The Latent and Manifest Consequences of Status-Less Communications

Letters To SpookyTheManiac

When Tiger Woods goes to the White House to meet Barack Obama, Barack Obama has more status than Tiger Woods.

When Barack Obama goes to Glen Abbey to meet Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods has more status and Barack Obama.

- Oren Klaff

Pitch Anything is a must-read.

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Just A Couple Of Degenerate Gamblers

Let’s say we wanted to bet on who was going to win the SuperBowl - Janky or Balanky. How might we decide who to bet on?

Home field advantage, the health of the best players, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the coaching staff; these might be some of the arguments we put forward in our debate.

Each of these arguments - home field advantage, health, coaching strength - these arguments are rooted in a specific FRAME, and framing makes the world go round.

Why Is Framing So Powerful?

When you look at a piece of art, you rarely think about the frame the painting is in. Nobody ever looks at a painting and goes,

Damn, WHO FRAMED THAT.

Yet the frame is one of the most important decisions a painter makes. The frame represents what the Artist decided NOT to show. The process of deciding what NOT to show is called framing.

You’ve heard it’s all about how you start and how you finish. A painter starts and finishes a painting through the process of framing. The process of framing forces the painter to decide the width and the height of the project.

And even after the painter is done painting, they have to decide the thickness, the material, and the design of the box around the painting. In a lot of ways, the frame is the painting.

The medium is the message. - McCluhan

Eric Weinstein showed that all newspaper headlines are actually opinions spoken as facts.

Framing in Gambling

Back to our bet on The SuperBowl.

ANNOUNCER: Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Now is the time for the two titans - Janky and Balanky. Two Anky suffices will enter, only one will leave standing. Never before have two bohemoths of this size met…

Every single argument about who was more likely to win would be grounded in a very specific frame:

• I think Janky is going to win because they have home field advantage and they’ve won their last 8 games at home.

  That’s a framed argument, framed around home field advantage. It does not use the frames of player health or head coaching skill.

• I think Balanky will win because their star player is finally healthy and returning to the line-up.

  That’s a framed argument, framed around the health of the best players. It does not use the frames of home field advantage and head coaching skills.

• I think Janky will win because their Head Coach won the World Cup.

  That’s a framed argument, framed around the track record of the Head Coach. It does not use the frames of home field advantage and player health.

A frame sets the dimensions, the height, the width, the colour, the material, everything about an argument.

Humans Frame Each Other BEFORE They Frame Their Arguments

Here’s the cool part: remember when I said that people don’t talk to you, they talk to their idea of you? Well, their idea of you is primarily influenced by their idea of your STATUS.

What is status? Status is the ability to influence someone else’s behaviour through the use of money, power, and respect.

Regardless of the argument you’re having, whether it’s about The SuperBowl or SuperPolitics, your argument is going to be with another human being. And that human being is going to frame their argument using logic, emotion, and humour.

Here’s a map of humourous, logical, and emotional arguments from the frontispeace of Koestler’s The Act of Creation. Any argument can be made funny, logical, or emotional.

However, arguments don’t just consist of what you say, but how you say it. And when someone has more amassed more money, power, and respect - their cumulative status - they will use not logic emotion or humour but their status to win the argument.

Arguing From A Position Of Lower Status

How did David defeat Goliath? He definitely didn’t decide to fight fire with fire. David didn’t decide to pick up a sword. Instead, he choose a small, lightweight, and accurate weapon, the slingshot. Moreover, he chose a weapon that Goliath couldn’t use. Goliath didn’t chose to use a sword; he only knew how to use a sword. If he knew how to use a slingshot, we might’ve had a different story handed down to us.

Where am I going with this? Everyone watching David and Goliath was impressed by the size, strength, and sound of Goliath. But that size, strength, and sound were no match for a long-range, tactical weapon.

When you’re arguing with someone who has more money, power and respect than you do - status - it’s easy to think that all is lost. But all is not lost. Just because someone has more money, power and respect than you do, doesn’t mean you can’t win the argument.

But if you’re going to win an argument with someone with more more money, power and respect than you do, you’re going to need to choose the right weapons.

People with status are very predictable, and they use very predictable tools.

• Time - as in I don’t have enough time. “Good - I don’t need your time. I need your email address so you can access the document when you’re ready.”

• Power - as in do this or else. Power requires the use of small defiances and light humour. Objecting in small ways and using sarcasm is something Power is terrible at handling, especially in public.

• Framing - as in this is the way you should look at this problem. “Oh, is that so? So you’re saying we should disregard _________________.?”

What happens when they use logic? Simple: respond with humour and emotional narrative. When they use humour? Emotional narrative and logic. When they use emotional narratives? Logic and humour.

So you see, it’s simple to deal with people who have more status than you.

You just have to choose the right weapons, the right time, and the right terrain upon which to defend yourself against the onslaught of status.