So I decided to improve my rusty English a bit and will be posting a few texts about things I find interesting and/or fascinating (games, human behavior, business efficiency mostly). And if you are into practicing speech - tell me, we might as well do it together.
First things first - there really arent many readily observable existential properties as interesting as the degree of intellectual and emotional similarity among individuals. If not for my general contempt to modern psychologists, I'd have considered getting education in the area before plunging into economics. So instead of doing some rigorous analysis I can only speculate about the reasons people ended up the way they are.
For instance, almost everyone maintains certain image, but it's hard to meet a person who is completely aware of his or her own motivation in doing so. You could argue that in the process of adaptation people learned to feel good when others praise / admire them (as described in
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html
), but I feel there is much more to it. Something about aesthetics of self-image, surroundings and atmosphere. And it seems that popular perception of beauty in general and this aspect in particular varies little from person to person, at least in comparison to lifestyles and more specific tastes. So is there some universal standards of grace and harmony that appeal to everyone or its just a few useful reactions encoded in our subconscious by the enviroment that help us to get by? Either variant is great and mind-provoking but I wish it was the more mysterious one.