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Let me give you a personal example from the place where I was born.

I grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, and there's a deep-rooted cultural virus there. We call ourselves gamblers and hard workers, and we boast about it proudly—but perhaps we're simply masking a need for attention and recognition to feel superior to others.

It works like this: if someone has something that grabs attention, you need something bigger, cooler (and usually more expensive) to pull – or steal – the attention.

Did your friend buy a car that everyone is looking at? You'll start looking for a pickup truck that will turn even more heads.

Is your neighbor throwing a party that everyone is talking about? You need to throw one that will set the new standard.

This applies to everything. Weddings. Quinceañeras . Job titles. House sizes. Sports teams.

And here's the irony: your joy becomes relative – it depends on how much you made others feel inferior to you.

It's not enough to just be happy with your car—you need to know it attracts more attention than a friend's. It's not enough to throw a wonderful party—you need people to say it was better than the last one, so its owner feels "outdone."

And this applies not only to things and events. Everything goes much deeper, to the personal level:

– When are you getting married? – When are you going to have children? – Your cousin already has two, what are you waiting for? – Your brother just got promoted, how are you doing at work?

This constant comparison doesn't stem from any objective frame of reference. It's the same cultural virus that permeates families, convincing everyone that their worth is measured by achieving shared milestones—and achieving them more effectively than everyone else.

There is even a thought experiment that illustrates this perfectly:

– Would you rather have a $300,000 house where everyone else has $200,000 houses, or a $500,000 house where everyone else has a million-dollar house?

Rationally, a house costing half a million is objectively better. It's bigger, better quality, and more expensive.

But most people choose a house for 300,000. Because in that area, they win. They're at the top. Affluence doesn't matter unless you have relative superiority. They have the best house on the street—all the attention is theirs.

In the millionaires' neighborhood, they're at the bottom. They have the "worst" house. Even though by any objective standard it's a mansion, no one pays them any attention.

This preference—to be relatively superior, rather than objectively better—is acquired. It's a cultural virus. And it makes people deeply unhappy.

Not everyone behaves this way, and it's not just about Monterrey. But this is what I know from my experience growing up there.