The Trap of Comparing Yourself to Other People

A former colleague announces something. The reaction arrives before any thought does — a small drop, quickly followed by the correction that this is an unattractive way to respond to someone else's good news. Then the effort to be pleased, which mostly works, and a residue that lasts the afternoon.

The usual treatment for this is character: be less envious, be more generous. Chapter 3 takes an entirely different view of where the problem sits, and it is worth hearing because it does not require anyone to become a better person first.

The Chapter Blames the Ranking

"Avoiding distinctions of merit among the people prevents jealousy. Not setting a value on rare things prevents theft. Not seeking the things of sense keeps the mind in peace" (chapter 3, Walter Gorn Old, 1904).

The structure of all three sentences is the same, and it is the reverse of the usual one. Jealousy is not treated as a flaw in the jealous. Theft is not treated as a flaw in the thief. Each is presented as the predictable output of an arrangement: rank people and rivalry appears; declare a thing scarce and valuable and it starts going missing.

That is a mechanical claim rather than a moral one, and mechanical claims can be checked. Wherever a ranking is introduced — a leaderboard, a set of published figures, a class list read aloud — the rivalry follows reliably enough that it is hard to attribute to the particular characters involved. Remove the ranking and it subsides, among the same people.

What a Feed Actually Is

Read with that line in mind, an ordinary morning looks different. A feed is not a place where comparison sometimes happens to occur. It is a continuous, public distinction of merit among the people — which of them are doing well, at what, relative to whom — updated all day and delivered without being asked for.

Chapter 3 predicts what a population under those conditions will feel, and the prediction is unremarkable: exactly this. Not because the people are unusually envious, but because they are being shown a ranking, and that is what happens to anyone shown a ranking.

Which reframes the residue that lasts the afternoon. It is not evidence of a mean streak that needs correcting. It is a response to an arrangement, and it is roughly the response the chapter would expect.

From the Tao

Avoiding distinctions of merit among the people prevents jealousy. — Tao Te Ching, chapter 3 (Walter Gorn Old, 1904)

Why Trying Harder Does Not Work Here

This explains something otherwise puzzling: the resolution not to compare has such a poor record. It is renewed regularly and it fails in about the same way each time, which is unusual for a resolution about which the person is entirely sincere.

It fails because it is aimed at the wrong stage. The comparison is not a decision that could be decided differently; it is closer to a reading taken automatically from available data. Deciding not to take the reading, while continuing to supply the data hourly, is a plan with a structural problem in it.

Chapter 3 does not ask for the resolution. It addresses the conditions, which is the part that can actually be moved.

What the Chapter Is and Is Not Offering

Some honesty about the source is owed here. Chapter 3 is addressed to a ruler, and its programme for the population is not something to adopt wholesale — it goes on to recommend keeping people from certain kinds of knowledge, which is a governing instruction from a different world, and not one this reading is borrowing. What is being borrowed is the diagnosis in the first line, which stands on its own.

The diagnosis is portable because the arrangement is now self-administered. Nobody is imposing the ranking; it is subscribed to, refreshed, and carried around. That is worse in one way and much better in another, because a condition you are maintaining yourself is one you have some access to.

The chapter's own remedy — "he acts by non-action" — is easy to read as passivity and is not. In this context it is specific and slightly deflating: the effective move is not an effort of will against the feeling, but a change to what is being looked at. Removing the input does the work that arguing with the response cannot.

A Smaller Thing to Try

Pick the single source that produces the most of this, and stop supplying it for two weeks. Not a general reduction, and not a rule about phones — one source, a fixed period, chosen because of what it reliably does rather than as a punishment.

Two weeks is long enough to notice something specific: whether the feeling was about those people at all. Usually a good deal of it turns out to belong to the ranking rather than to anyone in it, and it does not transfer to the next set of names. What remains after two weeks is worth taking seriously, because that part is probably about your own life and has something to say.

Chapter 3 is not asking anyone to stop noticing that others are doing well. It is pointing out that being shown, continuously, where you stand is a condition with predictable effects — and that the condition, unlike the character, is adjustable.