Who wants to play the status game?

This has given me food for thought. My kids go to school in an area that has a mix of incomes. My average day might involve working from home, or it might involving traveling internationally to visit $PROMINENT_BRAND_NAME to deliver consulting. When I talk to the other parents I want to reveal some aspects of my life so we have something to talk about. However I can easily come across as boasting (and, to some extent, I guess I am) if I name drop trips and clients. The Leveling Game is similarly tricky. Though I would happily criticize the current government, in my area the majority voted for them (sigh.) Also, grumbling isn't really my jam. I don't want to base my relationships on it.

There are good ideas in the post. For me, it shows the different understandings of the current politic climate.

Some people things on creating a common ground where everybody has the same value. Other people want to have a clear hierarchy that states what is your place in society.

I am clearly biased to choose the common ground approach. I have grown suspicious with the people that look for a clear hierarchy because usually they also couple that with them being at the top. If you want to have a clear hierarchy, that may be useful, you need to be able to agree to be at the bottom.

But, to look at the different perspectives may help to understand each other better and create a way to work out solutions that are acceptable for everybody.

You can still complain about the Government just focus on the promises they aren't keeping :)

Part of what this is getting to is that the elites are, in a sense, unmoored. I can't speak for what they individually feel but there must be some acceptance that Facebook and Google just don't measure up to Standard Oil or Toyota in terms of real world impact. The electronic companies can measure up, but they are becoming more of an Asian phenomenon. Maybe the drug companies.

I have a half-formed view that many of societies elites are trying to pretend that they are something else because they don't know how to handle the responsibility of maintaining the complex machinery of society. They don't want to actually let go of their power and status though.

I love how the author casually puts herself up there with Kant, Aristotle and Nietzsche. I guess she's playing the importance game too :)

"And no philosopher — not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I — has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things."