I don't think you're a dick any more than I think I'm a dick, but I'll warn you, occasionally I think I'm a dick. ;-)

It is possible to construct a mental world for yourself where hierarchy and status don't matter, and several people do. I've lived in both worlds. I've always been pretty inquisitive, and when I was in middle school and high school, I got big into philosophy - questions like "What makes something good? What makes something better? Why do we value the things that we do?"

I had a vested interest in the answer to these questions, because in the dimension that matters in high school - standardized test scores - I was way, way out in front of everyone. As in, four or five standard deviations ahead of everyone, enough that my SATs from 7th grade could've gotten me into an elite college.

And yet I was miserable, because being such an outlier made me alone and isolated. I also found it very problematic morally, because I had arrived at the conclusion that to be morally good, an action must've been taken on your own free will: there're no "points" for things you have to do anyway. My smarts - the one quality that I most defined myself by - came about by chance meeting of sperm and egg, and I didn't do a damn thing for them.

So starting at age 13, I rebelled. I just completely rejected that value system. I figured that the one thing I could control was whether I was a good person or not, so I resolved to be nice to people, whether I thought they were stupid or not, and whether being nice to them could do many any good or not. I hung out with the freaks, and goths, and stoners, because as fellow outsiders, I felt the most kinship with them. Some of them had combined SAT scores lower than my SAT-M; a bunch ended up dropping out of school. I heard that one (my best friend from early high school) was later convicted of dealing meth.

But y'know what? I was a whole lot happier during that time in my life.

I ended up figuring I'd give the "let's work really hard and climb to the top of the pyramid" idea another go when I was 23, in my senior year of college. Mostly because I wanted to be able to tell people they were doing it wrong, and look, there're successful people that think it's not all about success! When someone unsuccessful says "Hey man, just because you make more than me doesn't make you better than me", there is an impulse to say "Of course you'd say that, if you got off your lazy ass and got a job you could be successful too, but damnit, I worked for what I got!" When someone successful says it, maybe you take notice.

But unfortunately it's very hard to live in a culture without absorbing its value system, and I worry that as I climb the corporate ladder and rack up accomplishments, I'm losing the core values that made me happy. I had a sudden realization lately that I don't really like myself anymore, because so much of my life now revolves around being awesome in my chosen field, and it's shut out what life's really about, being with awesome people and being able to take delight in their awesomeness even if nobody else does. I looked at my OKCupid profile lately and thought "I wouldn't date myself, I wonder why the hell anyone else would, it's no wonder that 75% of girls take a look at it and then ignore my message."

So there's my overshare for the day. I dunno what to tell you, because I haven't really figured it out for myself. I suspect that the answer lies in going through all the motions that successful people use to become successful, but not internalizing that as part of your value system. If I saw that two hundred pound woman pouring my coffee, I'm guessing two different parts of my brain would light up. One would say, "What a fat slob, can't she go to the gym and get a real job?" And the other would say, "Y'know, she probably has a couple kids at home, and she works hard to provide for them, and she has a nice smile and makes friendly conversation even though she probably knows that I'm thinking my assholish thoughts."

And then the parts of my brain would fight, and it wouldn't be pleasant, and I'd go home feeling like a douchebag and then go write about it on the Internet.