He's saying it's a culture. An American culture. But it's not. It's all cultures. Everywhere. All the time. Because it's a reward mechanism for finding your place in your tribe that's built into your head and you are trying to make it irrelevant and will ultimately fail at the task. That part of the brain is what builds all cultures. The problem isn't with American culture. It's with the idea that you can eliminate a serotonin based reward mechanism from your brain and that by doing so, living as if you have 8 billion friends is suddenly possible. It's not. Dunbar's number is a real thing. It exists for a reason. I'm not talking about zero sum survival or anything like that. I'm talking about a social heirarchy that's built into your brain to help you recognize your place in the world. Ignoring it will get you into a lot of trouble. Using it to find your place in 8 billion people is a losing game. Using it to find your place in a community of about 150-500 people works most of the time. Modern technology has wrecked our idea of who we are and where our place is. That doesn't suddenly make comparison and bad mechanism. It means we need to limit who we compare ourselves to to people that we will actually interact with in person day to day and find a way to fit in with them.
Discussion
I'm not getting the impression that you've studied this much.
Humans do have some wiring that makes us aware of hierarchies. This is due to there being some very real zerosum situations in life where this is necessary. But to lean into it is barbaric. We also have wiring to facilitate violence, but to lean into that when not absolutely necessary is evil.
I'm getting the impression that you aren't listening at all. That's okay. Keep ignoring the pain of comparison and ignore it's lessons.
I'm curious where you got these ideas from. Was there an influential book or podcaster?
It's not one place. That's what I'm trying to say. It's a lifetime of experience. Being raised in religion. Having people lie to me. Watching their actions. Listening to people tell stories of abuse. Watching family members and friends interact. Listening to theories that do and don't make sense. I don't wholesale believe anyone. It's all piecemeal. Listening to professors explain how the brain works. How anti depressant meds work by modifying serotonin uptake. Lectures on microtubules and quantum consciousness. It's too much stuff. I just distilled it down because it's apparent to me that people think you can fix your brain without changing your environment. You brain is part of the environment. Change your environment change your mind. Get off of social media. Don't compare yourself to people you will never interact with. If you feel inadequate find something you are adequate at and be the best in your group at it. This is everything from national geographic, all the way to Alex Jones. I find the pieces that make sense and I put them together. Removing yourself from ever competing or comparing at all is not good. It's a type of egotism. It's also ignorance of your place in your group. You end up stepping on people's toes or hurting yourself or them because you are clueless of how you relate. Comparison is useful and it's built into your brain at a chemical level. You don't remove it or get over it, you just become delusional.
I agree that we gather quite a lot of data on life as we go. I'm 41 now, so I have 41 years of data to pull from when forming theories.
But, to have a coherent conversation with some one it helps to state a theory and then back that up with some evidence. If you are not a researcher on this topic then it can be helpful to point to other people's research.
I'm not discounting your life experience, I'm just looking to find some structure in this convo otherwise it's just people yelling at each other.
Adding ageism on top of authority fallacy is not an argument. Explain why it's zero sum. Explain why comparison has to be avoided especially in a social heirarchy and explain why the examples I gave are wrong, or I'm going to resign you to saying whatever you want to say with no real argument. So far I haven't heard anything that makes any sense besides "it makes me feel bad"...which is just evidence that you feel bad. I'm okay with that. I just thought it was a interesting subject and thought your original post was missing a lot of information when it comes to social comparisons.
Memory and time are illusory databases. They are not the true elements of our life.
Memory fades. Time never stays still and fleets away. True life is timeless and eternal. If you dot your life with time-marks, you are dying; you are not living. Time is death because you can't inhale the same breath again.
I am not saying that comparison is never appropriate. There are times when it is necessary... in zerosum situations.
I'm saying that leaning into comparison is a recipe for very poor mental health. I'm happy to dig into why I think that if you're interested.
Umm...if you are equating the serotonin mechanism to zero sum then you don't get what it's for and I can't really explain past that. You don't lean into anything. It's built into your head. You literally cannot not do it. I'm not interested in why you are straw manning things I'm not saying. If I don't adhere to your "anything in the mind that's a serotonin mechanism is zero sum" there really isn't anything left to say besides you are wrong and learn more about it. 🤷
Are you into religion, or philosophy, or psychology?
Any of these paths will point you to peace being found when you move away from comparison.
I'm into all of them. What they will teach is to not be jealous, stop thinking about yourself so much, and to try to take care of your fellow man and actually put them ahead of yourself. You can't do that without comparison. If you can help others you are actually making them better off than you in a lot of cases...if your goal is to ignore that comparison then you don't know if you've done any good at all. I would say service to others is the number one thing taught by all of those. They don't decry comparison at all. Actually if anything they say compare yourself to God or an ultimate ideal, find yourself lacking and do your best to help everyone else around you.