This is a brilliant essay. In actuality, life does involve games, but IMO a life which has no story is not fully human. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/life-story-or-game.html
I’m
a liberal arts type, so I see life as a story. Each person is born into
a family. Over the course of life, we find things to love and commit to
— a vocation, a spouse, a community. At times, we flounder and suffer
but do our best to learn from our misfortunes to grow in wisdom,
kindness and grace. At the end, hopefully, we can look back and see how
we have nurtured deep relationships and served a higher good.
Will
Storr, a writer whose work I admire enormously, says this story version
of life is an illusion. In his book “The Status Game,” he argues that
human beings are deeply driven by status. Status isn’t about being liked
or accepted, he writes; it’s about being better than others, getting
more: “When people defer to us, offer respect, admiration or praise or
allow us to influence them in some way, that’s status. It feels good.”
High-status
people are healthier, get to talk more, have more relaxed postures, get
admired by their social inferiors and have a sense of purpose, Storr
argues. That’s what we’re really after. The stories we tell ourselves,
that we are heroes on journeys toward the true, the good and the
beautiful — those are just lies the mind invents to help us feel good
about ourselves.
Life
is a series of games, he continues. There’s the high school game of
competing to be the popular kid. The lawyer game to make partner. The
finance game to make the most money. The academic game for prestige. The
sports game to show that our team is best. Even when we are trying to
do good, Storr asserts, we’re playing the “virtue game,” to show we are
morally superior to others.
The desire for status is a “mother motivation,” and the hunger for status is never satisfied.
I
think Storr has been seduced by evolutionary psych fundamentalism. He
is in danger of becoming one of those guys who give short shrift to the
loftier desires of the human heart, to the caring element in every
friendship and family, and then says, in effect, we have to be man
enough to face how unpleasant we are.
But
I have to admit, the gamer mentality he describes pervades our culture
right now. Social media, of course, is a status game par excellence,
with its likes, its viral rankings and its periodic cancel mobs. Vast
partisan armies fight wars of recognition.
American
politics, too, has become more a war for status than a way for a
society to figure out how to allocate its resources. Donald Trump’s
career is not mostly about policies; it’s mostly about: They look down
on you. I will make them pay.
Foreign policy sometimes looks like a status game with Vladimir Putin and his humiliation stories: The world does not see and respect us; we must strike back.
In an essay called “The World as a Game,”
in the invaluable Liberties journal, Justin E.H. Smith points out that
social credit systems, like China’s, literally turn citizenship into a
game, awarding points or penalties depending on how people behave.
One
of the features of the gaming mentality is that it turns life into a
performance. If what you mostly want is status, why not create a fake
persona that will win it for you? Some of the people who stormed the
Capitol on Jan. 6 were dressed like they were from some blockbuster
movie or a video game.
People who see
themselves playing a game often get lost in the make-believe world of
the game and depart from the messiness of reality. In an essay called “Reality Is Just a Game Now,”
in the equally invaluable New Atlantis magazine, Jon Askonas notes how
much being active in the QAnon movement is like playing an alternate
reality game.
QAnon players “research”
through obscure forums and videos, searching for clues that will
support their conspiracy theories. They show up at Trump rallies
carrying signs with phrases that only other players will recognize.
Askonas
writes: “For devoted players, status accrues to finding clues and
providing compelling interpretations, while others can casually follow
along with the story as the community reveals it. It is this
collaboration — a kind of social sense-making — that builds the
alternate reality in the minds of players.” He concludes that the
role-playing game is to our century what the novel was to the 18th
century, a new mode of experience and self-creation.
The
status-mad world that Storr describes is so loveless — a world I
recognize but not one I want to live in. Ultimately, games are fun, but
gaming as a way of life is immature. Maturity means rising above the
shallow desire — for status — that doesn’t really nourish us. It’s about
cultivating the higher desires: The love of truth and learning and not
settling for cheap conspiracy theories. The intrinsic pleasure the
craftsman gets in his work, which is not about popularity. The desire
for a good and meaningful life that inspires people to commit daily acts
of generosity.
How do people gradually learn to cultivate these higher motivations? To answer that, I’d have to tell you a story.
I’m
a liberal arts type, so I see life as a story. Each person is born into
a family. Over the course of life, we find things to love and commit to
— a vocation, a spouse, a community. At times, we flounder and suffer
but do our best to learn from our misfortunes to grow in wisdom,
kindness and grace. At the end, hopefully, we can look back and see how
we have nurtured deep relationships and served a higher good.
Will
Storr, a writer whose work I admire enormously, says this story version
of life is an illusion. In his book “The Status Game,” he argues that
human beings are deeply driven by status. Status isn’t about being liked
or accepted, he writes; it’s about being better than others, getting
more: “When people defer to us, offer respect, admiration or praise or
allow us to influence them in some way, that’s status. It feels good.”
High-status
people are healthier, get to talk more, have more relaxed postures, get
admired by their social inferiors and have a sense of purpose, Storr
argues. That’s what we’re really after. The stories we tell ourselves,
that we are heroes on journeys toward the true, the good and the
beautiful — those are just lies the mind invents to help us feel good
about ourselves.
Life
is a series of games, he continues. There’s the high school game of
competing to be the popular kid. The lawyer game to make partner. The
finance game to make the most money. The academic game for prestige. The
sports game to show that our team is best. Even when we are trying to
do good, Storr asserts, we’re playing the “virtue game,” to show we are
morally superior to others.
The desire for status is a “mother motivation,” and the hunger for status is never satisfied.
I
think Storr has been seduced by evolutionary psych fundamentalism. He
is in danger of becoming one of those guys who give short shrift to the
loftier desires of the human heart, to the caring element in every
friendship and family, and then says, in effect, we have to be man
enough to face how unpleasant we are.
But
I have to admit, the gamer mentality he describes pervades our culture
right now. Social media, of course, is a status game par excellence,
with its likes, its viral rankings and its periodic cancel mobs. Vast
partisan armies fight wars of recognition.
American
politics, too, has become more a war for status than a way for a
society to figure out how to allocate its resources. Donald Trump’s
career is not mostly about policies; it’s mostly about: They look down
on you. I will make them pay.
Foreign policy sometimes looks like a status game with Vladimir Putin and his humiliation stories: The world does not see and respect us; we must strike back.
In an essay called “The World as a Game,”
in the invaluable Liberties journal, Justin E.H. Smith points out that
social credit systems, like China’s, literally turn citizenship into a
game, awarding points or penalties depending on how people behave.
One
of the features of the gaming mentality is that it turns life into a
performance. If what you mostly want is status, why not create a fake
persona that will win it for you? Some of the people who stormed the
Capitol on Jan. 6 were dressed like they were from some blockbuster
movie or a video game.
People who see
themselves playing a game often get lost in the make-believe world of
the game and depart from the messiness of reality. In an essay called “Reality Is Just a Game Now,”
in the equally invaluable New Atlantis magazine, Jon Askonas notes how
much being active in the QAnon movement is like playing an alternate
reality game.
QAnon players “research”
through obscure forums and videos, searching for clues that will
support their conspiracy theories. They show up at Trump rallies
carrying signs with phrases that only other players will recognize.
Askonas
writes: “For devoted players, status accrues to finding clues and
providing compelling interpretations, while others can casually follow
along with the story as the community reveals it. It is this
collaboration — a kind of social sense-making — that builds the
alternate reality in the minds of players.” He concludes that the
role-playing game is to our century what the novel was to the 18th
century, a new mode of experience and self-creation.
The
status-mad world that Storr describes is so loveless — a world I
recognize but not one I want to live in. Ultimately, games are fun, but
gaming as a way of life is immature. Maturity means rising above the
shallow desire — for status — that doesn’t really nourish us. It’s about
cultivating the higher desires: The love of truth and learning and not
settling for cheap conspiracy theories. The intrinsic pleasure the
craftsman gets in his work, which is not about popularity. The desire
for a good and meaningful life that inspires people to commit daily acts
of generosity.
How do people gradually learn to cultivate these higher motivations? To answer that, I’d have to tell you a story.
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