Sex and Status, Tragic Greatness, Book Talk at Cambridge
Sex and Status, Tragic Greatness, Book Talk at Cambridge
Podcast appearance + links and recommendations
You can listen to my recent interview on the Madison’s Notes Podcast:
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Exclusive book talk at the University of Cambridge
I’ll be speaking about Troubled on October 4 at the University of Cambridge. Details and info here. If you want to watch online, the livestream link is here.
The Psychology of Social Status
My new lecture series “The Psychology of Social Status” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.
I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience, exploring the psychology of social status, examining its evolutionary roots, developmental origins, and the fundamental role it plays in shaping human behavior. We examine individual differences in status-seeking, the evolutionary reasons behind status pursuit, and the complex relationships between status, envy, emotions, and intrasexual competition for romantic partners. We also investigate the dynamics of social status in relation to stories, plot lines, and arenas of competition, and concludes by discussing the concept of luxury beliefs and their impact on society.
Enroll here for immediate access.
Here’s the trailer:
From the archives
Sex and Status: The logic of female and male intra-sexual competition
Links and recommendations
Professor Steven Pinker on Humanism and Campuses (interview by Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
Men Now Face More Hiring Discrimination Than Women by Cory Clark
A Tragic Greatness (essay on The Godfather) by Titus Techera
Confessions of a Pickup Artist, pt. 2: The Mystery Machine by
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
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Three interesting findings
1. Black Americans are more likely to perceive themselves to be victims of prejudice when they have higher levels of education. Similar realities hold for Latinos and Asian Americans: higher education leads to heightened perceptions of discrimination. (source).
2. Adolescents with an IQ of 130 are 3-5 times less likely to have had intercourse than those with average IQ. Boys with an IQ that would qualify for intellectual disability (60) are still more likely to have had sex than those with a very high IQ (130). (source).
3. 69% of Democratic parents and 66% of Republican parents say that public schools should teach the “success sequence,” which describes the surest way to avoid poverty (source):
1. Finish high school.
2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.
3. Get married before you have children.
Isn't the human social status pursuit a key point of Jordan Peterson and his lobster analogy? He has been routinely denigrated by the left for this, which I always found very interesting as why would they be so hostile to that idea? It is almost like they know they are status-obsessed and ashamed of it to the point that they would fight to deny any discussion about it.
Is it the higher the education the more status obsessed? Or is it that status-obsessed personalities pursue degrees in higher learning to back their need for status? I think it is probably a bit of both.
Interesting for me... I stopped my MBA program which was a nigh and weekend program because I was working full time as a vice president in a bank. We had two young children and my wife was struggling with me being away so much for work and school, so I stopped the MBA pursuit. Today I am a CEO and never finished my MBA. The ONLY reason it would come up in my mind from time to time is to enhance my bio. I have enough self-awareness to recognize that this is only ego and status as what in the hell would achieving my MBA at this point do to materially enhance my career (I am 64 years old and have reached the top of corporate advancement.)
I'm sorry, but to me, Lincoln, not some cunning mafioso, is the true example of tragic greatness in the culture I want to live in.