I’m Better Than You, OK?

Why this need to assert superiority?

I have been reading ‘The Village’ by Marghanita Laski.  It is a novel published in 1952 and set at the end of WWII in a little village in England.  A daughter of the gentry falls in love with a member of the toiling classes, and is only allowed to marry him – after threatening to elope – if the couple emigrate to Australia, to minimise the shame for her parents of being related to the lower classes.  Never mind that the groom is more decent than the sons of the gentry, that the bride is incapable of holding down a job but loves being a housewife, that the groom earns three times as much as the parents of the bride – gentry and working class must not mix, on pain of breaking two hearts.

The gentry hold the working class and the trades people and the nouveau riche in contempt, the nouveau riche look down on the gentry and pity the working classes, the trades people look down on the gentry and the working classes while sucking up to the nouveau riche, and everyone despises the new cockney parson because of his accent and his wife, who used to be a primary school teacher.  The way people talk about each other, you’d think the classes belonged to different species!

Anyway.  You may think, ‘Serves you right for reading out of print novels’, but alas humanity has not changed since the book was written.  The tendency to look down on each other and – which is the real purpose – to expand one’s ego at the expense of others is flourishing to this day.

This has always puzzled me.  Of course I understand it purely intellectually, but on a deeper level it strikes me as just weird.  I remember a conversation I once had with someone who tried to convince me for a solid four hours that her university degree was worth more than mine.  Putting aside details, did she really think I would ever agree with her, regardless of her arguments?  I mean, why on earth would I?  And even if I did, through gritted teeth and with ill grace, I would hate her forever more for having cheapened my accomplishments.  What is the point of having such a conversation?

We have all succeeded in achieving certain things in life, why do we need to assert that some of them are more important than others?  We all have special talents, why do we need to assert that one talent is more important than another, and should be rewarded more than another, and make the possessor superior to others?  Is it only possible to be pleased with one’s life/ achievements/ possessions by denigrating those of others?  Can’t we all be brilliant, beautiful, successful, marvellous, and amazing in our own right?  Why this need to compare?  Why do we have to be more brilliant, beautiful, and successful?  Why this need to drag down other people?