Why do you need to feel special? The ant theory posted above was spot on, think any of those ant’s are like, “I’m the man”. No they live in harmony and allow a colony to thrive.
It’s one of the more profound enigmas of human nature. Ego comes from so many combined sources that other creatures don’t necessarily think about/engage with. There’s theories that suggest it’s because of our unique way to create object and concept manipulation in our brains - think forward and backwards in time that has something to do with it. We can envision where we want to be in 5 years, financially/stability wise. Then we strive to achieve that. Other creatures, as far as we know do not have the capacity to think that far ahead and map out plans. They take things day by day and rarely strive to achieve anything outside of moment to moment survival.
The concept of ego and how it’s built is way more complex than that. But that’s the gist of how and why we might be blessed/cursed with it.
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Yeah, we aren’t ants though and likely aren’t going to evolve into them. Which I’m personally okay with. We’ve certainly observed that ants work very collectively but we definitely don’t have any measurement on “happiness” in them.
Humans aren’t born in certain “roles” that dictate from birth what their interests, profession, and function in society will be. The only way we’d get there is to centralize authority into few enough hands that they get to decide what each person does in life, maybe neutering the rejection of such a system through technology.
Not sure about you but I’m not interested in that.
Too much focus on individualism and ego is bad…going full collectivist/hive mind isn’t great either.
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Hmmm…
We do measure their happiness, based on positive judgment bias. Certainty vs. uncertainty. Also their output of calming or alert pheremones.
Here’s a little snippet:
The caste system disagrees with you. Although humanity did overcome it in most areas of the world, it is still very prevalent. There’s a movie out right now called Origin. It’s about the ongoing unspoken caste systems still in place in modern day society.
But ants aren’t subjected or forced into their roles either - none of the other ants force each other to do anything based on rank or what have you. Whatever instincts they develop as they mature makes them gravitate into what they do for the hive. Queen tenders usually are the most unique. Probably because they’re most heavily exposed to her phremones, but compared to the rest of the hive they’re incredibly affectionate. Constantly grooming her and one another to keep the potential for contamination and infection away from her and the brooding area.
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Im honestly not sure how the trust level thing works. Ive been active here for 6 years (according to my summary screen. Though Ive been here since 2004) and it says my TL is Member. I have no idea what that rank means, other than I know I cannot post links/photos. And not sure how to raise to that level
You are trust level 2. Note that is specific to the charname-server, not Battlenet account wide. Each char has its own trust level it has to earn under the current WoW forum system. Changing name or server resets it to zero.
You can start with this thread one of our former Tech MVPs posted in 2018 when the forum software deployed.
You can also check the Discourse website to learn more about the forum software. They are the maker of it.
Basically, there are 4 trust levels:
- TL0 which is what an account starts as
- TL1 which you get in about ten mins just from reading posts/giving a like maybe?
- TL2 which takes repeated forum visits over a period of weeks, reading posts, and a few likes.
- TL3 which takes enough reading, likes, and visits over a 100 day period to earn. You have to keep that activity up to maintain it. A suspension removes that and you have to earn it back starting 6 months after it expires.
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Subdivisions
In the M+ Halls
Behind PvP Walls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the Mogs that you fret
In the Mounts you can’t get
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The fact that we’ve moved on from monarchy and fiefdom in most of the world speaks to the fact that we’ve tried similar systems and found better.
Personally I’m quite a fan of classical liberalism and believe it’s making a nice comeback currently against rising collectivism on the political poles. I dig a good balance between individual freedom, ambition, and a combined healthy concern (not sole focus) on the idea of a greater good.
I think we need it more than ever going into the kind of future we’re building. I’d prefer to see a pretty open source technological future emphasizing freedom and progress than the dystopian options we might stumble into.
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I wish there was a way to track your stats. It’s annoying for me to have a rolling requirement and no way to know how you’re doing at maintaining it.
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a lot of expressed opinion is in support of RMT 3rd party transactions.
anything that threatens that brings an immediate response.
wow is a great game that unfortunately supports a 3rd world country sized RMT economy that hurts the play experience for a lot of customers…
I do not understand why this keeps being said. They hate third party real money gold buying.
obviously MS does not support this and I believe is taking steps get control of this black market economy.
my point is a lot of the negativity on the forums is created by people who exploit the game economy for real money and they are ferocious
Blizzard does not support it either. They can’t “get control” of criminal organizations using stolen credit cards, malware, phishing, fraud, botting, account theft, spamming/advertising, etc - when that org is outside the reach of US law. Some countries really don’t care that people are committing crimes in the US if it brings money locally.
The only way to totally shut down third party RMT is to remove any ability to trade in-game items/currency or services. They can limit it using in-game changes such as binding some things to the account, using software to find accounts meeting a specific set of cheating parameters, using player reports to start investigations, educating players so that players don’t buy goods and services that feed these criminal groups.
Stopping it though, without the legal ability to go after them, and without crippling the interactivity in the game is …tough.
If game companies could just nuke the RMT folks from orbit I am sure they would. They want nothing more than for all the fraud, cheaters, con artists, botters, and other ilk to go away forever.
i know right? just yesterday i was playing with my new alt. void elf priest when this guy started spamming invited to me for no reason.
naturally i decline because i don’t know the person and i see no reason to accept such invites, the dude got mad at me and in spanish yelled at me “son of (Bee)” (if you get what i mean)
don’t know why he invited me without saying anything but way back then people would atleast introduce them self and explain why they want to invite me to something.
people have become way to rude and way to mean, Blizzard really need to start punishing these individuals like idk a warning or something?
do people forget that there is a real leaving person behind the monitor? seriously why? just why?.. 
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Blizz is not in a position to do much, I agree.
but MS has almost infinite resources including setting the standard for operating systems.
I look forward to see what MS can do.
my point is that a lot of negativity on the forums comes from defenders of gate keeping and RMT exploiters and the damage they do to the play experience is almost unmeasurable.
My transmog has been fixed and I’ve left the 50’s behind.
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maybe it’s apropos for the 1750s?
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Possibly. The mask I just added does make it look like I’m heading to a fancy dress party in Victorian England.
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It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I think the old systems will remain. Whether you call it a monarchy with nobility or not the basic formula is: They with the most money have the most access to advanced toys/resources. I’ve seen more and more valuable information getting locked behind hefty subscriptions -because the scientific community doesn’t want AI being able to reguritate and reproduce studies and throw it into the open source realm. Those funding the research also want to make a buck; so if anything they want to use the AI to achieve specific results that’ll further increase the return on investment via asking for high dollar access into the newly forming higher tiers of research.
It’s stratifying already. Libraries from the time I’ve been in undergrad to now as I start pursuing my PhD have lost access to great expanses of information. They don’t have the funds to provide general access to the public. As an undergrad you had to pay a ‘student library fee’ that go you able onto some of the databases (JSTOR, MEDLINE, PsychInfo) to research papers & articles. As a graduate student, that access diminished and the fees doubled to get access to medical and scientific journals and studies. There are still some places you can get access to okayish publications. ERIC is probably still the most popular. Project Muse is alright, PubMed Central.
When you hoard resources and need to feel special/have special access to things, you’ll always have the potential for a sense of injustice. That’ll breed resentment. That’ll breed negativity.
Anyways. We’re straying way off topic here into a different rabbit hole.
Main point:
Negativity isn’t the only option. It’s just the one we lean into.
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you’re the star of the masquerade
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