[hugh3]

Who do you see as your "social inferiors" and why?

Y'see, this is why I'm worried that I'm over-sharing and making myself sound like a dick. But it's something we all do, subconsciously, because it's something our brain is programmed to do. It's not that one consciously sits there and thinks "Man, that two hundred pound woman pouring my coffee sure is my social inferior", it's just something of which one is unavoidably aware.

Or am I just a dick?

[nostrademons]

I don't think you're a dick any more than I think I'm a dick, but I'll warn you, occasionally I think I'm a dick. ;-)

It is possible to construct a mental world for yourself where hierarchy and status don't matter, and several people do. I've lived in both worlds. I've always been pretty inquisitive, and when I was in middle school and high school, I got big into philosophy - questions like "What makes something good? What makes something better? Why do we value the things that we do?"

I had a vested interest in the answer to these questions, because in the dimension that matters in high school - standardized test scores - I was way, way out in front of everyone. As in, four or five standard deviations ahead of everyone, enough that my SATs from 7th grade could've gotten me into an elite college.

And yet I was miserable, because being such an outlier made me alone and isolated. I also found it very problematic morally, because I had arrived at the conclusion that to be morally good, an action must've been taken on your own free will: there're no "points" for things you have to do anyway. My smarts - the one quality that I most defined myself by - came about by chance meeting of sperm and egg, and I didn't do a damn thing for them.

So starting at age 13, I rebelled. I just completely rejected that value system. I figured that the one thing I could control was whether I was a good person or not, so I resolved to be nice to people, whether I thought they were stupid or not, and whether being nice to them could do many any good or not. I hung out with the freaks, and goths, and stoners, because as fellow outsiders, I felt the most kinship with them. Some of them had combined SAT scores lower than my SAT-M; a bunch ended up dropping out of school. I heard that one (my best friend from early high school) was later convicted of dealing meth.

But y'know what? I was a whole lot happier during that time in my life.

I ended up figuring I'd give the "let's work really hard and climb to the top of the pyramid" idea another go when I was 23, in my senior year of college. Mostly because I wanted to be able to tell people they were doing it wrong, and look, there're successful people that think it's not all about success! When someone unsuccessful says "Hey man, just because you make more than me doesn't make you better than me", there is an impulse to say "Of course you'd say that, if you got off your lazy ass and got a job you could be successful too, but damnit, I worked for what I got!" When someone successful says it, maybe you take notice.

But unfortunately it's very hard to live in a culture without absorbing its value system, and I worry that as I climb the corporate ladder and rack up accomplishments, I'm losing the core values that made me happy. I had a sudden realization lately that I don't really like myself anymore, because so much of my life now revolves around being awesome in my chosen field, and it's shut out what life's really about, being with awesome people and being able to take delight in their awesomeness even if nobody else does. I looked at my OKCupid profile lately and thought "I wouldn't date myself, I wonder why the hell anyone else would, it's no wonder that 75% of girls take a look at it and then ignore my message."

So there's my overshare for the day. I dunno what to tell you, because I haven't really figured it out for myself. I suspect that the answer lies in going through all the motions that successful people use to become successful, but not internalizing that as part of your value system. If I saw that two hundred pound woman pouring my coffee, I'm guessing two different parts of my brain would light up. One would say, "What a fat slob, can't she go to the gym and get a real job?" And the other would say, "Y'know, she probably has a couple kids at home, and she works hard to provide for them, and she has a nice smile and makes friendly conversation even though she probably knows that I'm thinking my assholish thoughts."

And then the parts of my brain would fight, and it wouldn't be pleasant, and I'd go home feeling like a douchebag and then go write about it on the Internet.

[mattgreenrocks]

I was touched by your comment, especially regarding the cognitive dissonance and meta-emotions.

You need to investigate alternative value systems that don't make a person's worth contingent upon the power they have. I think you will find the freedom you're looking for there. But, it isn't easy, as the ideal of power is nearly hardwired into our brains from many years of evolution. And, if you're successful, you need to realize that you are consciously rejecting much of society's sacrosanct value system, and it will bite you in the ass in unpredictable ways for quite awhile. You may find yourself less successful in areas where power is the lingua franca: business, dating, hell, even friendships.

At the end of the day, however, you can only be true to yourself. Success doesn't mean shit if you're not happy. Best of luck to you, you know enough to really set yourself free, but it only gets harder if you go down that route.

[StavrosK]

Rejecting a value system doesn't mean you won't recognise it or even abide by it, it just means that you think it's flawed/unjust/false.

[mattgreenrocks]

Good point.

You have to constantly remind yourself that others may play by totally different rules from you, and you cannot call them on it without pissing them off. The trick is more to find some kindred spirits so you don't feel too strange.

[three14]

But that's so much better than the GP. If the GP smiles at the waitress, he can only manage a real smile at her as her superior or a fake smile as a fellow human being. You at least have the option of a real smile as a fellow person.

[apenwarr]

Not exactly a dick: you're intensely conscious of the social hierarchy. I've noticed that some people just are, and some people just aren't.

What you do with it is what makes you a dick or doesn't. And a lot of that is under your conscious control. The people who don't care about the social hierarchy are just lucky because they don't have to worry about it.

Now, using words like "social inferior" is probably a bad idea if you want to not make people aware that you're aware of the social hierarchy :)

On the other hand, I'm much more concerned about your use of the word "incompetence" above than about your use of the word "social inferior." Sometimes spilling a drink is just an accident, not a sign of incompetence. We've all spilled drinks in our lives; people who serve them for a living have surely spilled more. You can get into a lot of trouble if you can't tell the difference between incompetence and bad luck.

[yid]

Nope, you're fine. The only thing more ubiquitous than people judging each other is people proclaiming how bad that is.

[18pfsmt]

I'm not sure anyone is arguing over whether people should or shouldn't judge each other, but rather arguing over the metrics used. I'm not for PC in conduct, and I offend people in person quite often. Most people I interact with these days have known me for more than 10 years. It seems hugh3 is from the UK, while I am from the US (4th gen UK immigrant; just inherited 2 portraits of immigrant ancestors from the 1850s); there seems to be quite a few nuanced differences that turn out to be significantly determinate in our ultimate conclusions in a variety of situations. I'm guessing you, too. are from the UK because it is difficult for me to empathize with hugh3 the way you appear to do so.

[j_baker]

The thing is, we relegate these kinds of ideas to the subconscious for a reason: it's incredibly condescending to let them out. It's good to be aware of them, but it's a bad idea to embrace them (whether rationalized or not).

Granted, sometimes you have to let them out. Sometimes you run into a situation where someone is doing something wrong and you have no choice but to "pull a rank". But aside from that, it's generally a bad idea to give these thoughts too much weight.

[PostOnce]

It's not that we don't consider ourselves superior to others, it's that we don't speak publicly about having social inferiors, because that is the mark of an inferior person. I have heard trailer-dwellers speaking loudly about "low-class people" (relative to themselves, in their opinion, heh), and how they are better than group x or y, but rarely in the company of higher-caliber people do I ever hear such talk. This is because superior people simply have bigger, better, and more important things to discuss. It's also a matter of class. It's very low-brow to speak of others as being beneath you.

Generally, when I hear people speak of others as beneath them, I pity them for their lack of higher thoughts. I imagine a Klan member on television, talking about how others are beneath him, because his worth is not generated through action or societal contribution, his supposed worth is innate, he is better than group N because he was not born a member of group N; he will never contribute anything to society that improves the social rank he imagines himself to have been born with.

tl;dr: Everyone thinks unbecoming thoughts; only the low-class voice them.