One day I was chatting with my friend. She was pinching her arm and lamenting how fat she had become; when in truth she wasn't fat at all, which I pointed out. "Compare me with X (a slim girl)," she exclaimed. I then said "But you are thinner than Y (a plumper girl)."
She then answered "hey don't compare me with fat girls." After we had finished laughing, I gave some thought to the matter. Surely if one wishes to determine one's level of fatness in society, one should compare to everyone, both the fat and the slim ones. But my friend only compared herself to slim people.
An analogous example is when one says that businessmen are rich. From my observation, the successful ones are rich, yes. But many are just surviving, and many have failed. Why do we not include them in our overall assessment? Obviously there is a bias here - we tend to observe the ones which we aspire to be like, thus skewing our perception of the average towards that direction.
In a way, this biased perception serves a purpose for society: it spurs us on to achieve more. Yet we should also maintain a sense of perspective, for if we keep shifting the line of comparison upwards, the level of stress in society will constantly increase as well.
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