Morality implies inefficiency.
Some amount of arbitrary rules are required to hold civilisation together.
But this balance is delicate, and our moral codes are necessarily flawed. So inevitably, we create status games that (by definition) are disconnected from morality and reality.
At their best, these status games create functional, widespread networks of trust. But at their worst, they become corrupt, metastatic, zero-sum breeding grounds for resentment and (eventually) violence.
To make matters worse, we're wired to care deeply about status.
How to get around all this?
Prioritisation.
Just like we place the moral above the material, we can place the material above status games.
Rather than rejecting the rules outright, we can accept them on our own terms.
This lets us extract the lessons from these games without overweighting them.
And in so doing, we can earn our seat at the table.