Why does everything seem to be made into some kind of competition?

lefty goldblatt said:
Spot on with this analogy.
I drive a 22 year old Toyota.
It looks like a mobile scrap yard, after my dad's bad parking attempts (I inherited the car from him, after it was decided he was too old to drive). I've put it through 6 MOTs and spent no more than £200 in total to get it through those tests. It starts first time, every time.
When I drive to to the golf club where I play, it's surrounded by Jags, BMWs, Mercs etc, and I can guarantee their owners are financed/leased to hell, for the pleasure.

Daft fuckers
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Love this anolygy at my golf club its the same with all the new clubs gotta have the lastest driver,irons,putter etc.
I buy new irons every 6 yrs.My putter is 10 yrs old change the grip every 2 yrs works as well as the day i bought it.The tosssers shelling out 2 grand every year for the latest equipment who i routinely beat would be better off having lessons.
Never has the term all the gear no idea been truer.My daughter and her fella have everything on finance 2 cars , 3 hols a year,fancy appliances the works if they were to lose thier jobs they would own nothing.Worse thing is we taught her that if you cannot afford it you save for it.
 
Kompany Car said:
Now take me back to being in my 20s and you would have probably got a very different answer. Ive never been jealous of anyone but having as nice a car as I could afford, designer clothes, going on 18-30s etc were probably my main driver in life.
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I think there's an obvious biological driver, particularly for men, to seek social status when they're in their teens, 20s and 30s. Then you get older and find out what 'really matters' in life is family and relationships, but the reality is that often you wouldn't have had those relationships if you weren't putting effort into your social standing when you were younger. Young women, on the whole, aren't going out with blokes who don't at least seem driven to succeed in some way. Or at least men like that don't get a lot of choice.

Young men are insecure about their status, young women are insecure about their looks (obviously not exclusively, but as a general trend). And then we grow up, look back and laugh about what we were so insecure about. But the reality is we were insecure for good reason, because that's what drives us to become an attractive partner. The issue is that our biology is supposed to make us compete with the 10 or so people of our own age in our tribe, but the internet forces us to compete with literally everyone on earth, including fictional people. It's easy to be insecure when your feed is photoshopped pictures of perfect people with a plastic surgeon and a personal trainer, or 20-somethings who already own 10 houses and a Lamborghini (and never tell you what daddy does for a living).
 
SkyBlueFlux said:
In the same way people can overcome their “innate” nature to become vegetarians on a moral basis, many can also forego the need to compete with others on a similar philosophical standing. There is no longer an inherent driver that obligates us to be competitive, but the momentum that we carry from years past means that people still see it as a virtue, and this will likely be the case for a long time to come.
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I remember reading Grayson Perry's book about men (I forget the title) and he said that was one of the defining features of being a man, that you will find an area to be competitive in. Even men who think they're not competitive because they aren't with things like sports or board games will have something they are competitive about. Take something as mundane as hipster culture. On the surface, it seems like a rejection of the mainstream, but in reality, it then becomes a competition about who knows the most about various obscure references. Even on forums like this (but particularly hobbyist pages, like photography and so on) there will always be one bloke (and it is always a bloke) who has tens of thousands of posts and revels in their status as a respected member of their little corner of the internet. Hell, half of religious bigotry comes from people competing to be the most devout. Things like Twitter supercharge this, where people get followers for being a 'virtuous' person, and actively look for things to be offended by in order to show what a sensitive and enlightened little flower they are. It's certainly not just a male thing, but I think men are more likely to engage in it.

Hell, even on this thread, we risk having a competition to compare who is the most 'above' this sort of material competitiveness thing.
 
melrose40yarder said:
Love this anolygy at my golf club its the same with all the new clubs gotta have the lastest driver,irons,putter etc.
I buy new irons every 6 yrs.My putter is 10 yrs old change the grip every 2 yrs works as well as the day i bought it.The tosssers shelling out 2 grand every year for the latest equipment who i routinely beat would be better off having lessons.
Never has the term all the gear no idea been truer.My daughter and her fella have everything on finance 2 cars , 3 hols a year,fancy appliances the works if they were to lose thier jobs they would own nothing.Worse thing is we taught her that if you cannot afford it you save for it.
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Fuck me!
Every six years?
Had one set of Calloway irons for decades.
Bought a new driver two years ago, getting a new putter this year.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
I think the 4 bed detached, 2 new cars on the drive and three expensive holidays a year thing has come about because we new tend to be dual income households and start families a lot later, so disposable income ( until recently) has probably been higher for couples. Not sure any of this actually makes anyone happier though with women probably getting the worst deal - society basically saying you can have all this, kids and a career but there's still only 24 hrs in the day.
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But also the law of supply and demand then comes into effect. Dual income households lead to an increase in disposable income, but eventually it becomes the norm rather than the exception. And things like housing, services and utilities get priced at what people are able to pay (or borrow), meaning that a couple that would rather have one person stay home suddenly find that it's unaffordable. Is it really possible nowadays for an ordinary couple to buy a house if only one person works, even if they have a half decent job? Having said that, perhaps the idea of one person staying home is actually a relatively recent luxury and both people in a couple working (outside of looking after children) is historically the norm.
 
lefty goldblatt said:
Spot on with this analogy.
I drive a 22 year old Toyota.
It looks like a mobile scrap yard, after my dad's bad parking attempts (I inherited the car from him, after it was decided he was too old to drive). I've put it through 6 MOTs and spent no more than £200 in total to get it through those tests. It starts first time, every time.
When I drive to to the golf club where I play, it's surrounded by Jags, BMWs, Mercs etc, and I can guarantee their owners are financed/leased to hell, for the pleasure.

Daft fuckers
Click to expand...
I've only ever owned one car. A 1998 Nissan Primera bought in about 2006. Paid a grand, spent about 200 quid in total maintaining it over 4 years, sold it for 600. The insurance was 800 a year though.
 
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