4 ms·

I once saw a bumper sticker that said "You will die. I will die a marine." I'm guessing the modern version of being drug out to the desert for "ritual body muti

I once saw a bumper sticker that said "You will die. I will die a marine." I'm guessing the modern version of being drug out to the desert for "ritual body mutilation" had given that person a sense of pride and happiness at his service. Certainly something to be feel better about than hours spent on Everquest.

pavlov 10y ago
Yes, it's a tribal sense of purpose. An associated phenomenon is Laconophilia, the admiration of Spartan values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconophilia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconophilia In the Enlightenment era, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a famous advocate of Spartan values over the "Athenian" cultured urbanism that is essentially the foundation of modern Western life.
mesozoic 10y ago
You will die. I will die a level 90 Warlock.
bm1362 10y ago
Being part of a strong community seems to be the cure for existentialism.
projektir 10y ago
This may very much be the source of the happiness the author is lamenting about, though. Status is always there, and it never went away, and I'd posit that it is is something capable of making a person feel miserable even if everything else in their life is great. If your happiness is strongly tied to status, that is problematic, since status is almost necessarily zero-sum. For it to be significant that one is a Marine, Marines must be rare, and the comparison point would need to be some non-Marine. And, in the past, communities were smaller, you weren't comparing yourself to billions of people. If status is zero-sum or near-zero-sum, and when you can no longer stand out just by contributing to your community as the guy who makes tables or something, because there are quite a few people making better tables than you, so what happens to your status?
- merpnderp 10y ago
  It never occurred to me that he was social signalling anything other than pride in what he accomplished. It's not like "look at my Porsche, I'm rich." It's more "look at the callouses on my hands, I accomplished something real."
  - projektir 10y ago
    "Proud to be a marine" is one thing. "You are worse than me" is another.
    - mwfunk 10y ago
      Some people are both, it's just easier to project bad qualities onto some expressions of pride than others. There are plenty of people for whom their nice car is just a nice car that they enjoy, and there are plenty of people who take pride in their sacrifices but that pride manifests itself as a feeling of superiority over others.

pavlov 10y ago

Yes, it's a tribal sense of purpose. An associated phenomenon is Laconophilia, the admiration of Spartan values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconophilia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconophilia In the Enlightenment era, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a famous advocate of Spartan values over the "Athenian" cultured urbanism that is essentially the foundation of modern Western life.

mesozoic 10y ago

You will die. I will die a level 90 Warlock.

bm1362 10y ago

Being part of a strong community seems to be the cure for existentialism.

projektir 10y ago

This may very much be the source of the happiness the author is lamenting about, though. Status is always there, and it never went away, and I'd posit that it is is something capable of making a person feel miserable even if everything else in their life is great. If your happiness is strongly tied to status, that is problematic, since status is almost necessarily zero-sum. For it to be significant that one is a Marine, Marines must be rare, and the comparison point would need to be some non-Marine. And, in the past, communities were smaller, you weren't comparing yourself to billions of people. If status is zero-sum or near-zero-sum, and when you can no longer stand out just by contributing to your community as the guy who makes tables or something, because there are quite a few people making better tables than you, so what happens to your status?

merpnderp 10y ago
It never occurred to me that he was social signalling anything other than pride in what he accomplished. It's not like "look at my Porsche, I'm rich." It's more "look at the callouses on my hands, I accomplished something real."
- projektir 10y ago
  "Proud to be a marine" is one thing. "You are worse than me" is another.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    Some people are both, it's just easier to project bad qualities onto some expressions of pride than others. There are plenty of people for whom their nice car is just a nice car that they enjoy, and there are plenty of people who take pride in their sacrifices but that pride manifests itself as a feeling of superiority over others.