Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Most achievements don't mean much anymore: education, travel, entrepreneurship; all have lost their luster for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with the Internet. Intellectual achievements no longer offer cachet because anyone can know anything by asking their phone: the Internet is your doctor and your lawyer. As for travel; the Internet can show you anyplace and anytime in the world in full 3D surround-sound. Even athletic achievement has been minimized: thousands of people run marathons every weekend, play interactive videogames where they are the star, or participate in sports at levels exceeding what Olympians used to achieve. Combine these replacements with the change in social values that consider ambition as bad, and it leads to the devaluation of achievement, and more specifically, people that have actually accomplished something, created something, or traveled somewhere.

There's an additional powerful contributor to the disenchantment with achievements: because many people are told from childhood that they are special & unique, combined with the handing out of advanced degrees for virtually any ridiculous subject, people think they could have achieved degrees/licenses/travel/creativity if they just had the inclination/time/money/luck, and when actual reality proves that not to be the case, the cognitive dissonance causes them to be fervently dismissive of anyone who has. Also, achievement is not like wealth; not anybody can do it, so by comparison, those that have achieved lower the perceived value of everyone around them; of course, hostility is the reaction.