> There is a philosophical conundrum at the root of all this: morality requires we maintain a safety net at the bottom that catches everyone—the alternative is simply inhumane—but we also need an aspirational target at the top, so as to inspire us to excellence, creativity and accomplishment. In other words, we need worth to come for free, and we also need it to be acquirable. And no philosopher—not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I—has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things.

* When your worth is already infinite, you are free to aspire to whatever accomplishment you choose, knowing that it'll be the same in the end whether you get there or not.

* When your worth does not change when it is compared to another's "excellence, creativity, and accomplishment" at some superior "top", you don't have a moral conundrum (or an inferiority complex).

* The "conundrum" becomes non-sensical when you can celebrate the accomplishments of others with the same enthusiasm as your own.

* Worth is not "acquirable": it is something you always have but have to discover. Hoping that comparative excellence, creative output, and worldly accomplishment will provide it for you will simply cost you time.

So I would argue that the real game here is widening your sense of identification to include all players of the game. And once you're there, maybe you'll have a lighthearted, arbitrary aspiration to see that that point of view is spread...

Who wants to play the love game?