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There's this kind of sociopathic defacement of civil society in the name of "achievement" where we form a lipid bilayer of ego membrane, something on the outside that assumes this is all par for the course, and something internal that feels like we're winking at one another backstage, "oh isn't this sneaky" our inner selves want to say to each other, like eating cookies before dinner or opening presents before Christmas. What the child self longing for recognition fails to recognize is that the achievement of culture isn't material success but what material success affords: respect for ritual, protecting what is sacred in the face of survival pressure. Candide and Pangloss sitting over their meal, starved for days, refusing to eat because not everyone is yet seated. The inversion of priorities, of what cultures achievements really are, creates a Carthaginian fetish, where sacrificing children to Moloch for wealth is turned into using wealth to sacrifice more children, its own end and means. It is one thing to build temples and lose yourself in the task, forgetting to eat. It is something else to go to the temple in greasy overalls when you had time to change, so everyone knows you work so hard as to risk scorn of breaking taboo. It is performative and empty. You betray yourself for nothing. Go code on a mountaintop. All you prove is your willingness to climb a worthless summit.