Agreed. Unfortunately humans are hardwired to compare themselves to others.
Because on one level, we are all just competing for finite resources - especially quality females - economics is in that context an ordinal competition, not cardinal.[1] But on another level, it's the mutual cooperation, wealth creation from nothing (making the "finite" a little less finite and a little more infinite), etc that allows us to advance both as a society and as individuals.
[1]There is an interesting tie into Mises here if I wanted to rabbit hole it (value is subjective, not measurable in cardinal units, and exists only in the mind as a ranked preference of options)
When we treat everything as a zero sum status game, especially when it comes to other human beings, we tend to slide into ugly, destructive dynamics (up to and including wars) where everyone burns resources just to keep their relative place. Cooperation and innovation, on the other hand, are how we turn a fixed pie into a growing one.
So yes, relative position matters in some contexts, but the whole reason our species has gotten this far is that we are not limited to fighting over scraps. We can change the size and shape of the pie together.