People spend an exorbitant amount of resources improving ourselves in every way conceivable. But what does this accomplish? Within humankind lurks an unspoken rivalry that motivates us to do exorbitant things. This rivalry has existed since the early ages, and has become increasingly evident as the world becomes exponentially interdependent. This is the Age of Unspoken Rivalry.
We perfect our physical appearance, attend ivy-league universities, and boast our material wealth so that we might gain an edge on our rivals. But who might those rivals be, and what are we rivaling over? Our rivals are everyone around us; they are everyone in the United States. As the global community takes shape, they are everyone in the world. We are rivaling for college admission to increase our education, jobs to maximize our wealth, and spouses so we can reproduce.
Modern civilization has become so interconnected that our success is based primarily on the performance of those around us. The performance of individuals competing for rewards (such as a cash prize in a running race, or a job at McDonalds) is influenced by two fundamental elements. The first is endowment, which is one’s ability or wealth. The second is effort, which is how extensively one utilizes their endowment to compete for a reward. With this simple equation, we see that one’s endowment plus their level of effort is equivalent to performance. Thus, those with greater endowments are able to put forth a lower level of effort to perform equally to their lesser endowed counterpart.
In the example of college admissions, endowment is the competitors’ intellectual abilities, performance is demonstrated in their test grades, and the rewards are given as acceptances into desired universities. The rewards are generally given to the competitors with the highest level of performance. For this reason, high performing high school students are more apt to apply to high ranking universities, such as ivy-league schools. Degrees from high ranking universities are generally favored in the job market because the holders of such degrees have already been labeled as high performers during the admission process and throughout their collegian career. This is, in effect, why it’s more likely that an ivy-league educated individual will earn substantially more money in his or her life as compared to a high school dropout, who is labeled as an extremely low performer. If a high school dropout had the same earning potential as a college graduate, there would be little purpose to attend college at all.
Within the last 100 years the college degree has become nearly a pre-requisite for entering the work force. Years ago, when a lower percentage of high school graduates decided to attend college, it was plausible that one may become very successful without attending college. However, as higher percentages of students decided to attend college, the high school graduates were left at a disadvantage, lacking a college degree.
The model of progression outlined above can be used to explain the need society feels to increase our physical attractiveness. Over a number of decades, women have went from wearing no makeup and showing no skin to covering up the majority of their natural face and exposing much of their body (and a parallel can also be drawn for men). A women’s endowment, in this example, could be considered her unaltered body, her effort is the steps she took to increase attractiveness, and the reward is the increased attention and interest from individuals.
As individuals within society collectively attempt to gain advantages over one another, the level of effort necessary to achieve adequate rewards will continues to rise. The demonstration of progressing effort will become increasingly radical. Plastic surgery will prevail, college will become a necessity for even low salary jobs, and greed will take precedence. Humankind would be better off if everyone agreed to decrease the effort required to achieve certain rewards. Unfortunately, the opportunistic nature of humans will prevent such an agreement from ever occurring.
Interesting piece. You’ll see it become less unspoken and more overt as time progresses.