Hierarchies are pretty self-evident. Look at the caste system in India, some 3000+ years old. Evolved, but still there. The monarchies of Europe, especially Britain and the descending line of dukes, earls and lords. Celebrity status in the US — film, music and sports stars.

Many of our insecurities, those that generate stress, as we struggle to discern who we are from who we should be, are not genetic or cultural. In my opinion, that are mostly perception issues. If we perceived wealth to only be a matter of coins in a bag, that the haves and have-nots would simply be a matter of math — she has more coins than me.

But it’s not. Wealth is access. Wealth is perception of what may always be just out of our reach. It’s a $1000 bottle of wine, a $15,000 hand-bag. Smooth skin, a tight buttocks and a latte at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s what has been told (read sold) to us from birth via every damn media platform imaginable. Things that we are supposed to want or need. Then we stress because we cannot have them — even if we do not need them.

We want whiter-whites, because we are sold on the idea that is means something important and we should listen. We want the newest car, because it’s the ultimate driving machine. We need a $185 pair of sneakers because it brings us a little closer to that special reality that we might share. We crave that supplement, because it’ll change how we look,and how we feel, compared to an ideal that in reality, only exists in Photoshop or in an advertisement.

Stress is very real. It’s what exists when two tectonic plates rub against each other in a battle for position. It’s what occurs when two opposing ideas push up against one another in a fight for dominance. It’s all too often, the debilitating result when two realities crash into one another, insisting that one must be wrong if the other is right.

Anxiety is an artificial state. It doesn’t exist in Nature. What in Nature races against the clock every day? Even a peacock who fails to mate, doesn’t off himself. I think all the internal conflicts, the odd choices we feel compelled to make, make us socially anxious. Must be a better way.

Thanks, Zat, for some critical thinking.