Continuing with the day's trivialities, this point from Julian Sanchez is both frivolous and insightful. Joy!
We think about what we're missing out on in a bounded context, a pool of relevant options: You may be more upset that the cute woman who works in Accounting won't give you the time of day than you are that Halle Berry doesn't seem particularly interested either—even though the latter might constitute the bigger "loss" if you're looking at an unrestricted option set. So you lament the talk you have to miss because work or another event take precedence, but not the one you have to miss because it's in California—unless, perhaps, the one in California is an exceptionally appealing. So, say, you might not expend any thought over the fact that a band you really like is only playing on the other coast this tour, whereas you do if it's a concert festival with a lineup that includes a lot of your favorite bands.
This is a bit of a digression from Julian's point, but hey,, it's frivoility day round here, and logical progression is no longer required. I've always had a real soft spot for Emile Durkheim's critique of capitalism, particularly his focus on the tyranny of choice. Given the ideals of a society promising the potential for unlimited happiness, options, and outcomes, there's a long-standing cultural bias, unrealistic as it may be, against acceptance of merely good outcomes. And I genuinely believe this causal for many, many unhappy marriages.
It leaves a lot of folks in fairly positive situations unreasonably unhappy, as the perfected versions of life injected into us through the media slipstream serves the purpose of implicitly and explicitly diminishing the lives we actually lead. That's why Drew Barrymore or Reese Witherspoon are infinitely more dangerous archetypes than Halle Berry or Jessica Alba. Towering glamour and exquisite beauty sets off enough unreality bells that we realize it out of reach, the girl (or boy, I just don't know the requisite actors) next door, however, is targeted to fall directly in that grey area between potential and impossible.
