 I got a mate 40 here. Welcome back to 40 University today's class is Sociology now I reckon there are a lot of blokes out there Who think and even some she was too off. I just do this one weird trick Yeah, I'm good. So as long as I'm good with Jesus. I don't have to really sweat anything else as long as I Observe the commandments of the Torah. I don't have to sweat about status or anything else or as long as I'm eating healthy I didn't sweat about anything else and like Religion is not like this one weird trick whereby if you do it then Then you're good like as long as you're good with Jesus Then you can just like flow through life or as long as you're getting all the anonymous gay sex that you crave You know, then you're good and you don't have to worry about anything else It's like, oh, you know, I met this refugee bloke and I brought him home And he's got these particular skills and now I'm getting sexually satisfied on a regular basis I don't really have to worry about anything else. Well, there's no one weird trick That just enables you to skate through life There's not like one answer. There's not like one thing that you finesse. It's not like, oh, you know, I I tick this box and Now I'm good like Status right you don't get to escape from the status competition and a lot of people think our 40 is overly obsessed with status like 40 He's just got this moral and psychological and social weakness where he's overly obsessed with status And I just think 40 he is at ease with the natural passions like when you look at me Do you not see a man who is at ease with the natural passions? All right, do you think I'm sitting here judging you for the amount of anonymous gay sex that you're having? No 40 does not judge All right, I am at ease with the natural passions for sex for fame for love for security All right for status for for money for honor All right, this is a face that is at ease with the natural passions Right and and I don't think that when you become Spiritual you then transcend the natural passions for sex for love for fame for honor for safety and security and status right you never get to Transform and graduate from the status game right because essentially your happiness level and your health is Largely determined by your status level. All right, your happiness and your health is largely determined by the quality of your attachments which enlarge Matter are going to be accounted for by your status level if you're a total loser Right, even the most patient Friends and family again I want to start to distance from you if you're consistently losing at life There's no way you're not going to exhibit all the symptoms of major depressive disorder or many of them Right, so you may think oh, I'm too smart. I'm too sophisticated. I'm too sexually nourished To be concerned about status games what you may think that you don't care about status games But status games care about you you don't get to escape the status race There is no escape because essentially what depression is and anxiety is is The same for humans as it is for other primates. It just means that you're losing at life when you lose attachments You're gonna lose in status when you lose in status. You're gonna lose attachments And when you're losing attachments and status, you're gonna be plunging in your health in your feeling of well-being in your happiness in in even your own confidence in your own reality like if You have something significant happen to you today and you go call a friend and try to tell your friend about it And they just get off the phone. They don't have time to talk to you So you call someone else a family member and they don't have time to talk to you two three people Essentially communicate to you. They have no interest in your anecdote about what happened today You're gonna start a question whether this really happened All right, you're gonna lose faith in your own ability to ascertain reality You're gonna lose faith in the reality of your own experiences Now I try to create a safe space here where we acknowledge and accept and we validate your lived experience but You don't get enough of these spaces in your real life where people Acknowledge you and acknowledge the reality of your experience and acknowledge your anecdotes and they show some interest in you You're gonna you're gonna doubt yourself. You're gonna your grip on sanity your grip on life is going to become attenuated All right, you don't get to escape the the status game if other people don't want to hear your stories You're gonna doubt whether these stories even happen You're gonna doubt your own ability to Be sane your own ability to be living in reality All right, we don't escape being a social animal and Interacting with others you walk into a room and people shy away from you There's no way you're gonna walk out of that room feeling better than when you walked in All right, you go to places and people shy away from you You're gonna be unhappy unsuccessful you're gonna have high levels of cortisol stress hormone in your blood and You're gonna start to doubt your own sanity on the other hand you walk into a room You walk into a group and people like ah, there's 40 Then I feel great. All right stress levels go down my feeling of strength and energy goes up and I feel a stronger grasp on reality a stronger grasp on sanity when I am successfully You know interacting and bouncing off other people So there's no escape from the status game Stalin had high status Heavy is the head that wears the crown. So yeah status does not solve all your problems in life Because guess what? There's no one weird trick. It's gonna solve all your problems in life But life is relentless It is endlessly challenging and you don't get to escape from the challenge by doing yoga Just because you can do a headstand you don't get to escape the challenges of life and the status game So I like this essay on unheard calm by Ed West life is one big status game so Captain James Cook was Major explorer from from England in the last half of the 18th century played a big role in discovering Australia and Two decades before he landed in Australia He was at sea and he's facing a desperate matter of life and death. The problem was scurvy, right? That's a deadly illness. It's caused by vitamin C deficiency It's been the curse of sailors for centuries prior. They'd been dying of scurvy So by the time he set sail for the South Pacific where they have lots of free love in the South Pacific in 1769 he had a lot of confidence in a remedy for scurvy The problem was the remedy was sauerkraut and sauerkraut was not a popular meal in England So this is a time when eating vegetables was frowned upon so how could he convince his crew to eat 7,860 pounds of fermented sauerkraut on their long journey east So what did he do? He ordered that it be served only at the captain's table Not to the rest of the crew that we noted in his journal the moment They see their superior set of value on it. It becomes the finest stuff in the world And that's how it works when we see high status people doing things and saying things We will naturally consciously unconsciously subconsciously start to emulate them Because everybody wants to rise in status Right. We have certain basic instincts that there is no escape from we have an instinct towards sex and love We have an instinct towards status. We have an instinct towards security meaning both physical security and financial security And you don't get to transform from these instincts what you want is to have these instincts in proper proportion But if these instincts get out of control then it's going to ruin your life, but these instincts and proper proportion are great So you should always be cognizant of your safety your financial well-being securing love and Seeking status nothing wrong with it. So Once the captain's table was serving sauerkraut then the lower-ranked players began requesting it and before long sauerkraut had to be Rationed so the number of men who died of scurvy on that expedition was a record breaking a zero So the beta battle for status it defines us. We never get to escape from it There's not one weird trick where we get to escape from the battle for status All right status provided the impetus for Homer's heroes for Shakespeare's heroes It's the subject of countless works of English literature and Russian literature. It's the inspiration for the most absurd fashions Now over the past few decades status markers like accents and dress have leveled and Traditional barriers to social climbing have or social falling have been reduced so now people can fall much more dramatically than they Used to be able to because we have fewer things holding people up because we're a less coherent cohesive society as we have more diversity and So our modern ways of signaling social status have become more nuanced more competitive and more vicious So life is a status game Three methods by which we reach the top dominance Competence and virtue look life is a spiral staircase, right? There are four stages that we move through and we never graduate from any one of these stages We can always enter into a new stage without even realizing it. There's a stage of mastery when we become good at something So I was struggling with some software recently But every day that I was struggling and learning various forms of software I knew that I was getting better and then eventually the software became second-hand So I was afraid of learning OBS for years Then I finally sat down and within an hour I had crossed the the fundamentals about three years ago Okay, so life is a spiral staircase four stages that were always in one of these four stages One is mastery we get good at something Another stage is grandiosity. So often we get good at something Then that leads us to have an overinflated view of our own importance. So mastery very often leads to grandiosity Which is where we usually fall and make a total fool of ourselves leading to feeling small in a big world and The final stage is helplessness All right so you can be in mastery and trip and fall and you're in helplessness you can be in mastery and your back goes out and You're in helplessness you can feel like you're in mastery and then you lose your job lose your friends lose your family and You're in helplessness. So whatever stage we're in we can always work on mastery We can always develop more mastery, but life is a spiral staircase. Alright status game three methods by which we reach the top So there's dominance Which is connected with mastery then there's competence which is mastery and then there's virtue Right, so we we use all of these methods to try to attain status now virtue is probably the most interesting way to attain status and probably the most dangerous way and The desire for status based on virtue inspires immense cruelty So status is extremely important to our health Right. Our health essentially reflects where we are in the status game Yeah, you can be on top of the world and then you run out as cough drops and then then where you are Now you can be getting all the anonymous gay sex you want But you're out of cough drops and you're trying to do a live stream and you start getting a tickle at the back Of your throat and then where are you mate? All right, so if we're more successful in our careers We tend to live longer All right So if we're feeling low status that that floods our bodies with stress hormones like cortisol Which puts us at much higher risk of major depression anxiety Neurodegenerative diseases heart disease cancer, right? So being a loser can be fatal, right? We often only have a fragile view hold on life That's why the Torah keeps quoting God Pronouncing I sent before you this day a choice between life and death choose life So why is God saying I put before you a choice between life and death is acknowledging that it's so easy to choose death All right, you're walking down you're walking down the street And you want to get back together with your ex-girlfriend and you think up I just get hit by a car. I'll go to the hospital and then my ex-girlfriend will come and visit me And we'll get back together All right, that's that's how close we are to choosing death or you're driving down the street and you're stressed at work And you just want to break and you think I wouldn't it be nice to just get into a moderate car accident So I can rest for a few days. Well very easily these type of accidents can prove fatal. All right, so being a loser Loosens your grip on life. It is frequently fatal You could catch COVID while waiting in line for your fifth booster shot All right, the people who feel low status are more likely to be Behaved in an ugly way which then increases their isolation and their low status They're more likely to pick up destructive habits like smoking eating sugar Like because when you're low status and you're losing at life you want the more desperate you need for distraction So the more likely you are to turn to porn or anonymous gay sex or sugar Soda caffeine drugs alcohol anything sports addiction Netflix addiction anything to get you out of reality All right, so obviously being overweight is a sure outward sign that you're a loser at life You walk into a high-rise in Manhattan or San Francisco or Los Angeles. There are very few fat people All right, you don't find among the upper classes even the upper middle class many fat people There are very few successful people who are fat So essentially being fat is just screaming to the world that you're a loser and people react to you accordingly All right, so winners are generally slender All right, so losers are much more likely to kill themselves They're They're much more They're much less ability to deal with setbacks such as loss of a job or a divorce or losing a friend losing a community All right So many men many women find the status game so stressful that they simply drop out But guess what you don't really get to drop out of the status game There is no escape now in Japan you got more than a half a million of the social withdrawal syndrome Now they're just locked in their bedrooms playing video games Yeah, why get sick when you could have a delicious sugar-free recall a lozenge So good. I mean don't have more than three three at a time but just use it moderately and It's wonderful tastes so good okay Among the benefits of high status is so real that many workers prefer a fancier job title over a pay raise You know better parking space over a pay raise Now our lost for status is insatiable just like our lost for sex is insatiable and our lost for Financial and physical security is insatiable. We have these basic instincts our loss for these instincts is insatiable They get out of control than they can ruin our life Now when a high status individual does something we subconsciously copy flatter and conform All right This is subconscious copy flatter conform programming is triggered and we allow highest status Individuals to alter our beliefs and our behavior we mimic not just their behavior But also their beliefs the better We believe the higher we rise so in certain social circles There are there are certain required beliefs and you don't you don't toe the line you don't get to hang out in these cool circles All right, so the more attuned we are to the belief systems of higher status people the more likely we are to rise in status The people will believe virtually anything if high status people suggest it People will believe obviously untrue things if it's the cool and status way to go So we tend to put a huge amount of effort into signaling and detecting status So high status people tend to speak more often to speak more freely to speak more loudly to speak more demonstrably They're more facially expressive They they achieve more successful interruptions in conversation Like when 40 speaks other people listen All right Successful people will stand closer to us They will touch themselves less. They'll use more relaxed open posture They'll have a steadier vocal tone So our vocal tone and the frequency of our voice the hum Changes to match that of higher status people. So there will be workplaces Where people will imitate the particular laugh of the boss or the vocal patterns of the boss Right, you can hear people just howling together. They're vocally members of the same tribe that writes at West So these status signals dominate our office life our religious life our corporate life our individual life and This is why the zoom Conferencing can be far more exhausting than real life meetings because it's harder to tell in a zoom meeting Whose body language tells you that they're high status All right, so in a normal meeting you can just zone out when low status people are babbling away So status our driver status is push forward Western civilization It's push forward the arts like the desire for status creates high-powered You know life-streaming performances like this one now. What about power postures? So I'm not sure but definitely Pulling in the opposite of a power posture. So a tight compressed pulled down posture definitely screams that you're a loser It's not all about the nookie. You can have all the nookie you want and Still be in at low status in many areas of life So art has been driven by the desire for status 18th century Britain membership in certain clubs and societies became an important social marker So the number of learners societies rose from 50 and 1750 to 1500 and 1850 this had an enormous impact on education wealth and science British cooking has improved dramatically from the 1980s with the rising prestige associated with leading chefs But status games do wonderful things. They can also be toxic. They do horrible things to people So political beliefs religious beliefs there are also status markers and they become more important as status markers Recent decades as other status markers have declined in importance So people adopt positions not just out of sincerity not just out of partisan loyalty Not just out of conformity but to signal social status To to align with something that that looks good, right? aesthetics is a huge Huge influence on political choices You want a type of politics that puts forward a certain aesthetic that matches who you aspire to be So crime and immigration All right liberal positions on crime and immigration are associated with higher education levels and many circles with higher status so low status Members of society are less likely to benefit from freedom of movement They're more likely to be victims of crime and so their vulgar views on crime and immigration the same views that I hold Which are the crime is a huge problem and we should be very tough on criminals and we don't need any more immigration at ease of low status perspectives in many circles Right because lower status people less likely to benefit from freedom of movement more likely to be victims of crime more likely to lose from Immigration now The rise of modernism at the end of the 19th century that came about because the masses became literate for the first time so when the masses became literate the Upper classes wanted to be able to distinguish themselves from the newly literate masses and so modernism arose as a repudiation of everything traditional and Accessible so with the rise of daily newspapers and the rise of radio and movies and TV then high status people needed to to go off in esoteric directions to show that they are higher status than the The great unwashed to read newspapers and magazines. So you've got Modernist architecture, which we almost all hate right the only reason that you'd love their modernist art is It's your way of showing your high status At pre 20th century buildings consistently sell for more money that they're more beautiful even though they have huge technological disadvantages Dislike of modernist architecture is one of the few things that every single demographic agrees on black white Asian male female rich boy young old They all prefer the vernacular style of architecture But there's one section of society which disagrees and that's architecture Students and the longest someone studies architecture the more pro-modernist their views So the longest someone studies literature the more pro-modernist their views the longest someone studies art the more pro-modernist their views Because you become attuned to status signals and you want to mark yourself out as a sophisticate as opposed to the hope of light Who share Prince Charles's love of pastiche So if the public suddenly decides that they like the stuff that wins architectural awards Then the highest status people have to go off in a new direction So people will tend to repeat untrue such as there's no such thing as race if they feel it helps their social position so all societal debates are in part a Status competition in particular the quest for moral status So we have learned to use virtue to raise our social status Because our commitment to virtue shows that we've got a commitment to the wider community so Virtue inspired like the witch hunts of the 17th century the ritual child abuse panics of the 1980s All right, and now QAnon is a perverse type of virtue signaling Like you know that there's some more powerful evil enemy out there who's abusing children Then we've got all this social media Led bullying. All right, this is always framed in terms of protecting the weak Protecting them from harm So the more people imagine themselves as protecting the vulnerable the more horrendous their behavior So you could call this altruistic evil people do terrible things out of love and a desire to appear virtuous Right, it's a status game seek the maximal removal of their Opponents ideally to deliver unto them reputational death So when the mob grows into a status gold rush massive blast of vindictive energy gets directed at the victim And then attracted by the prizes of social status for being a virtue signaling more and more ambitious players pile in the game becomes an animal of attack and people begin glorying with the ecstasy of dominance That status is not just important to individuals. It's also important to groups People feel their collective success and failure Intensely like if your team wins the Super Bowl, you're gonna feel great If your group is rising in status, you're gonna feel great if your group is declining in status You're gonna be sad and mad when your group is on top. You're gonna feel happy So modern-day identity politics has unleashed a competition for status that can never end So people keep wanting to raise the status of one group They want to increase the prestige of the ancestors through this one group So we're rediscovering like women in history gaze and lesbians in history blacks in history Influential people of color in history to try to raise the status of these oppressed groups The status is a zero-sum game But unlike wealth this pie cannot be expanded if your group rises in status other groups must fall And the psychological and physical effects of losing are real The desire for status can never be overcome it will always be with us But that doesn't mean you have to give into it Completely just recognize it's a natural instinct. But if you let it get out of control then you're in trouble. Oh That's easy. What which is highest status pronouncing status with a long a status or a short a stat status Status is far more prestigious than status Steve Saylor's got a great column here Why do Americans treat COVID vaccines and ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine as jealous guys between whom they must choose In which to put all of their faith in Why not just consider these complementary plans a plans B plan C? So when it comes to your health, why not have a multi-layered plant of defense roughly worked out ahead of time right perhaps based on how long each element takes to be effective so vaccines kick in with effectiveness after two three four five six weeks and How likely your doctor is to give you know a particular Medicine without you having to make an extraordinary case for it So if you're a typical American losing weight will be a sizable help and how bad COVID could turn out for you And it also will improve your health and your social status in many other ways and your self-esteem It's a good idea to buy a pulse oximeter. So I got a pulse oximeter here just to check Oxygen levels in my blood to see if everything's Hunky-dory, so if it gets under 90 you're in trouble Let's see. I'm doing so normally I go around about 99 Yeah, so I think I'm about 99 98 Yeah, I'm 99 so the the oxygen is just flooding through my blood But I bought a pulse oximeter for I don't know 40 bucks on Amazon so that way you can tell how and how Whether you need to go to the hospital or not if it drops under 90 You need to go to the hospital because you're not getting enough oxygen in your blood. All right, so getting vaccinated obviously that helps but Apparently the efficacy of vaccinations tends to wane with time So the current Delta variant is so infectious that tends to overwhelm that you're high the vaccines high levels of efficacy But it still remains a strong line of defense against hospitalization. Yeah, how well do you sleep? Get an overnight sleep test or they're just set your phone up to record your sleeping And you can see whether you're gasping or you can check in the various apps or tell you about the quality of your sleep so The medical community has learned better ways for treating COVID That's why it was it's a good idea to try to wear as long as possible before you you get COVID Because the medical community keeps becoming better and better more effective at treating COVID Right, so now if you become critically ill Medical staff will give you dexa methosone without you needing to ask for it and Regeneron that's what Trump got last October. It's free, but it's not necessarily widespread at present Now Joe Rogan says he's taking taking a monoclonal antibodies for his current case of COVID Sounds like a Regeneron cocktail Then there's either Mectin, which is a false medicine. I mean There's fluovacemia and there's hydroxychloroquine. There's molnupiravir. There's Brazilian viper venom There are these like off-the-wall remedies and You may find a doctor who's sympathetic But you may need to study up on what's the precise dosage for a human of your weight and under which conditions do These medications recommended and maybe you need to write it down until you get really sick And you're not getting as much oxygen to your brain to work things out so Mortal poor layers of defense seems pretty sensible to me Why don't more Americans approach COVID this way, but Americans seem to decide all this particular Line of defense. This is what I'm gonna invest all my hopes and dreams and faith in and then they derive every other line of Defense as if each layer of defense only works if you believe 100% in it and you don't believe in any other Right, so American true believers You know, they they tend to enjoy it making fun of true believers in other faiths So it might be wise to come up with a plan B in case plan A doesn't work And if plan B doesn't work, it might be good to have plan C as well Right. Why put all your faith in one line of defense might not think about Multiple layers of defense ahead of time before you get sick. Bye