If I’m the 5th wealthiest person in my cohort and I move up to 4th, that means someone else moved from 4th to 5th; absolutely agreed. And as long as we don’t pay attention to anyone outside our cohort, that’s a zero-sum game; also agreed.
Of course, if I do look at the rest of the world, I might discover that in going from 5th to 4th in our cohort she also went from Nth to N+1000th in the world… in which case it’s less clearly zero-sum.
Similarly, if you join my conversation and end up getting most of the attention, I lose status within the conversation. If in the process the conversation becomes more interesting to others, I may gain status within the community
Of course, the same thing goes the other way… I can gain status locally while we both lose it globally. I can take over a conversation while making everyone dismiss me as a crank not worth listening to.
And I appreciate that recalibrating ranks to the local group is often useful; I don’t mean to say one should never do that. Merely that it’s worth being aware of both the local and the global context.
If I’m the 5th wealthiest person in my cohort and I move up to 4th, that means someone else moved from 4th to 5th; absolutely agreed. And as long as we don’t pay attention to anyone outside our cohort, that’s a zero-sum game; also agreed.
Of course, if I do look at the rest of the world, I might discover that in going from 5th to 4th in our cohort she also went from Nth to N+1000th in the world… in which case it’s less clearly zero-sum.
Similarly, if you join my conversation and end up getting most of the attention, I lose status within the conversation. If in the process the conversation becomes more interesting to others, I may gain status within the community
Of course, the same thing goes the other way… I can gain status locally while we both lose it globally. I can take over a conversation while making everyone dismiss me as a crank not worth listening to.
And I appreciate that recalibrating ranks to the local group is often useful; I don’t mean to say one should never do that. Merely that it’s worth being aware of both the local and the global context.