There just may be systematic overvaluation of what people say instead of what they do, by practically everyone.
For the average person, who is far from producing genuinely original ideas/insights/arguments/etc… Just what they say throughout their entire life might even be worth less, realistically, than a fancy dinner to a random passing reader.
Conversely taking a bit of actual effort in buying said reader a fancy dinner probably more than doubles it, at least in the eyes of the person getting to eat it.
Of course the opposite pretence needs to be maintained very often in normal day to day life, and after enough times, folks start genuinely believing the opposite. That just the mere prospect of losing a minor verbal status game implies that they must fanatically counter-signal.
(i.e. the needle of their perception gets harder and harder to move over time)
Which would explain the observed phenomena throughout history.
There just may be systematic overvaluation of what people say instead of what they do, by practically everyone.
For the average person, who is far from producing genuinely original ideas/insights/arguments/etc… Just what they say throughout their entire life might even be worth less, realistically, than a fancy dinner to a random passing reader.
Conversely taking a bit of actual effort in buying said reader a fancy dinner probably more than doubles it, at least in the eyes of the person getting to eat it.
Of course the opposite pretence needs to be maintained very often in normal day to day life, and after enough times, folks start genuinely believing the opposite. That just the mere prospect of losing a minor verbal status game implies that they must fanatically counter-signal.
(i.e. the needle of their perception gets harder and harder to move over time)
Which would explain the observed phenomena throughout history.