two inches of water in your bath, you're going to – the UFOs will come down and they're going to take you to the level above – that's what they were offering to you, though.

The level above human.

There's this crazy memoir of one of the guys who was in this group. He didn't cut his own balls off. He left before the ball cutting. But he was jealous. He wanted to have his balls cut.

And there was only one person that could have it done in the beginning. And they flipped a coin. And he was really annoyed that he lost the coin. flip. Oh, my God.

But what was interesting about his memoir was he said that people talk about brainwashing in cults. And people talk about how we were forced to follow these rules. But we wanted to follow the rules. Like, not following the rules would be like being a NASA astronaut and just not caring about how the space shuttle works, you know. So they're not – they don't consider themselves brainwashed.

They consider themselves – well, they're just in a status game, like any other status game. It's just a very, very strict one.

What is it that they do? Because, I remember, someone was explaining to me – someone who left the church was explaining to me how, like, if someone would be hostile, you have, like, a very specific way you –.

Yeah. You're a suppressive person. Or a potential trouble source. Dude, I ordered Dianetics in, like, 1994.. I had just moved to L.A.

and I thought it was a self-help book. I was like, all right, yeah, fucking, look it. Your brain's going to explode. You've got to get your shit together. Look at all these people that are succeeding on Dianetics, you know.

I was 26 or whatever I was. So I ordered this book and they've never stopped sending me things. Oh, no. I mean, they fucking never stopped sending me things.

Maybe that's a good cult to join. Yeah. Maybe, if they, just let me be me. Because it seems like that was part of it. There was a big allure over how many successful people were following that religion.

I mean, some of the most successful actors. Tom Cruise is one of the most successful actors of all time, and he's literally the poster boy for that.

But then I kind of did a lot of this research, and once you accept that what humans need to be healthy psychologically and physically is connection and status, you see that that's actually what religion provides people. That's what religion provides my parents is that they're connected into community, and they feel important. Yeah. They feel they're good Catholics because my dad conducts the choir and this, that, and the other. And so that's invaluable.

That's what humans need to survive. And in the current world, in the huge populations in which we live, it's very hard to feel securely connected. You said a moment ago, the tribes in which we evolve are very small, like 30 to 50 people. So it's quite easy to feel securely connected. It was quite easy in that environment to feel important, like, valued by other people.

I mean, probably it was not rare in the tribe to feel invaluable, like you're needed because everybody was needed. There wasn't many people around to find the tubers and catch the rabbits or whatever. But in this day and age, in these huge groups in which we belong to, it's much harder to feel relative status, because you're competing with millions of people, especially online. And I think that's a source of a huge amount of misery in the modern world. It's stress.

I call it identity, anxiety, identity stress. We feel really unsatisfied with the amount of connection and status that we have because we exited these fucking massive international tribes now.

It seems to me there's like a pathway for this. Yeah.

We get them from the news, which is increasingly politicized and hysterical. Yeah. And so the outrage goes up.

And it has this particular model of self. Right. Which we kind of the brain identifies and turns us into.

But you do know there's a difference between sales people that are just real friendly folks and then super saley guys. And those super saley guys are like, how does that guy turn that off? Like that's such a bullshit way to talk.

And he realized that The Waiter was just behaving like a waiter, like a classic Parisian waiter. He's going, look at his movements. And he was just really annoying. John Paul Sartre. He's acting in bad faith.

He's doing the dance of The Waiter. That's not really who he is. Right. He's just being The Waiter. And he said, there's the dance of the auctioneer.

There's the dance of the used car salesman. And that's kind of what we do.

When Jamie tore the place down, he's not this, Jamie. Jamie that owns the club tore the place down. He swore. he saved that for me. I want that little piece of memorabilia.

Yeah. There were so many people that saw Hicks and were like, God, he's so profound. I want to be profound. But you don't have shit to say. You don't even read.

But yeah, there's just a lot of that. There's a lot of posturing. That's not really how you feel. But you see how this is appealing. And you see that there's a pattern that seems to be successful.

And then you just mimic that pattern, mock that pattern. Yeah.

That anybody can experiment. Right. But most experiments go wrong. But if you experiment with the form of stand up or whatever. If everyone's doing Hicks and you come up with something new and it works, that's incredible.

The David Tell problem is David Tell is so good that when you work with him all the time, you start delivering your punchlines like him. But they're not as good as his punchlines. And you fucking sound like David Tell. But it's not even – they're not like plagiarists. They're just easily influenced people that are starting.

They're not good. yet. You know what I mean? And you get susceptible to patterns. Yeah.

Incredible. That's someone dedicated.

It's like when you watch an old boxer and they can't talk anymore. It's kind of a similar feeling. Because in the early days, when he was running for sheriff of Picken County in Colorado, in Aspen, he was on fire. He was amazing. He was at the height of his verbal skill.

He was young and vibrant. And then, to see him at the end, where he could barely, you couldn't understand what he was saying. It was like everything was a slur. It was all this weird, like he had a bunch of health problems, hip replacements. It was before he killed himself, but not much before.

And that's intolerable for somebody like that to live with. That's the tragedy of that. Yeah.

Johnny Depp narrated it in the movie. And it was fucking great. He narrated a couple of these Hunter pieces in the movie. And one of them was like how the 60s. See.

if you can find that, Jamie. When Johnny Depp does this, Hunter S. Thompson,

he narrates this story about the wave pulling back. It's the wave of culture. And it's so eloquently, brilliantly written. And it's about the hope that he had in the 1960s.

And how the 1970s came and it all pulled back. It's a brilliant piece. It's brilliant. And it's just, this. is it.

Strange memories on this. Isn't that beautiful?

And I think, with us, though, there's hope that we'll eventually get to some place of normalcy. And some semblance of peace. But what happened in the 1960s is fucking bananas. I mean they basically turned this counterculture hippie love movement into Charles Manson. And the Manson family.

And the fucking CIA was dosing people with LSD. They were doing anything they can to stop the anti-war movement. Anything they can to stop these hippies. And made everything illegal. They made marijuana.

Well, marijuana was already illegal. But all the Schedule 1 substances. It's all the sweeping part of the 1970s psychedelic act. that was all about the civil rights movement. It was all about just arresting people for any kind of protest.

Any anti-government. Anti-war. Let's find these hippies. Everything's illegal. Fuck you.

Go to jail. And they put water on it. They just put the fire out.

And when I was doing my research for my book Selfie. I was sort of. Because I was interested to know. Like, if you change the rules of the status game. Do we change as a.

As a culture. As a bunch of people. And it really does seem like that. Like if you think about who were in 1960s. Versus who were in the 1980s.

You go from. Fuck the man to greed is good. You know. Yeah.

Like. And I found this really quite sinister interview. From 1981 with Margaret Thatcher. Where they're interviewing her about. You know what are your big plans.

And she said. She was going on about. You know it. In the last 30 years. I think, I've been about the collectivism and getting together.

And now that we're going to get rid of all that. And increase competition. And she did this thing. She said. The method is economic.

But the object is to change the soul. Which is a really like megalomaniac. James Bond villain thing to say. Whoa. But she did do that.

They did do that. Like. Change the soul. Yeah. Like.

So. But by changing. The rules of. Who we have to be in order to. Achieve success.

They changed who we were. Like. We became. You know. As a people.

Gordon Gekko. Material girl. Madonna. Whitney. Whitney Houston.

The greatest love of all. Is loving yourself. Like. We became. You know.

This, big. As you say. We went from. Pots of cocaine. It was.

There was a really interesting study. They found in 1983. They were looking at. Changes in birth names. And for generations.

And generations. Babies have been called, things like. You know. Alfred. And John.

And Barbara. Like. All the traditional names. But in 1983. Suddenly.

We started naming our kids. Weird names. Because. We wanted. To.

Our kids. To stand out. And be a star. And. And when you look at.

The changes in values. Between, like. The 60s. And the 80s. And 90s.

Suddenly. Money becomes a. Dominant value. Celebrity becomes a. Dominant value.

Being good looking. Becomes a much more. Dominant value. But there was. There was a.

A study. About 20 years ago. They asked. Two and a half thousand. British.

Under tens. What is the best thing. In the world. And these under tens. Number one.

Was being a celebrity. Number two. Was being good looking. Number three. Was being rich.

Like. That's who we've become. And. And the big change. Is the economy.

Like. We've become these kind of. Neoliberal. Profit obsessed. Celebrity obsessed.

Seems like. Everybody wants.

60s. I think it was 1965.. It was less than half of people. Thought being rich. Was a.

Important thing in your life. And now it's way over 75%.

Of social media. And reality shows.

What defines the 80s. Is these big. Economic changes.

Radical individualist. You had to be a. Get up and go. Um. Profit motive.

Uh. Self-sustaining individualist. Like a. Right. Like a competitive individual.

Um. Because before that. We had the big state. We had big social security cushions. We had.

Public housing. And they. They got rid of all of that.

You're saying greed is good. Yeah. Don't. Don't be that guy. But also.

Don't be lazy. And rely on the state to take care of you either.

I think it was Tony Blair that talked about the idea of. Neoliberalism with cushions. Which I love that.

It was brutal in the 80s. But we. Most of us are much wealthier now. Than we were in the 80s. Like it's kind of worked.

But. But it's also created much more. A separation. Between the top and the bottom. Much more inequality.

So the rich are much richer now. And the poor are much poorer than they were. In the middle of the 20th century. So let's say. It's created a lot more unfairness.

As well. So you do need those cushions. I think.

So there's. That's a part of the problem. It's like there's no escape. From like severe poverty. No.

Very few people escape. And. When you're in severe poverty. Especially if you're in another country. Like.

When people look at this caravan. Of people coming in through. South America. Through Mexico. I would do it too.

A hundred percent. One hundred percent. I'm not a terrorist. I would hope that it wouldn't be a terrorist. You know, in a different life.

But. One hundred percent. If I was living. In a place like Mexico. And I found I could walk to America.

Absolutely. I can get a job there. Let's go. You would do it. A hundred percent.

It's natural. Seems like. A normal thing. That people want to. Have a better life.

I think that. We've just got to figure out. Why. We have these. Parts of the world.

Why we have these communities. That are just never getting better. And help them.

That suck. And give them. Economic security. Give them. Education.

And health care. Set up school systems. That are really good. You're going to change the whole. Atmosphere.

You're going to change everything. Provide job opportunities. Set up places. Where. We should make.

How about. Here's a law. Here's a law. That should make. You can't sell.

Anything. Made by people. Who make. Less than would be legal. Here.

Wouldn't that be an amazing law. If we passed that. If we just said. Listen. We all know.

This is bullshit. Yeah. Okay. We all know. That if you're buying an iPhone.

There's a lot going on. That you wouldn't like to see. Yeah. There's a lot going on. From the mining of the cobalt.

Yeah. Yeah. To the people in the factories. I don't want to see that. I want the.

Shiny titanium thing. It's so pretty.

How the sausage is made. But if you really want to. I mean. If you really want to. Try to fix everything.

Everywhere. Say. I'm not buying. Anything. From anybody.

Who doesn't get paid. What you're supposed to get paid here.

Okay.

What are you allowed. To pay people. In Mexico. And how much does it go. Like.

Let's say. Let's pick a place. Juarez. Hmm. That's a.

Kind of a. Border town. Just like. If you. If you own a factory.

In Juarez. How much do you have to pay. Those people.

Where they look at how much. A big Mac costs. In each territory. And from that. They can work out the relative.

Strength of each economy. It's like. So. the test would be. You'd have to be able to buy.

X amount of big Macs per day. With your. Yeah. With your daily wage.

You know. We just have. This. Real weird desire. To never stop making more.

Hmm. Like. Real weird desire. To like.

Maximize profit. Expand. Expand. Make it big. Nobody ever has a company.

And goes. We're good. Yeah. Just like. Leave it like this.

So you're. You're always insecure. About your. You don't. Status is.

Imaginary resource. Like. It only exists in our minds. In the minds of other people.

Make sure that it's. Still there. It's still there. You're constantly. Measuring your state.

Like. Apple are measuring. Their status versus. Google. And Samsung.

Or whoever. So they. There's that. Constant chippiness. So.

So. You're always trying to. Ratchet up. There was this really. Hilarious study.

They did. Where they. They got a bunch of.

Multiple millionaires. And billionaires. And they asked them. How much more money. Would you need to be perfectly happy?

And uniformly. They said. Between two and three times. More money. And it's like.

And it's like. You're not going to be perfectly happy. You. Delusional. But that's.

That's the human brain. So. So. So. When I've achieved this thing, I'll be perfectly happy.

But of course, we're happy for about 10 seconds. Then we want the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. And actually, it's exhausting, but it's also how we built civilization. It's also an incredible, amazing thing that we're restless. We're never satisfied.

We want better, and better, and better, and better. It drives us forward.

Hey, I'm looking at the money, and it's not more. I'd like more money.

Every quarter has to go up, and go up, and go up, and go up. So that's a sort of damaged incentive, in a way.

You just have to be a company. You can't just sell your stuff to people, like whatever you are, what piece of this, and whatever you want to call it, stocks. You call it whatever you want. You're selling chunks of your company, right? No, you have to own it.

You want to be in business? You gotta own your own company.

So it's not just the quality. It's what you're getting, for your money goes down, and down, and down. So it's just kind of like fake. It gives you the illusion of growth in the company. We're making more money.

Yeah, because you're putting less berries in the yogurt. You know, that's why. You know, it's not a positive, productive growth. It's a growth that comes from cutting all the good stuff out of your product.

Own something, bitch.

That's what I think. This is my thought. I think that is, I think this whole, like, competing with the Joneses, keeping up with the Joneses, what is it, it always fuels technology at the end of the day, because that's the thing you buy, like, every year. People buy phones and laptops. If you're really balling, you buy a new laptop every couple years, you know?

And that is, you're constantly looking for new processors, new innovation, what is it, AR? How big's the battery? What's the battery life? And it's constantly going in this general direction of ever-complex technology that interfaces with human beings, and now with AI. And it's gonna be an artificial life form.

And whether it's 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, or it's already happening in a fucking lab in Ohio.

So, basically, the more status that you get in your group, everything gets better.

there is in the world, better than that dude and that person. And yeah, and that's what motivates. That's what pushes people to create amazing things.

Whether it's stocks and bonds or selling pharmaceutical drugs, they're fucking psycho competitive about that.

One time he was at this barbecue and the husband of one of her friends worked for Microsoft. And he's like rubbing Steve Jobs' face in it, saying, oh, we've invented the future of computing, you're done. It's this pad thing with a stylus. And apparently he really annoyed the fuck out of Steve Jobs. So Monday morning, Jobs comes into Apple, furious, swearing and going, right, we're gonna prove this prick wrong.

It's not a stylus, it's a finger. He used the finger. And from that barbecue came his rage. And from the rage came the iPhone. And that story was told by Steve Forstall, who was intimately involved with all this stuff.

And he said, it was not good for Microsoft that that guy went to that barbecue that day. He's absolutely right. But that status, it was personal for Steve Jobs. It was Microsoft telling Apple that they were fucked and that they'd solved computing.

I mean, with all the international chaos that's going on in the world, the conflicts, the wars, the Ukraine thing and the Israel-Hamas thing, it's like, fuck, man. How much longer? I mean, that's a status thing, too, right? And ultimately, ultimately. When you can get groups of people to go after other groups of people and be convinced that those people that you don't even fucking know are your problem, the fact that that game is still being played in 2024..

They call it the paraverbal frequency band. And you can't hear it consciously, but it's a way of organizing status hierarchies when we meet people. And the person whose top sets the tone and everybody else matches to meet the tone. And these psychologists studied a bunch of Larry King interviews, a bit like this one. And they stripped out the paraverbal frequency band and they could work out who he felt superior to versus who he felt inferior to.

So he felt inferior to, I think it was Liz Taylor and superior to Dan Quayle. And there were particular interviews which were very irascible and didn't go very well. And they were kind of, they weren't getting along. And one of them was Dan Quayle. And they found that they were just not matching.

So there's all this stuff going on beneath the hood of consciousness, which is constantly organizing us into kind of status games. And so, and it's that that causes the hierarchies of life. That's the reason why communism can never work, because they're trying to wipe out the effects of status in society, but you can't wipe out the effects of status in society because it's in our brains. You go into an elevator with three other people and you've already figured out within seconds who's the highest status, where you sit in the pecking order, who's got the nice luggage, who's getting out of the suites floor at the top. We can't help but do it.

And so that's that constant work of the subconscious brain. figuring out where we sit in. the status hierarchy creates human life.

Yeah, where's all the Polish people come from? So I went to Poland to find out where all the Polish people had come from. And we went to this old steelworks, this old sort of Stalin-era steelworks. And the Polish journalist who was my fixer said, oh, you know, I just mentioned casually how the Poles are such hard workers. And she was like, we're not hard workers.

We're lazy. We're like, I can't believe that you Brits think we're hard workers. And she said, we've got this post-Soviet mindset. So I said to her, what do you mean the post-Soviet mindset? And she said, well, when everyone's getting paid anyway, you're not motivated to do any work.

So in a steelworks like this,

nobody would do any work. And if somebody came in all enthusiastic and ambitious, they'd be bullied to fuck until they calmed down and stopped doing work. So that was how it worked. And there was a phrase like, you can turn up for work or you can not turn up for work. You're still gonna get paid.

So removing that stuff from human society removes something that we need, which is individual status. We're like, you know, if you don't reward individual status, you don't motivate people to contribute to work. And that's partly why communism collapsed, because it's incompatible with human nature. Like capitalism is the only system that we've got that is compatible with human nature. It rewards the status instinct.

And they phrase things in a way that if you oppose this idea that somehow or another you're cruel or that you're greedy or evil, that there's something negative about you being competitive. And it's essentially, I think of the roots of it as kind of a cop-out of people that have been beaten in life. Yeah. You know, there's this thing that certain people do when things aren't going well, they want to tank anything that's going well. You know?

You know, you are.

So this is the animalistic, you can force somebody to attend to you in status, either physically or with social violence of the kind you see on social media. There's virtue games. So people compete to have a reputation of being very virtuous, so courageous. Somebody who knows the rules, follows the rules, believes the sacred beliefs. So a religion is a virtue game.

The royal family, weirdly, is a virtue game, because it's about being deference and knowing the rules. And then there's success games, I call them, which is about competence, about being a great hunter, a great honey finder, a great sorcerer. And that's what defines the West. That's what made the West. what it is, is that we started playing, like for millennia, we were mostly playing virtue games.

It was caste, kingdom, Game of Thrones, kind of land. And then, starting with the Industrial Revolution, we started playing success games. So we started mostly like much more rewarding competence. And so that competitive instinct is channeled into figuring out how to solve problems, how to create wealth. And it's right that we reward that.

We've evolved to reward people who offer value to the human family, that status. It's not a negative thing in that sense. It's massively positive. And weirdly, capitalism is an economic system that does the same thing. It works with how status games work.

It works with how we've evolved to operate in human tribes.

We'd get rid of that. We'd get rid of people being interested in status. Everybody works together. But it just didn't work. Like, there were some anthropologists, sociologists, that went to the Soviet Union in the 50s and they found 10 distinct social classes in the Soviet Union.

All they did was they took the existing status game hierarchy, with the wealthy at the top and the workers at the bottom, and they flipped it. So the workers were at the top and the wealthy and former wealthy really were at the bottom. And those former wealthy, the bourgeoisie, the children of the bourgeoisie, were absolutely discriminated against, openly and horrifically. if you weren't tortured and killed, you were held back in every sense. And that's the thing about utopians.

Utopians often talk about. we're gonna get rid of the hierarchy, but they don't wanna get rid of the hierarchy. They just want a new hierarchy. You at the top, every single time. Yeah.

You cannot come, which is a very different sentiment. Then you can stay home if you like, and you still get paid. But you can come, but if you wanna stay home, you just get paid. And everybody just chose to stay home. It's nice, right?

And thank you for appreciating me. That's not a negative, right? If you have the money to do it, and it doesn't fucking stop everything in its tracks, sounds, great. Sounds, great. Sounds like a nice liberal hippie thing to do.

But the other one doesn't. The other one scares me because it's racist. If you're saying white people can't be here,

It's a bad idea. The idea behind appreciating people is great. But the idea about discriminating people in any way is bad. And if you're saying white people have to stay home, that's bad.

Wow. And that's how, you know, when you think about how, especially, you know, men, especially white men, especially straight white men, are treated at the moment. Talk, preach, brother.

They're former, you know, they're made to feel like former people. Like there's a whole generation of guys who've been raised in a culture where they're being made to feel, you've had your turn, sit down, shut up. The future is not for you. The future is for people who don't look like you and think like you. And so that former people really resonated with me.

It's like, you, straight white men, you're former people. You're yesterday's people. You're not the future. You're not tomorrow.

It's time to listen. That's my favorite. Just please be quiet and listen. Like, hey, sometimes that's good advice. And sometimes you're just telling people you want to talk.

And then, during a break, this woman came up to me and she worked for a major academic, like one of the biggest academic journals. And she said to me, there's a problem with, I've got a problem with what you've been talking about. And it's that most of these studies are by straight white men. And I was like, so, okay, and what's the point? And she was saying, well, you can't really trust them because they've got their own, they've got their own- They're all evil.

Their perception of the world is wrong. And I felt actually a bit intimidated by that, because I'm standing in the Guardian with this woman telling me that, effectively, I guess I've been racist somehow or sexist somehow. So I just said to her, I'm not going to have this conversation with you. Okay, and she kind of went away. But I just thought, but it was the fact that she worked for a major scientific publication.

She was telling me that because the work was done by straight white men, it could not be trusted. That's Mississippi level, like Mississippi 1932 level racism. It was absolutely a baffling kind of moment. And she was a smart person. She was clearly a smart person.

But again, that's the human brain. It believes what it has to believe in order to make itself feel important and valued.

It's so good. It seems like satire. It's so good.

But it's real, right? I mean, I'm seeing other people talk about it. Okay. So just post that. Let me see.

Let's see the article. Look at this, straight black men are the white people of black people. Oh.

One of those belief groups, they called them progressive activists. And these are people for whom the fight for social justice is at the heart of their identity. You know, they believe that how you get on in life is about not about your talent and your hard work, but about your race and gender. So we know who they're talking about. And so what was interesting about these people?

was it just astonished me. First, is that they are the richest of all the seven groups. So they had more people earning over 50,000 pounds per year as a family. And, secondly, that they were the most highly educated of all the seven groups. So these people that are constantly going on about privileged, if they're the most privileged people in Britain, they're amongst the most privileged people in the world.

So that was the first thing. The second thing which I thought was amazing was that they were six times more likely to make political comments on what was then called Twitter. And they make more social media contributions than all of the rest of the groups combined.

You're out here throwing paint on the Michelangelo's.

Like one of these, I think it was you, Gav, asked people,

who do you think should be the next governor of the Bank of England? A man or a woman? This is the kind of story that drives our media into paroxysms. You know, like if it's a, they've hired another white man. Oh, you know, they get the shivers.

And this poll found that 5% of people thought it should be a woman. 3% of people thought it should be a man. Everybody else pretty much didn't give a shit. You know? That's great.

That's the reality. That's good progress. Yeah, most people think, it doesn't matter.

It's got all those things to it. And that's a big part of it, is like worried about being shamed and cast out of the group. Yeah. Which is terrifying for people. So they're willing to say and believe things that aren't that logical.

And I agree with the cult thing, but I would just add that all human groups have cult elements. They have special languages, they have rules, hierarchies, rewards and punishments. It's just that cults are the tightest possible form of human group.

You bow and you enter the... I was so committed to this that I had this girlfriend when I was in high school and I had the keys to the gym, because I would work out there like anytime I wanted. I taught classes and stuff. And she wanted to have sex and I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it.

She was so hot. I wouldn't do it. I was like, I can't do it here. This is not, this can't happen here. At like 17,, I was so horny and so stupid.

But I was like, uh-uh, we can't do it here.

Yeah. But that's, there was a lot of weird stuff where, like some of the masters would date some of the married women. It was, it got real weird. Got real weird. Yeah.

Got real culty.

Like the yoga guru, guys start banging people's wives. It's just like, there was a place that I bought out here that was owned by a cult. I bought a place for my comedy club and I didn't wind up completing the deal. I got out of it because there was some problems with the property. And then I bought the place that I bought on Sixth Street.

But before it, I bought this place called the One World Theater. And the One World Theater was created by this guy. His name was Jaime Gomez. And he was a gay porn star and a hypnotist. And he started a cult in West Hollywood.

There's a documentary about it called Holy Hell. And then they moved out to Austin and he had his followers build him this theater so that he could dance in front of them. And that was the place that I bought.