Being Rated

Each community rates and ranks each member of its community from highest to lowest, from most popular to least popular, from richest to poorest. Obviously, many of these categorizations overlap. It is the common, groupist rating that is the most unfair and unjust, ranking people based on conformity, ordinariness, uniformity, popularity. Being popular is often a function of happily embracing whatever ranking society assigns to one, with hope of rising in the ranks over time, a social reward for being a team player. A more productive, superior, honest ranking system would be for each member of a community to live realistically, ranking the self today against the back drop of what the self was and accomplished yesterday in anticipation of what one might do or be ten years from now. Comparing and contrasting who the self is and how the self performs against the nature of and achievement level of neighbors would be de-emphasized.