All Westerners complain about how they constantly feel like they're chasing for status. You have to be beautiful, rich or muscular to get anywhere. I guess they haven't been multicultural enough to experience Asian or Arabic culture, where status is highly important. In truth, the West has toned down status a lot. It's not that important anymore, except if you want to excel in fields of dating, fashion or maybe journalism.

In the West, especially in Northern Europe, you can decide to become a shaman, listen to punk music, or dress like a homeless person, and still not receive too much, if any, slack from your parents. You can pick almost any lifestyle, any job, any hair cut, any piece of trash called home, and many people will simply say you fulfilled your own dreams. It's the meme of equality that speaks: you, normal citizen, can choose to become a pop star. Or a weird goth, we don't care. You're OK anyway.

Try that in Iraq, Afghanistan or China. Your parents would probably beat you up real good. I have Arab friends who wanted to become psychologists instead of doctors, and now their parents pretend like they don't even exist. That is status craze. If you think about it, it's not so strange. In a more tribal-oriented culture, status becomes central to know your place in a cultural and social hierarchy. If you're a doctor, you are rich, powerful and responsible. If you're cleaning toilets, you're low down on the ladder, probably not able to support a family. In India, people may not even want to look at you.

In the West we see these differences, but pretend we don't care. In many cases, we don't. Since our culture is more centered around the individual, individual self-expression becomes more important than placing the individual in a larger perspective, such as family or relatives or tribe. When was the last time you made an important decision in your life after making sure that your parents and relatives approved of what you had in mind? It doesn't happen here.

So to all of you spoiled brats in the West who feel you need to look beautiful, intelligent or rich, get a grip on yourselves. You're not doomed to chasing status. The Chinese guy across the street though might wear unfashionable clothes, but you can rest assure that he'd be at the mercy of his parents and relatives if he screwed something up. He knows he will bring shame upon his family if he rebels like you, so he'll do anything to avoid that tragedy.