Thank you, this explains a lot. So, kinda, status is good in itself, because it is a mechanism to direct social rewards to people who produce some kind of value, or at least display some kind of excellence. It is just bad if people think about status in a way other than the completely naive: “you need to get good at X, then status will automatically happen proportionally to how much you deserve it”.
There are also other mistakes people could make, such as sacrificing too much in order to achieve X. Such as a guy who writes a perfect book, but also his wife divorces him and his kids hate him, because sacrificed everything to the goal of writing the perfect book. But this is about the specific mistake of trying to get X-related status using means different that maximizing the X; such as befriending the right people. Like a guy who writes a book that is “good but not the best”, but he is a friend with the right people, and therefore his book gets elected as the official book of the year. And this probably requires that he reciprocates in some way—maybe he also in turn votes for their art, or helps their kids pass admissions to a prestigious university, or simply provides some financial or sexual services in turn.
Lewis was a writer, so I suspect he might have seen something similar among writers, but also noticed that this is a more general thing. (The first example that comes to my mind is publishing scientific papers.) I am not a professional artist myself, but I have seen enough to be disappointed. I have also seen people who refused to play this game and succeeded anyway; such as writers who have never won a book award, but their books sell better because they are good; and maybe if they keep being obviously good, even the critics will be one day shamed into giving them some award.
So… I guess the most vulnerable are the people who are “almost good”; who stand on the line between “mediocre” and “good” and could be plausibly rounded up in either direction. And this cannot be dismissed by mere “don’t worry about what they think, the art is either good or bad regardless”, because the decision will have a real impact: emotional, but also as an advertisement. An almost-good artist getting an award will be encouraged to try harder (because it seems that the hard work is rewarded), and will find it easier to get money on Patreon or Kickstarter, or to find a publisher for a book. An almost-good author ignored may give up (because the hard work done so far seems to be useless), and will get less external support. So the recognition can make a difference—I assume that if you took 20 such almost-good authors of the same quality, and randomly gave awards to 10 of them, statistically those 10 would have more success ten years later than the 10 you did not choose.
The problem is that trying to get to the inner circle also has its costs, both emotional (not only the award received by cheating will not encourage you, but now that you know how things work, even the possible future awards will motivate you less) and in time and energy (the effort spent on getting to the inner circle is an effort not spent on getting better).
As a toy model, imagine 3 wannabe artists, all of the starting at the same almost-good quality: artist X gets an award from the inner circle because their parents are in the inner circle (i.e. X didn’t spend any energy on the inner circle, probably is not even aware that the inner circle exists); Y doesn’t get the award; and Z works hard to get into the inner circle, ultimately succeeds and gets the award… ten years later, I would expect X to be more successful than Y, but Y more successful than Z. That’s because X received an unconditional support, but Z got a part-time job that distracts them from the art. And the thing is, unless you have the inner circle “naturally” on your side, your choice is not between X and Y, but between Y and Z, and there Y is the better choice.
Thank you, this explains a lot. So, kinda, status is good in itself, because it is a mechanism to direct social rewards to people who produce some kind of value, or at least display some kind of excellence. It is just bad if people think about status in a way other than the completely naive: “you need to get good at X, then status will automatically happen proportionally to how much you deserve it”.
There are also other mistakes people could make, such as sacrificing too much in order to achieve X. Such as a guy who writes a perfect book, but also his wife divorces him and his kids hate him, because sacrificed everything to the goal of writing the perfect book. But this is about the specific mistake of trying to get X-related status using means different that maximizing the X; such as befriending the right people. Like a guy who writes a book that is “good but not the best”, but he is a friend with the right people, and therefore his book gets elected as the official book of the year. And this probably requires that he reciprocates in some way—maybe he also in turn votes for their art, or helps their kids pass admissions to a prestigious university, or simply provides some financial or sexual services in turn.
Lewis was a writer, so I suspect he might have seen something similar among writers, but also noticed that this is a more general thing. (The first example that comes to my mind is publishing scientific papers.) I am not a professional artist myself, but I have seen enough to be disappointed. I have also seen people who refused to play this game and succeeded anyway; such as writers who have never won a book award, but their books sell better because they are good; and maybe if they keep being obviously good, even the critics will be one day shamed into giving them some award.
So… I guess the most vulnerable are the people who are “almost good”; who stand on the line between “mediocre” and “good” and could be plausibly rounded up in either direction. And this cannot be dismissed by mere “don’t worry about what they think, the art is either good or bad regardless”, because the decision will have a real impact: emotional, but also as an advertisement. An almost-good artist getting an award will be encouraged to try harder (because it seems that the hard work is rewarded), and will find it easier to get money on Patreon or Kickstarter, or to find a publisher for a book. An almost-good author ignored may give up (because the hard work done so far seems to be useless), and will get less external support. So the recognition can make a difference—I assume that if you took 20 such almost-good authors of the same quality, and randomly gave awards to 10 of them, statistically those 10 would have more success ten years later than the 10 you did not choose.
The problem is that trying to get to the inner circle also has its costs, both emotional (not only the award received by cheating will not encourage you, but now that you know how things work, even the possible future awards will motivate you less) and in time and energy (the effort spent on getting to the inner circle is an effort not spent on getting better).
As a toy model, imagine 3 wannabe artists, all of the starting at the same almost-good quality: artist X gets an award from the inner circle because their parents are in the inner circle (i.e. X didn’t spend any energy on the inner circle, probably is not even aware that the inner circle exists); Y doesn’t get the award; and Z works hard to get into the inner circle, ultimately succeeds and gets the award… ten years later, I would expect X to be more successful than Y, but Y more successful than Z. That’s because X received an unconditional support, but Z got a part-time job that distracts them from the art. And the thing is, unless you have the inner circle “naturally” on your side, your choice is not between X and Y, but between Y and Z, and there Y is the better choice.
...or maybe I am over-analyzing this.