I think that most people are simply primarily motivated by establishing a social standing for themselves. Some small part of the population wants to be socially dominant, a very large portion of the population wants to “fit in” and know the have a secure social standing, even if it isn’t necessarily at the top. The idea of trying to appeal to some standard outside of social hierarchies to validate yourself is not uncommon, but I don’t think it’s the majority. Being able to totally cast aside social hierarchies in favour of something else is rare.
I see what you did there.
Yeah, that’s just not what the majority of people want. I discussed this with a friend recently - our common experience of being a kid and thinking, “I’m nice to other people, I’m polite, why don’t people like me?” All that stuff they tell you about being polite and whatnot is just platitudes. The reality of social interaction is a brutal mess that I doubt we are even capable of untangling. We wouldn’t be able to perform that dance if so much of our brains weren’t built for that function - and for some of us, I think our brains weren’t built for that function and we just have to accept that we can never really get it (this discussion is now overlapping with the simultaneous one win the I’m so smart thread). People don’t operate on rigour or formality, they work on tangled heuristics and self-serving guesses.
