“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, our models of reality, law and self-worth. But that’s a pretty shabby basis if you ask me.
“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, our models of reality, law and self-worth. But that’s a pretty shabby basis if you ask me.
You know that nature programs saying “complex social hierarchy?” It is part of that. Everything we do is part of it. There are multiple forms of hierarchical display. Our primary form is the insane use of the means for fundamental survival, aka wealth. This is a very primitive and barbaric form of display. Academia and visual media arts use reputation as a form of hierarchy; sports use meritorious achievement. We are only animals determining class and rank. No one living can opt out because ostracization is still a class and rank, as is simple survival.
Writing about a very hard science fiction future pushed me into this space. Particularly, what are the implications of post scarcity if one completely discounts the argument that, ‘it is an idealist utopian fantasy,’ and tries to address the real complexity of humanity.
So we enter post-scarcity but everybody is still playing the same games.
It could be the effects of ancestral trauma. We see people expressing extreme poverty behavior even tho it happened a couple generations back.
It could be genetic. Climbing the social ladder is arguably what we’re born to do.
This would suggest some kind of therapy is called for.
I think there was a Greg Bear where humanity encountered an alien race with a nice therapy that became popular among humans. Probably an allegory for meditation.
Talsit?