Playing a Different Game Part 1

Discovering how status narratives are created and used

This is part 1 of 3 of a series on understanding the creation of internal status narratives.

The ability to not care what other’s think has been a puzzle I have been trying to solve for quite some time. As stated in in one of my previous articles, I suffer from what is basically a pathological impulse to avoid offending others, even if those people are functionally imaginary. The displeasure of others is also associated with deep feelings of shame, self-loathing, and the general deflation of my morale and enthusiasm. Imagining what it would be like to not live this way is extremely difficult, to say the least.

After discovering Mark Queppet’s concept of the status narrative, I think I have begun to finally understand what it means to not care about the opinions of others in the context of psychologically healthy high status men. First, it is necessary to define what a status narrative is. A status narrative is the series of conditions that govern what events and actions allow for the feelings of winning or losing. Serotonin is associated with the feeling of success and helps us feel our sense status relative to others. For example, when you decide to play a game and follow its rules, you are submitting to that particular status narrative. If you score according to the rules, you feel like you are winning. Most of us have become unconscious of our adoption of these narratives. When playing a game, there is nothing stopping us from just making our own status narratives and defining success in a completely different way. My siblings and me once did this with a game of Mario Party. We changed the rules so that winning would be defined not by which player had collected the most stars, but the least. The result was just as fun as if we had followed the suggestions and rules of the game.

When observing the behavior of an ALPHA or SIGMA, we should expect to find that he has the mental dexterity to produce his own status narratives and the fortitude to ignore those that do not serve his particular purposes. Much like deciding to play a game with house rules, the sufficiently high status can conjure up their own victory and failure conditions for life and hold to them against social pressures. Eventually, the narrative of a high status man may become apart of the wider culture itself and something for other men to aspire to.

We should strive to become more conscious of all status narratives, both righteous and wicked

It is crucial to be aware of these win-failure conditions as we give them power over our serotonin, and therefore our very sense of making progress in life. Despite what some people claim, everyone cares about some form of status. Socio-sexual status is one of these.

Let’s see how the idea of status narratives relates to Vox’s own SIGMA indifference as seen on this old Alpha Game post.

A reader asks:

"To what extent is Sigma "indifferent"? If you were humiliated and laughed at in public, you still wouldn't feel even a little bad?"

To which Vox responds:

“Not if I believed I didn't merit it, no. One benefit of having been a social outcast at a very young age is that one rapidly learns that one has very little need of others.”

I interpret this exchange to mean that Vox developed a series of status narratives that were based off of early, legitimate observations. These observations proved true, and so they became rock hard convictions upon which a coherent status narrative can rest. Vox and most other high status men are not psychopaths, it is not that they are incapable of feeling embrassment or shame, just that their personal conditions for feeling such things are different from most other people. Also, let’s remember that one of Vox’s mottos is literally “most people are idiots”. Now it is becoming easier to see how a childhood that taught you that you do not need others and they probably do not know what they are talking about anyways can lead to a rational indifference with intact cognitive and emotional empathy.

It will not be possible to build a status narrative out of falsehoods and doubts, only that which seems really true

The reader may be worried that trying to create your own status narratives is a path to GAMMA. I do not think this is a concern. It seems to me that when GAMMAS redefine success, they do so in rejection to what they truly want. The GAMMA does wish to get the girl deep down. His latest MGTOW phase is merely a consolation to himself that he cannot get the girl, not that he has realized he does not want to. It is a self denial and disconnection from his true desires. He is not creating a new status narrative that he actually believes in, just coping in a vain attempt trick himself and others that into thinking he is indifferent.

The overall goal of this series is to explore the mechanics of status. As described, I suffer from bad convictions which create bad status narratives that make losing very common and painful. The reader may be wondering if this state of mind is simply some immutable disposition and cannot be altered. Based on my research of neuroplasticity and the effects of early childhood experiences, I think the greatest obstacle is not heredity but convictions. As far as self-development goes, pondering heredity is useful for simply understanding that you have limits, but it can easily become a morale drain, way to excuse yourself of failure, and the source of a self-defeating fixed mindset. We will eventually hit out limit, but people have the tendency to distort and expand what they perceive as being their limits, and in doing so, actually create unnecessary mental blocks for themselves. I hope to prove that radical change is possible by cultivating the correct mentality.

So far we have covered how convictions based on honest observation can create status narratives that lead to high status behavior through controlling the flow of motivating serotonin. In the next two posts, we will cover the other aspects involved in status creation: perception and desires.