“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.
Most likely about getting laid. Probably left over from our monkey days.
That probably covers it sufficiently. Translations for non-sexual contexts is easy.
I’m convinced it’s because we want to be loved, but most people will settle for someone just feeling positive about some superficial aspect of them.
Welcome to The Problem!
Lemme see if I can put that in a succinct meme.
We have created a parallel reality. A consensual dream. And, when you live in a society, skill at navigating the consensual dream is more useful than skill at navigating reality.
Exactly, it’s like playing a video game. And no matter how immersive the game, reality always demands its cut.
Because humans are nervous apes who just want to be loved. Impressing other people gives you feedback that you are wanted, accepted, and appreciated.
If I impress people enough they might be willing to give me the D
its because we find it cheaper to deserve gifted genital visits than to rent/lease/buy them.
“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, law, self-worth and our models of reality.
Can you expand on that some? On the surface, it doesn’t match my experience at all.
“How impressed everybody is” is the basis of money, law, self-worth and our models of reality
Money
Is it? I don’t try to impress anybody with money I do or don’t have. If you do, consider not doing so. You might find your finances in a better state.
self-worth
Don’t, I repeat, do not base your self worth on what other people think. Listen to their input and make yourself the best person you can be. But if you only have self-worth due to how impressed your neighbors are, you are going to have a very poor life as you make a continued bad decisions.
Law
There are vanishingly few laws that are centered around impressing anybody. The core theme to is to create laws that best allow for the functioning of society. For some easy examples, lack of criminalizing murder, lack of property rights, or lack of a tax code all fuck up modern society pretty quick.
our models of reality
I’m not sure how ‘impressing others’ is part of this at all? Our model of reality, ie physics, chemistry, math, have nothing to do with impressing others?
Excellent. An opportunity to elaborate my thingy.
By impress I mean that the thing looks big. People are impressed by big strong stuff.
Stuff that has big value is worth a lot of money. Thus money is based on people being impressed.
For good and ill, one’s self-worth is generally based on how much attention you get and how much nice things people say about you. Thus self-worth is based on people being impressed.
Law is based on impressive arguments, impressive authorities, impressive force, impressive majorities.
Models of reality are likewise. Arguments, axioms, authorities, experiments, observations.Somebody is impressed and the hypothesis gets promoted to theory or whatever.
That’s where I’m going with that. People are being impressed. Majorities are getting impressed. Impressive people are being impressed.
finding meaning in life, those who care about it trying to validate themselves by doing just that
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?
Because we are social animals? Someone should create c/AskStonerLemmy 😂
Yeah, we should create a c/PedanticNonanswers too
Ok, the obvious : our society-programming is just that powerful. So we are all eyebrows-deep embedded in a useful insanity.
But you’d think we’d struggle against our restraints a bit more. That it might even be common. If nothing else, for the sake of art, science, economics.
