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Everything he says is true, but boy no one wants to hear it. So much of modern identity is tied up in envy together with empathy.
Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups. You can even express some hostility towards your own group to show how noble and virtuous you are. Unfortunately, in the west, this narrative is deeply flawed - the most of the approved groups only suffer relative to others. They don't suffer absolutely at all.
If you give up envy, you take away people's ability to show what noble souls they are.
I've been thinking recently that Twitter is rapidly becoming a tool for people to claim Moral Superiority. There's all sorts of culture wars being fought, and both sides seem intent on showing how much more Moral they are.
That's always been around, but it feels like it's become much more intense online over the past year or two.
I think it may have been an inevitable phase of moving the world online, when I step back and try to look at it objectively. Suddenly billions of people are talking to each other and getting a sense of their place in the world. Naturally, they're trying to establish an identity in that mass of humanity. Staking out their territory.
Part of that is aligning themselves with a tribe. Some of the old tribal leaders (politicians) are extremely adept at that game and have been successfully pulling people into the highly (and quite intentionally) polarized divisions that serve the leaders' goals. You can see this at work when you see the masses parrot whatever the approved outrage of the week is (and this applies to all extremes on the political spectrum).
The key point is that these outrages are specifically selected for their ability to divide the populace into neat little tribes. A lot of political issues are chosen for focus because they serve as a Sorting Hat, if that makes sense. That benefits the people who are already in charge of those Houses.
I'd like to think this is just a phase, though. We're very early on in the game. People are just getting used to an idea that they can establish their identity in the big global world, and so far they're leaning on the old structures. Maybe in years to come they won't have to, maybe they'll find other ways to establish identity. At least I hope that's the case.
Anyway, this is kind of rambling. I should try to organize these thoughts a little better.
Yes, the only reason envy is related to this is that it's playing a substitute role for actual harm.
Here in India, you can actually say "look, starving children." "Look, these people need water." "These people need power." If I hadn't been stuck in a hospital for the past week or so, I'd have seen several people each day for whom empathy is a natural reaction. But it's pretty hard to inspire empathy for Indians or Africans.
In the US, it's far harder to find such people. No one would consider me a deprived person or particularly deserving of empathy (ignoring a temporary medical condition), yet I have far fewer goods and services than even most of the poorest Americans. This poses a conundrum for those who want to appeal to empathy.
That's where envy comes in. Don't feel bad for people because they have too little, feel bad because others have more.
Nowadays the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to express sympathy and empathy for various approved groups.
Uh, modern people prove they are good in a variety of ways with PC-politics being just one, feel-good charity another, tough-love realism another and so-forth. And modern people also prove they are strong and successful and sexy and what-all else, it's a Vanity Fair out there.
But a clever jump from the problem of envy to the problem of "sympathy and empathy for various approved groups."
While I agree that telescopic empathy is often more self-serving and less helpful than it appears, I would make the same claim of calls to "step out of the game," finite or no.
There are rewards to being first. On some axes, it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
Further, in some cases humans actively create finite games for others to play. You used to be able to hunt buffalo and live off the land. Not anymore.
I'll make some not-so-brave statements, and then I'll make some brave (and, in my opinion, useful) ones.
Not so brave:
1. Life is a finite game. Over the long term, and on varying resources, Malthus was right.
2. We've gotten a lot of great stuff from having humans play finite games. This "market" one is pretty neat. Idealists imagined the rectangle I'm using to type this, but pragmstists financed its development.
3. Finite games can do horrible damage to people, causing them to starve, isolate themselves, and harm others. That's the short list.
4. "People" should "find" a "balance" that's "right for them."
Brave(r):
1. A finite game can sometimes be transformed to an infinite game by projecting it over time. Startups perform this alchemy all the time by considering lifetime customer value rather than just initial revenue. Horatio Alger, as long as he spends less than he makes, is a source of infinite money.
2. In a unpredictable and uncaring universe, one should carefully guard one's main source of sustenance---even if that's a finite game, save value, and then make small risky forays into more desireable territory. This is the operating principle of the financial world.
3. Sometimes big investments are necessary (so, maybe not so brave).
Lets look at how envy drives some entire businesses:
1. Instagram - completely based around lifestyle envy and like count.
2. Pinterest - envy my "good" taste
3. Facebook - envy my life and my baby
4. Twitter - envy my wit and follower count
5. Linked.in - envy my job and connection count
6. Gmail (before open access) - envy my domain name for my email address.
7. eBay - Envy my sellers badges and review ranking
I think social networking in particular has a strong correlation to using envy as being a "dark" social pattern exploited for growth and stickiness.
I use most of those services (except 2 and sort of 5) and don't experience the 'envy' that you associate with them. Perhaps your perspective on them is skewed or perhaps my use-cases are atypical.
I'd say your use-cases are atypical.
Envy is so much part of those services that it has even been played in comedy routines - or even in drama:
I think Linkedin and eBay are stretching it a bit... a very small (though probably real) percentage of use cases for those services revolve around the envy emotions you describe.
Science - envy my article count and journal impact factor.
>Gmail (before open access) - envy my domain name for my email address
The others OK, but that's a little far fetched. Who gave a flying fuck if you had an early access Gmail account? Geeks? And I don't think it was some kind of envy generating strategy -- just the usual practice of an "invite only" beta.
Juxtaposed:
> ...stop taking finite games seriously.
> 22,800 followers
> 900,000 views
edit: no insult meant to the author, and I appreciate the sentiment. I just found the advice and the bean counting to be ironic when appearing together.
Wow, good observation. That whole sidebar screams "look at my numbers!"
I've been struggling with this and need some help from you wiser HN folks.
I've decided that I won't make money the #1 factor in my life and I do try and put it into practice. I have more savings than my friends who do earn much more than me.
Lately its occurred to me that such idealism may have some negative consequences in the long run. In a society where everything is predicated on how much money you have - the healthcare you receive , the education your kids get , the college they go to , I can't practically avoid playing society's finite games.
My dad is a guy who's never played any of these finite games. And the end result is that not a day goes by when my mom doesn't complain about him and his ways. It's hard to find other people who share such a world view.
And personally too , it's been very tough. It's a pretty common feeling but I have it too , that I lost my way somewhere and now I'm at some place where I can't motivate my self to find a way out. And frankly , I'm not asking for too much. If I got a decent job with some interesting work I'd be thrilled.
It's natural feel envy and snobbery. Especially towards the folks who grew up with you. I don't envy Elon Musk because he was never a part of my life. But if I were a smart kid in his class who grew up with him , maybe I'd feel a tinge of envy :P . Because you both came from the same place you feel that you could have done it.
You should never ever feel sorry for yourself. Easy enough to say but I can't seem to do it. And that's destroying me.
EDIT: Someone who actually walks the walk on this: http://heuna.tumblr.com/post/2415073898/kim-ung-yong-a-child...
My take on it has always been, for money not to be a big factor in life, you need a certain amount of money. Otherwise you're constantly counting it, tracking prices, looking for income, etc.
To be able to make enough money to not have to be thinking about it all the time, but to forego the opportunity on idealistic grounds seems to be a painful shot at my foot; I will have made myself constantly worry about money out of my disdain for it.
... wherein our author realizes they have been pursuing the wrong goals.
Yes, it is common for people to measure themselves against folks they consider their peers. Some of them got it from their parents who said to them, "oh, he's the best in his class" or "look at how clean and tidy your friend is, go wash up." Some of them got it from a desire to have a score with which to compare. Some got it from girlfriends or wives who complained to them in reference to a comparison.
And then again, a lot of people have moved past that and started defining their values not through comparison to others but to their own internal values.
It might be an age thing, or maybe a maturity thing. At some point you realize in the end you are going to be dead, and killing yourself so that folks who are still alive will remember you, is not really a 'goal' that lends itself to a full life.
On the other hand, comparing yourself to others can be useful in giving yourself direction and ideas.
For a simple example, when I visit friends' houses, I am often taking little notes. "Oh, I love this sink. Hey, the placement of the washer is great." It gives me ideas, real-life-examples, for how I could improve my house to my own liking.
The same can be done at a personal level. Anything you admire about someone can be taken as a role model. Not because you want to outdo them. Rather because you want to be more like them.
Others may disagree, but I find other people very handy for "window shopping" life decisions and lifestyles. Does this guy seem fulfilled? Does that guy have trouble making rent? Which one do I want to end up like?
Fair point, I refer to that activity as "learning from others" as opposed to "comparing to others".
The key difference is that the reference standard is rooted in your internal values. So "you love that sink" as opposed to "everyone thinks that sink is better than mine, time to upgrade my sink."
Role models are good too, if you are evaluating the values that you believe in. But the key there is that you adopt your values because you believe in them, not because others think you should believe in them.
Like the author who was pursuing fame as a researcher because he felt others saw that as valuable, only to come into conflict with his real values which were that his family meant the world to him. In my opinion, letting yourself be driven by values external to your world view will always end up with you feeling very poorly about yourself in the long term.
The book which this article is based on is Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse.
http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1...
For some reason, the article mentions the author but does not explicitly mention the title of the book.
A lot of the post feels like hyperbole to me - here's a successful and intelligent professor, telling people to simply do what they want to do, and not worry about 'competition' and finite games. He clarifies his views a little in the comments, relenting that one can still have healthy competition as long as it doesn't become 'war'-like.
Perhaps a more moderate summary of his message is "don't take the game too seriously, and know when to leave it". Or maybe this is just taking something that both the author and those he criticizes view as being binary, and viewing it as a real.
It's a matter of semantics, but perhaps we can replace "competition" with "inspired by" (a peer) to do more. Personally, this mindset has helped me a lot.
Sure, I feel that way about a lot of work related things. Honestly, at the end of the day as solipsistic as it might sound, you have to play the game where you're happy, and that's 'winning'. What game this is differs from person to person. Re: money, fame, etc, most us aren't Midases, and pursuing these metrics usually lead to significant losses in other (presumably important) dimensions.
Reducing the problem of inequality to envy is so totally, arrogantly disconnected from the reality of life on this planet that it makes me want to punch the author in the face.
This entire blog post can be summarized in one short sentence: "let them eat cake!".
Seriously, "Take the regular jobs."? What the fuck do you think the vast majority of people lucky enough to have a job are doing?
"Avoid conspicuous consumption." Well thank you very fucking much for that bit of helpful advice to the majority that have no fucking choice.
Envy is the standard lame excuses of the privileged that don't want to bother thinking about the consequences their privilege has for others.
His "finite games" are non-optional within a society of structurally growing inequality. You stop playing, you lose everything. Maybe not dramatically in one individual's lifetime (if, like his one and only example, you're lucky enough to be pretty fucking privileged to start with), but bit by bit, generation by generation, until there is nothing left but scraps.
That's what Piketty and Occupy Wall street were talking about, not about whether or not people can "choose" to buy a fucking BMW. Inequality is a growing cancer that gradually takes all choices away.
The book, "The millionaire next door" is based on extensive research on the consumption patterns of America's wealthiest and a surprising majority live below their means and don't play that game. They're wealthy is spite of being low earners -- in other words they play solid economic defense and often have a weaker economic offense than many. There are a lot of people driving BMWs who can't afford them, and the economic crises revealed a ton of people over-leveraged on mortages. Now, in that case there's certainly a strong argument that people were taken advantage of, and inequality is a really big problem -- I'm just not convinced the status game is something that must be played. Again, the book makes a compelling, fact based argument that frugality is a bigger determinant of wealth than high income.
To pick a nit and hopefully spark interest in what is an amazing book, Thorsteun Veblen described a good purchased to create envy as "Invidious Consumption", which is a special case of conspicuous consumption.
Invidious Consumption is meant to divide people. Conspicuous only means some aspects of it stand outside the realm of 'utility' (which to Veblen includes aesthetics).
Stopped reading at the luxury car point. Some people of means choose to drive luxury cars because they are powerful, comfortable cars with lots of safety features and bleeding edge technology.
I'm sure there are plenty of people that buy them due to envy, but to state that everyone who buys one is envious, or wants to evoke others' envy, is more than a little ridiculous.
>Some people of means choose to drive luxury cars because they are powerful, comfortable cars with lots of safety features and bleeding edge technology.
Probably the kind of people who have never heard or entertained the notion of diminishing returns, and think that spending $200,000 or $300,000 on a car will get you much more comfortable and "bleeding edge technology" than spending, say, $60,000, and not just an extravagant design and the envy factor.
(I'm also not sure why buyers of luxury cars in the US in particular want "powerful" sports cars in a country where the maximum speed limit we get is a kindergarten level 70-75 mph).
(Btw, and whenever someone writes "everyone" for a social group, he means "the majority of them". No need to point out some exceptions to "disprove" him).
> I'm also not sure why buyers of luxury cars in the US in particular want "powerful" sports cars in a country where the maximum speed limit we get is a kindergarten level 70-75 mph
Because handling and acceleration are useful and FUN even if you aren't red lining it.
> than spending, say, $60,000
The original author specifically denigrates BMWs, which you can purchase for less than $60k.
It's all relative, I guess.
It's ironic that you mention diminishing returns, as many automobiles in the $200,000+ range appreciate in value, rather than depreciate.
A $60,000 car is still, by all objective standards, a luxury car.
Mercedes-Benz, founded by the inventor of the automobile, Karl Benz, has consistently been the leader in automotive innovation, particularly in safety features. http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/innovation
Top speed is not the only desirable attribute of a powerful car. Accelerating to 75mph in 4 seconds is an enjoyable experience in its own right. Additionally, does the speed limit actually stop people from driving as fast as they want? Where I live, the speed limit most accurately describes the lower limit, not the upper.
"Everyone" may, perhaps, be construed as an overwhelming majority, but not a simple majority. A majority of voters selected Barack Obama as President of The United States in 2012. It would not be accurate to state that everyone selected Barack Obama as President.
Nobody cares about your reasons. Many people buy luxury cars to show off their wealth.
James Clapper, is that you?
Perhaps you like to play fast and loose with the definitions of common words like "almost" and "certainly", but there is a wide gulf between "many people" and "almost everyone".
my dad used to 'cheap-out' as i'd call it for most of my life, "why waste the money?" he'd say. Now in his later years he buys luxury - a new boat instead of fixing up the old one, a 'comfort' car instead of something that fits better to function, etc. His reasoning now is, "I've got the money, I might as well enjoy it cause I can't take it with me when I die. A bit more money for me not having grief is well worth the investment." Like your statement, it has nothing to do with envy, he'd just rather splurge a little to have the piece of mind that what he has is going to work in the way he wants it to.
Isn't it fundamentally just about the ability to manipulate one's environment, though?
Such capacity is the only thing I ever envy about others: the power to craft their environment and sculpt their own experience to fit their desires, regardless of content. The relative difference is entirely incidental, since I primarily notice only others who are further up the hierarchy.
Is it just me? It seems like a major fallacy to think that in general people desire power over other humans as an end in itself.
Perhaps it's the technocrat talking, but the ideal situation seems to be Unenvied Power: pure power over one's environment, with zero conscious representation of that power in others' minds.
As humans we need to feel a sense of accomplishment. When we lived in small tribes and villages it was possible for many people to achieve something in that small pond. Now we're all surrounded by giants. It's both humbling and depressing.
I'm not sharp enough to tell if this is a joke/parody site. He has the 'social media' stats in this weird prominent sidebar, which makes me think this is some kind of experimental-art piece critiquing social media.
The concept that playing zero-sum games is socially unacceptable needs to come back. This would not have been a strange concept to a businessman of the 1950s.
A culture of envy? Maybe. But in a world where the top 1% controls 50% of the global wealth, what is surprising about it?
> I believe that if there is one thing humanity needs to do to get through the next few centuries, is to reject envy and stop taking finite games seriously.
That cannot happen as long as you want humanity to exist. Reproduction is the driving force, shaping everything from our behavior, including the search for status, which is an important mechanism in mating. If people didn't signal [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Signaling], evolution would be a lot slower (or maybe could exist at all?).
Now, status doesn't necessarily need to be related to wealth, however for the past centuries, that was a reliable indicator.
This is really basic evolutionary psychology, and I encourage the author the check it out.
A lot of things "slow down evolution". Glasses and contact lenses, or not throwing babies with birth defects from the nearest cliff. So that in itself hardly constitutes an argument against anything, slowing down evolution is perfectly fine.
It's not like fast or slow or no evolution make any difference when it comes to the heat death of the universe. Evolution does make "progress", but not really towards anything in particular; it isn't going anywhere. The universe, for all we know anyway, is a tightly sealed container we will not get out of and die in no matter what we evolve into -- so we might as well spend the time intellectually honest and compassionate.
> Now, status doesn't necessarily need to be related to wealth, however for the past centuries, that was a reliable indicator.
On what planet? Make a list of the greatest minds of the last 100 years, and find out how much they cared about, or even despised, wealth. I know it's subjective to a degree what constitutes a "great mind" - but that still beats the circular logic of defining success as material wealth, and then saying material wealth is a good indicator for success.
"This is really basic evolutionary psychology, and I encourage the author the check it out."
Maybe at the same time he could check out dowsing, homeopathy, and all the other pseudoscience.