3 ms·
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
by 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 agoIt 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 agoSome 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.