These Two Depressing Candidates are Chasing Status Instead of Glory

There are three reasons people chase after power: status, utopia, or glory. We need to replace the mediocre status seekers for people chasing glory.

There’s a reason both of these political parties are disappointing. There’s a reason both of these candidates leave Americans so uneasy. It’s not about what they believe. It’s about what drives them.

They’re entirely driven by status seeking.

There are three reasons people seek out power:

• Status

• Glory

• Utopia

America is at it’s best when it’s driven by dynamic people like Washington, Hamilton, and Teddy Roosevelt who are driven to chase glory. It’s at it’s worst when it’s in the hands of empty status seekers or dangerous utopians.

One reason this election is so depressing is it’s a battle between two status-seeking groups led by status-seeking candidates, fueled by the naïve and dangerous dreams of passionate utopians. There are no glory seekers in sight.

STATUS, GLORY, AND UTOPIA

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for American Purpose when it was still an independent magazine called Status, Glory, and Utopia. The article is about the reasons people chase power, and why the group that gets the least attention—glory seekers—is actually the only group worthy of it.

American Purpose is now part of Persuasion here on Substack, so you can read the entire piece now there.

People who chase after power are always driven by one of three things: status, utopia, or glory.

Status seekers want power because they want to be somebody. These are the ambitious ladder-climbers, hard-working box checkers, and reliable conformists who rise through institutions by strong-arming colleagues and following the expectations of those in power to capture the trappings of status for themselves. It is resources and respect they crave—the fancy title, the corner office, the big house, the boat, and the picture with the flag behind it signaling that they matter.

They don’t want power to do something. They want power to be something.

This is the reason most people chase power. Most people are driven to climb not for the chance to do anything, build anything, create anything, improve anything, or change anything. They make the climb because they want the rewards powerful people get.

What’s good is that most of the time you can safely ignore these sorts of people because they rarely matter in the big picture. If the thing driving you is status, by definition you can’t do anything meaningful or important because that would require unsettling expectations, challenging power, and rocking other people’s boats. That threatens the only thing status seekers crave—the approval needed to climb the ladder to secure the rewards signaling they’re winners and thus important. Status seekers therefore can always be counted on to predicably push ahead with whatever the crowd believes.

Utopians want power because they want to force change onto the world. What drives utopians is an itch, something about the world that angers them or scares them. That other people accept this thing, go along with it, or actively advance it, fills them with moral indignation if not rage. They go into the world seeking power to force other people to change, to go along with their plans to reorder the world.

We think about utopians as mostly beneficial, because they’re mostly good when operating outside a society looking in. They’re the ones who point out injustices, hypocrisies, and stupidities other people refuse to see. They become the activists, artists, and philosophers who force us to see immoral or unworthy things from which we turn away, forcing us to live up to our values and be better. Martin Luther King, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Upton Sinclair were these kinds of utopians.

Utopians with power, however, are another story. The same qualities that make utopians heroes when outside the system looking in make them nightmares when they seize the levers of power for themselves. The fear or anger driving them to change the world cannot be reasoned with. The eagerness with which they force other people to obey cannot be slowed. Fueled by indignation and fervor, they give themselves moral permission to do anything to anybody to bring about utopia.

The greatest evils of humanity were almost always the work of utopians who obtained the power they craved. Their vision and righteous fury, when combined with a holy mission to change the world by force, has justified most of humanity’s unimaginable crimes. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were these kinds of utopians.

Glory seekers chase a legacy. Glory seekers are the rarest group of power seekers, and probably the most misunderstood. Glory is about leaving your mark to be remembered. What glory seekers crave isn’t to be wealthy and important, or to force other people to change, but to do great deeds so in a thousand years someone will remember them and build a statue in their honor.

On the surface, chasing glory strikes most ordinary people as selfish and self-satisfied. If you’re immersed in pedestrian concerns, chasing immortal glory seems both arrogant and silly. At least status people lust after something with which everyone can identify. Utopians are trying to save the world. Glory seekers in comparison look egotistically self-involved. In reality, glory seekers are the most benevolent because most positive change comes from chasing glory.

While glory seekers may be selfish in a way, they have no choice but to help people and make the world a better place if they ever hope to win the legacy they crave. It’s impossible to win glory without improving the world for other people. Nobody remembers the richest, most celebrated, or most powerful person generations after they are dead. Most national celebrities from a hundred years ago are now complete unknowns. Most of the richest business people are forgotten. Americans barely remember the names of presidents from a hundred years ago, except the few who did something truly meaningful. Nobody will remember you in a hundred years, much less a thousand, unless you do something that matters.

The thing you do, moreover, must not just be impactful and important but good. It must materially improves people’s lives so significantly they want to thank you for it centuries after you’re gone. No one builds a statue to someone unless they really want to honor them and thank them. That’s the only reason anyone is going to go to all the thought and expense to cast you in bronze and put you in a public park.

The only way for glory seekers to ever capture what they crave is to selflessly sacrifice and take on risk. They must fight against their own interests. They must be willing to give up the status and wealth that comes from going along and climbing the system. They can’t wield power carelessly or force ugly ideas or hurt others to bring about their ideas, or they’ll they lose their reputation. People looking back in a thousand years will not forgive them. The only way to win a legacy from people not yet born, who you cannot charm, threaten, or influence because you’ll be long dead before they exist, is to honestly earn it.

Glory seekers are more than just Caesar and Napoleon. They’re Washington, Hamilton, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. They’re scientists like Isaac Newton. They’re writers like Twain and Hemingway. They’re artists like Picasso. They’re inventors like Tesla. They’re filmmakers like Tarantino. They’re industrialists like Ford.

Glory seekers are the people who chase after excellence and achievement for its own sake in the hope that future generations will remember what they left behind.

We want leaders who chase after glory.

WHERE ARE OUR GLORY SEEKERS?

This is the problem with our two candidates for president. They’re both classic status seekers.

I know some partisans will argue with this, but they’re just blinded by loyalty. That both of these candidates are purely driven by status should be impossible to deny. One devoted his entire life to chasing status on the biggest stages he could find, up to and including the presidency. The other is a careful party regular who shaped her beliefs at each stage of her career to the agenda of her party so as best to climb its apparatus. Neither are utopians with a deep vision they hope to force onto the world, but neither are seeking the glory of immortal accomplishment.

It almost doesn’t matter what either of these people believes because status chasers never accomplish great things. Their beliefs are mere symbols for attracting followers and rising on the upward climb. No matter what partisans in the media say about all the programs, benefits, and accomplishments either of these people intend to bring you, neither should be trusted to do much more than enjoy the pomp of their office while pursuing their party’s current status quo.

It’s not just the candidates, of course. The entire apparatus of each party is also packed with status chasers, each trying to climb to importance. They seek titles, connections, wealth, and rewards, but not through the sorts of achievements anyone will recall in thirty years much less a thousand. These are not currently parties that reward such things. They would chase away anyone who seeks them. They only reward the safe and reliable mediocrity of those who chase after status. No matter the promises, policies, promises, and big claims, they’re all just dressing and sideshows for what truly drives everyone involved—the climb.

If that were the end of it, however, it might be depressing but acceptable. This wouldn’t be America’s first corrupt and listless Gilded Age. America has had other periods in which status chasers controlled society’s machinery while glory seekers had to walk away and accomplish things on their own, all while the utopians sat outside the window pointing out the failures. America got through these similar moments because eventually the status chasers’ failures become so apparent glory seekers saw an opportunity to take back control to provide society with direction, and amazing things started happening once again.

Status seekers aren’t inherently wicked or of no use. Many are smart. They’re hard working. They have skills and talents that can be put to use. Their problem is only what drives them. It’s where their talents are directed. If left in charge, they’ll waste those talents toward pointless endeavors to maintain the status quo so they can safely climb. Society will stagnate and problems won’t be solved. With the right leadership, however, status seekers can become an engine for creation.

Since status chasers follow the rules to best climb the ladder toward rewards, all it takes to reorient them is for the right people to make the rules. If glory people can take control of the top of the system long enough to reset the rules, status seekers will make chase to get to the rewards they crave. In their drive to win more status and rewards, they’ll employ their talents to implement and the build amazing things glory seekers direct. Society will flourish.

What worries me is the utopians. Utopians do well outside the system, but become dangerous if they ever get control themselves. Increasingly, the utopians are starting to get inside the door. They’re influencing events, seizing the reins, and wielding real power. Status seekers who run institutions, in their quest to remain popular and powerful, are letting utopians walk right in. Status chasers increasingly find it in their interest to lend control of the institutions they control to utopians. They let them advance extreme ideas. They let them punish enemies. They let them dream about how to aggressively force others to comply to bring about utopia—a dream that will be other people’s prison. This is dangerous.

The situation increasingly reminds me of the years leading up to our civil war. Weak parties headed by mediocre careerists like Milliard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan handed over power to utopians clamoring at the gates. Some of those utopians were deadly right about the issues, but their strategy for bringing about their better world involved radicalizing for a fight.

Where are the glory seekers?

Right now, the glory seekers are mostly in places like Silicon Valley. The kinds of people who want to immortalize their name in glory have long since opted out of institutions to create new technologies and start-up companies where they need not ask permission. Others of their lot are now dissidents and outsiders, shunted out of their institutions as troublemakers. Their insistence on truth and action put them at odds with the status seekers’ desire not to shake the status quo, and put them in conflict with utopians increasingly pushing into their institutions and grasping for utopian control. All of their talents are frankly wasted.

It’s impossible to close yourself away and build things outside society. Society will eventually come knocking to make you conform and comply. It’s both senseless and depressing to lock yourself away from the fight as a circle of dissidents talking amongst yourselves. This isn’t where they are needed. This isn’t where they will thrive. This isn’t where their talents can be harnessed. They should be piloting society’s direction, organizing and reorienting the efforts of status seekers toward noble and beneficial goals.

Here's the good news: the glory seekers are stirring. They’re realizing there’s no glory right now in politics. There’s no glory in America’s institutions. If they remain on the sidelines any longer, things will not just stagnate but likely break. This is why Silicon Valley is increasingly moving to Washington. This is why dissidents are building national audiences hungry for the truth.

The question is how long we have to wait, and if we have that kind of time.

What do you think about status seeking? Join the conversation in the comments.