Damn. That is one of the most articulate well thought out arguments I have seen in my 6 years on Reddit. I had to read it 3 times to understand it and it makes perfect sense to me as that is what’s happening around us.

But it leaves me asking why the majority of us continue to let this dictate our lives. I know it’s instinctively in us to compare but we continue to compare ourselves to lives that we know are false or not attainable.

Not sure what your taste in music is but this makes me think of a song called propaganda by Dax. There is a powerful scene in the video when he goes to check on a friend he hasn’t heard from. That friend is sitting in a recliner staring at the news on a TV in a almost comatose state. While there is a huge white beam of energy shooting in him from that TV. It goes on to say that the news ticker at the bottom of the screen is called a news feed and we are a product of what we feed our brain.

When I learned about stoicism and the fact that we have virtually no control of the things that happen around and to us only how we react to it I was able to see things differently. Comparing my life to others made less sense after internalizing that. Instead of comparing myself to others I break down each day by contrasting my actions against the virtues I believe to be important and if I took the correct steps to live my best life that day. This is not to say that I don’t find myself doing exactly what you explained at times but it helps center me when I do.