Post by edPost by -hhPost by edEh. If one earned the money for the car, it's all the same in
terms of bragging.
That's a flawed presumption, since there's no uniform baseline
or context: any differentiation may be a sham.
For example, I can recall an individual who was allegedly
"affluent" enough to have an expensive [vehicle brand not
important] … until it was discovered they were literally
sleeping in it ... does one still feel jealous? Probably not.
well, i wouldn't be jealous to begin with, but whether someone
is jealous or not is not really the point of it all being the same.
The context was bragging, and the braggart in trying to make himself
feel better (self esteem) which requires provoking a reaction in
others - - the flawed logic of the braggart is that it must be a
Win-Lose: they believe that they're raised by pushing others down,
which is accomplished by jealousy, envy, etc.
Post by edyou're basically saying that it's not the same because
someone sacrifices something that many others might want -
which is likely the case in the your examples of bragworthy
things -
Close, but not quite. Perceptions lead to assumptions, typically of
an "all other factors equal" which is fraught with exceptions.
The extreme example I provided illustrated that a general assumption
is that someone who has enough disposable income for a luxury SUV
isn't going to be homeless, so their well-being is gaged by the luxury
vehicle manifestation; that they have a house is assumed (in this
case, incorrectly).
Post by ed...to run a good half marathon or complete a (nontrivial)
project or pick up a new skill all require a sacrifice of time.
There's that too, but I purposefully chose to keep my other
'alternative priority' examples as things which are generally more
materialistic.
Post by edPost by -hhSimilarly, there's still the presumption of personal priorities,
but there's nothing saying that a vehicle must be one's preferred
vice. For example, there's no reason why one might not prefer to
spend one's discretionary amount on a bigger house ...or a second
or third one ... or instead of a car/SUV to have a sailboat/
powerboat/airplane instead, or to be able to go participate in
more cost-intensive hobbies such as skydiving/scuba/golf/hang
gliding/etc, or to be 'cultural' and spent it on the tickets
to attend various live performances
(Plays/Operas/Concerts/Improv),
etc….or even to bank the money to allow retirement by age 60…or
even 55, or earlier still.
i didn't say it must be one's preferred vice- in fact, i pretty
much said the opposite when i said it's all the same when it
comes to bragging. :P certainly the case when compared to
the examples you give above.
I think we're in agreement here ... I simply provided some concrete
examples of what some of these alternative priorities for
discretionary resources may be, and even here, the list is far from
comprehensive. There is no secret formula that says that happiness &
success is defined as the perfection of resource allocations to be:
24% household, 21% toys, 17% vacations, 14% family, 11% health, 8%
arts, and 5% volunterism...even if there are societal influences which
literally suggested these.
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I feel faint from all that hot gas.