Status Is The Opposite of Love
I was re-reading this wonderful post in by Adam Mastroianni about small ways to make yourself better, and one thing that really grabbed me was the idea of abandoning “Pointless status tests.” His idea was that it’s OK to compete, but any effort expended in useless competition robs society of better efforts. He places the pursuit of useless status on par with embezzlement of public funds.
That’s why, in my opinion, we should feel the same derision toward people who engage in pointless competition as we feel toward people who embezzle public funds. We all benefit from the public goods that society provides—safety, trust, knowledge—and so we all owe society some portion of our efforts in return. If instead you squander your talents on the acquisition of purely positional goods, you are robbing the world of its due. It’s like commandeering a nuclear power plant so you can heat up a Hot Pocket.
While reading this, I had one of those moments where an entire dam of semi-articulated ideas about status and morality that had been holding back a river of indignation finally burst and came rushing through my body.
I feel a visceral sense of disgust whenever I see someone playing a useless status game. It drives me crazy. These markers for ranking our worth against arbitrary benchmarks are the opposite of a love-centered existence that we all intuitively know is better. Why do we create this hell for ourselves where, at any moment, we can be promoted or demoted based on a designer label, a new color, the latest model of tech?
Which iPhone do you have? How many feet long is your yacht? Which year was that watch made? How many carats is that diamond? Were you at that party? Have you eaten that hot pepper? Could you get a reservation at that restaurant? Have you seen that play? Where did you go to school? Our dignity and worth as human beings should never be measured in square feet, salaries, or titles, and we all know deep down that it’s immoral to do so.
I remember in the ‘90s, there were rumors that in El Salvador, the very rich had rooms in their palaces with air-conditioning on full blast so that they could wear their fur coats at parties. I have no idea if it is true, but it sure captures the horror of the useless status game in its extreme. It’s got it all: Animal abuse, wasted resources, and extravagant wealth amid extreme poverty, all for feeling better than everyone who is outside that room and most of the people inside it as well.
I know it’s a cliche to blame capitalism for all our social ills these days, but I can’t find an economic system more suited to optimizing our weakness for pointless status than our current one. The entire influencer economy is an engine of pointless status games.
It’s like we’ve given up entirely on virtuous motivations, like a poker player so far behind he shoves all his chips into the middle in a final Hail Mary of status gaming: We’re all in on feeling better than each other as measured by endless, absurd indicators. Every swipe, like, and follow on social media is another benchmark against which we can measure ourselves in relation to each other. I need to eat here. I need to wear that. I need to go there. I need to take pictures of myself doing all those things and share them with strangers.
Anyone with a heart knows that love is the only way off the ride. The old truism, “the best things in life are free,” is fiercer than it sounds. The best things in life are not free; they demand that we lose. Love is giving without expecting anything in return. Love is looking foolish in front of someone. Love is not winning, it is surrender. A good life leaves a trail of losses in the status game in its wake. But we should not feel ashamed when they lose these status games; we should feel ashamed when we win them.
Amen to this one!