The Gervais Principle IV: Wonderful Human Beings
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Highlights
- There is a deep truth here. Social clubs of any sort divide the world into an us and a them. We are better than them. Any prospective new member who could raise the average prestige of a club is by definition somebody who is too good for that club. So how do social groups form at all, given Marxâs paradox? The answer lies in the idea of status illegibility, the fuzziness of the status of a member of any social group. This is governed by what I will call Marxâs laws of status illegibility.
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Status illegibility is the key to the Marx paradox, and the foundation of every other aspect of Loser group dynamics (which is also all group dynamics, since forming groups is a loser activity). If your status is clear, and the status of the club is clear (by definition, the average status of all its current members) then either your status is higher, in which case the club will want you, but you wonât want to join, or your status is lower, in which case the opposite is true. If status were precisely known all around, then the only case that allows somebody to join a club is if their status exactly matches the average of the club. The probability of this happening is vanishingly small, even if status could be measured accurately and quantitatively. Worse, this benefits neither joiner or club.
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This social contract requires them to play games. Games that work at two levels to create cohesion and social capital: they structure current, live situations, and they bolster redemptive life scripts (âI am specialâ stories). We need to understand status illegibility at both these levels. At the life-script level, the game-playing social contract creates complete nominal illegibility. Each individual in a group is judged according to a custom life script that makes it impossible to compare two lives within the group. Pamâs life has a redemptive script based on the fact that she is the cutest one in the office, can paint well, and forms the âItâ couple with Jim. Kevinâs is based on the fact that he is in a band. Creedâs uniqueness lies in his weirdness. The alpha usually enjoys a reputation of ineffable âcoolness.â
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Which means that competitive Darwinian dynamics must also be present, in veiled form, within groups. Nominal status illegibility and Iamuniqueism do not stop the pretty artist Pam from fighting the numbers-Guru Oscar over the use of the budget surplus (money). Unlikely social climber Phyllis cuts pretty-girl Karen down to size: âYou donât know who Bob Vance is? You have a lot to learn about this town, sweetieâ (sex). Pam and Karen fight Angela over party-planning rights (power). The fights are more macho in more male-dominated loser groups, but the principle is the same. So all the social dynamics are about maintaining a delicate balance between mutual reinforcement of unique life scripts and comforting status uncertainty on the one hand (which requires status illegibility), and fighting veiled battles over sex, money and power (which fuel the engines of group value creation).
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This idea (gaining status is a large group via membership in a subgroup) isnât bad actually, but it is mistaken at two levels. First, Andy mistakenly believes that there is a clear status hierarchy among groups in the office. Actually the status illegibility effect is recursive, and applies to subgroups as well. In the mythos of American high schools as portrayed by Hollywood, the football team and cheer-leading squads are on top and the marching band is at the bottom, for instance. Do the Goth kids outrank the hackers? That is strictly unknowable.
- What Andy actually needs to do is offer proof of the right level of status illegibility. Yes, his music and other skills matter. But they merely create a vector of uniqueness for later use. If he gets in, thatâs what the group will use to socially bolster his unique-and-above-average delusion. But to actually get in, he needs to demonstrate the right level of status illegibility, governed by the level he is aiming for. Attacks on alphas and omegas by newcomers can be clear-cut (yes, even omega positions can be attractive to outsiders; George Costanza plays that game in a bid for a rent-controlled apartment on Seinfeld at one point). A bid for any interior position must be made by demonstrating the right level of status illegibility. Status therefore, must first be successfully obscured during a membership bid. As with most group dynamics, membership bids are scripted in gametalk. How new members segue into existing group games is what determines their future. An example is the episode in which Michael is out of town, leaving Jim to run a staff meeting.
- All game-structured social dynamics are based on some social skill or the other. Since these games are skilled activities (such as improvising jokes or comforting a member who has suffered a loss), they can create value. This value accumulates as social capital. Letâs look at what that means. A social skill, such as joke-telling ability, is a behavior whose effectiveness is determined by the reaction of a group. A joke is funny if the audience laughs. A proven mathematical theorem remains true even if a billion people scream that it isnât. Theorem proving is not a social skill in that sense. Like theorem-proving, social skills are information skills, since nothing tangible is produced besides an effect on othersâ minds. Unlike theorem-proving though, the value of the product is based on social proof rather than objective proof (peer review as a process combines elements of both in varying proportions, depending on the field). Social skills produce information; a social truth hypothesis (such as a joke). If it passes a social proof test, it becomes part of social capital (the grand narrative of the group). In other words: Social skills â> Social truth hypotheses â> Social proof â> Social capital
- Sociopath (One-Person) Humor One person humor is Sociopath humor, and is psychologically more complex. It can only happen when the jokester and audience are the same person (which replaces social proof with individual judgment), and everybody else present is a victim, often unaware that they are being made fun of. Andy Kauffmanâs humor is an example. Hereâs an example from The Officethat illustrates the effective way to push Dwightâs âfarmerâ button.
- Among the Clueless, status stays static: you get the Michael > Dwight >Andy arrested development totem pole we examined last time. Among the Sociopaths, status is irrelevant. Table stakes and skill at using them is what matters. Sociopaths pay attention to what you have, and how well you bargain with it. Not who you are. But among Losers, status is real, and it matters. Within the limits of the status illegibility required for group stability, status churns through skilled Gametalk interactions. Humor causes status shifts among jokester, victim and audience. Net inflow of social capital occurs when the victim is out-group. Redistribution and appreciation/depreciation happen when the victim is in-group. Net outflows happen when an entire group is made victim by another individual or group within a larger, subsuming context (the football jocks making fun of the glee club, or Red Sox fans winning a bar room brawl with Yankees fans). Expressions of sympathy or workplace moaning work in similar ways.