{"id":164147,"date":"2025-10-06T08:03:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164147"},"modified":"2025-10-06T08:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:03:23","slug":"what-do-we-want-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164147","title":{"rendered":"What Do We Want?"},"content":{"rendered":"

UCLA psychologist David Pinsof writes<\/a>: See if you can spot the pattern:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to make money; we want to make <\/span>more money than our neighbors<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    We don\u2019t just want a job; want to have a more <\/span>prestigious job than our peers<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    We don\u2019t just want people to like us; we want people to like us <\/span>more than they like other people<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to be educated; we want to have <\/span>better educational credentials<\/a> than our competitors on the job market.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to belong to a group; we want our group to <\/span>be better than other groups<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  6. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to have opinions; we want to <\/span>have more interesting opinions than other people<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  7. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to be attractive; we want to be <\/span>more attractive than our rivals<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  8. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to be a good person; we want to be <\/span>holier than thou<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  9. \n

    We don\u2019t just want to help the environment; we want to be <\/span>greener than thou<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  10. \n

    We don\u2019t just want a house; we want to a prettier house, <\/span>with a nicer view<\/a>, in a <\/span>better school district<\/a>, than other people have.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Did you spot the pattern? Of course you did. It\u2019s the unflattering way our desires work. We\u2019re constantly comparing ourselves to the people around us, and we\u2019re never quite satisfied until we\u2019re just a <\/span>little bit <\/em>better than, or better off than, they are. This isn\u2019t true of all<\/span> <\/em>our desires (sometimes, we\u2019re just thirsty and want a glass of water), but it\u2019s true of a large percentage of them\u2014dare I say most of them. The majority of our time and energy is consumed by small-minded social competition, and we really hate to admit this. Our need to cover it up is, perhaps, the greatest source of human bullshit.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Why are our desires secretly like this? Because natural selection, <\/span>the thing that made our desires<\/a>, is an icky, competitive process. Animals compete with members of their species for <\/span>genetic representation in future generations.<\/a> They do this by competing for physical stuff (like food and territory), social stuff (like friends and mates), and the capacity to get social and physical stuff (like status and power). The competition rages over thousands of generations, and the winners leave more descendants than the losers. We are descendants of the winners, and we have inherited their winning characteristics, including their desire to win\u2014<\/span>and to conceal that desire from themselves and others (in order to win)<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    UCLA psychologist David Pinsof writes: See if you can spot the pattern: We don\u2019t just want to make money; we want to make more money than our neighbors. We don\u2019t just want a job; want to have a more prestigious … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43013],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david-pinsof"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164148,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164147\/revisions\/164148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}