The Rat Race Illusion: Why Enough Is Never Enough

“An average person lives a better life than a king from 100 years ago.” – Warren Buffett

This quote from Warren Buffett is a powerful statement. It is the kind of sentence that makes you stop mid-scroll, look up at the ceiling, and frown while your brain tries to compile the data.

Let’s test it.

Imagine King George V in 1920. He is the Emperor of India, the King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions. He is, by all accounts, the absolute peak of the human status hierarchy. He wakes up in a palace. He has servants who probably iron his socks while he is still wearing them. He has infinite wealth.

Now, imagine Dave. Dave is a mid-level account manager living in a two-bedroom apartment in Columbus, Ohio. Dave drives a 2018 Honda Civic. Dave has a slight curve around his midsection that he swears he is going to work on “after the holidays.”

If King George gets a toothache, he is in for a week of agony, followed by a terrifying extraction with rudimentary anesthesia that might leave him with a fatal infection. He worries about smallpox. He worries about tuberculosis. A simple scratch in the garden could turn into gangrene. His children’s survival is a coin toss. He is the most powerful man on Earth, yet he is biologically vulnerable in ways that would terrify a modern teenager.

If Dave gets a toothache, he drives his Honda to a sterile, climate-controlled office, gets a shot of Novocaine, and feels nothing but a slight pressure while listening to a podcast about murder mysteries. If Dave gets an infection, he takes an antibiotic that cost pennies to manufacture but billions to develop. If Dave’s child gets sick, he has access to an infrastructure of pediatric care that is essentially science fiction compared to 1920.

And it’s not just survival; it’s the texture of daily life.

If King George wants to listen to music, he has to command an orchestra to assemble in his living room. Think about the logistics. He needs twenty or thirty skilled humans to be physically present. If he wants to hear a specific song, and the orchestra doesn’t know it, well, tough luck, Your Majesty. If he wants to hear it again at 2:00 AM, he is out of luck.

Dave has the history of all recorded human audio in his pocket. He can summon Mozart, The Beatles, or a 12-year-old humming in a basement in Seoul, instantly. He can listen to it seventy times in a row while eating a taco.

Speaking of tacos: If King George wants a pineapple, it is a status symbol. It is a rare, exotic treasure grown in a hothouse. Dave can walk into a supermarket and buy a pineapple for two dollars. He can buy spices that would have launched trade wars in the 17th century—pepper, cinnamon, saffron—for the change he found in his car seat. He has access to Thai food, Italian food, Mexican food, and sushi, often within the same strip mall. King George ate British food. Every day. Let that sink in.

If King George wants to go to Australia, it is a weeks-long maritime expedition involving sea sickness, boredom, and a non-zero risk of never returning. Dave can be there in 20 hours, complaining the whole time that the in-flight movie selection was “mediocre” and the legroom was insufficient.

Dave lives in a world of magical temperature control. When it is 95 degrees out, Dave is cool. When it is 10 degrees out, Dave is warm. King George spent his winters shivering near a fireplace and his summers sweating in heavy wool.

Dave lives in a palace of comfort, unlimited exotic foods delivered to his door by strangers, and immediate access to the sum of human knowledge. Dave lives better than the King.

So, why is Dave so miserable?

Why is Dave currently staring at his ceiling at 3:00 AM, heart pounding, worried about his quarterly review? Why does he feel a crushing sense of inadequacy every time he opens Instagram? Why is he working 50 hours a week to buy a slightly nicer car to impress people he doesn’t like?

Why, if we have conquered the struggle for survival, are we still running for our lives?

This is the great paradox of our time. We have built a paradise of abundance, yet we are mentally sprinting on a treadmill of scarcity. We are caught in what we call the “rat race”—a relentless, exhausting pursuit of more that seems to have no finish line.

To understand why, we have to go on a little journey. We need to dig into the mud of history, open up the hood of the human brain, and stare directly into the eyes of the creatures living inside our heads.

Part 1: The Caveman in the Penthouse

To understand Dave’s anxiety, we have to look at his hardware.

Dave’s brain—and yours, and mine—was not designed for Columbus, Ohio in 2026. It was designed for the Pleistocene Era, about 200,000 years ago.

Let’s introduce Gronk, the Inner Caveman.

Gronk lives in your brainstem and your amygdala. Gronk is a survival machine. He is the product of millions of years of evolutionary beta-testing. His operating system is simple because his environment was simple (and deadly).

In Gronk’s world, resources were scarce. Food was hard to find. Winters were cold. If Gronk found a bush full of berries, his brain didn’t say, “Oh, wonderful, I’ll have a gentle handful and leave the rest for the birds.” No. His brain screamed, “EAT EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW OR YOU WILL DIE.”

In Gronk’s world, status was life. He lived in a tribe of about 50 to 150 people. If he was useful and liked, he got a share of the meat and a place by the fire. If he was disliked, socially awkward, or violated a tribal norm, he was kicked out. And in 50,000 BC, a lone human was a dead human. Social rejection wasn’t just uncomfortable; it was a death sentence.

This brings us to one of the most powerful and terrifying creatures in your mind: The Social Survival Mammoth.

The Mammoth is the ancient guardian of your social standing. It is obsessively paranoid. It is constantly scanning the tribe (now, the entire internet) for signs of disapproval. When you walk into a room and feel self-conscious, that’s the Mammoth worrying you’re about to be exiled. When you post a photo and check for likes three seconds later, that’s the Mammoth checking if you are still safe in the tribe.

Here is the problem: We took Gronk and the Mammoth, who are adapted for a world of scarcity and small tribes, and we dropped them into a world of infinite abundance and a global tribe of eight billion people.

To understand the scale of this mismatch, we have to look at the numbers.

For 99% of human history, Gronk lived in a tribe that followed the “Dunbar Number”—a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. That number is about 150.

In a tribe of 150, hierarchies are stable. Everyone knows everyone. You know who the best hunter is (it’s probably Thag). You know who the best storyteller is. You know your place. If you are the third-best spear thrower in the tribe, you can feel pretty good about yourself. You are a valuable member of the team. Your Mammoth is calm. “We are useful,” it says. “We are safe.”

Now, fast forward to 2026.

We have plugged Gronk into the internet. Suddenly, his tribe isn’t 150 people. It is effectively everyone on Earth.

Now, you aren’t just comparing yourself to Thag. You are comparing your career to Elon Musk’s. You are comparing your body to a genetically gifted Icelandic fitness model who has a professional lighting crew. You are comparing your cooking to a Michelin-star chef who posts 45-second time-lapse videos on TikTok.

In a tribe of 150, you could be the best at something. In a global tribe of 8 billion, you are the best at nothing.

There is always someone richer, fitter, smarter, younger, and happier than you. And thanks to the algorithm, that person is the only thing you see.

Gronk looks at a modern supermarket, and his “EAT EVERYTHING” alarm breaks the knob off because he doesn’t have an “off” switch for sugar—sugar was rare and precious in his world. But the Mammoth? The Mammoth is in a permanent state of panic.

It looks at your LinkedIn feed and sees your college roommate getting promoted to VP. It looks at Instagram and sees your ex-girlfriend in Santorini. It looks at the news and sees 19-year-olds selling companies for billions.

The Mammoth does not understand “algorithms” or “highlight reels.” It takes everything at face value. It sees these signals and screams a terrifying message into your conscious mind:

“WE ARE FAILING! THE TRIBE IS LEAVING US BEHIND! EXILE IS IMMINENT!”

This is the “Status Anxiety” that keeps the treadmill spinning. It is not greed. It is fear. It is the ancient, visceral terror of being the runt of the litter, the outcast who gets left behind when the winter comes. We are working 60-hour weeks not to get ahead, but to stop the screaming in our heads that says we are falling behind.

We are running ancient software in a modern environment, and the glitches are destroying our peace of mind. The drive to accumulate “more”—more food, more status, more resources—was once a perfectly calibrated survival mechanism. Now, it is a maladaptive compulsion that keeps us running long after we have won the race.

Part 2: The Donkey and The Moving Goalpost

You might think, “Okay, sure, evolution. But if I just get that promotion, or that new house, then I’ll be happy. I just need to get to the next level.”

Let me introduce you to The Dopamine Donkey.

We often think of dopamine as the “pleasure molecule.” We think it’s the feeling of eating the cookie. But neuroscience tells us that dopamine is actually the desire molecule. It is the chemical of anticipation.

The Dopamine Donkey is the part of your brain that holds a carrot on a stick in front of your face. It whispers, “Hey. See that shiny new thing? That new job title? That new relationship? If you run just a little bit harder and get that, then everything will be perfect. Then you will feel complete.”

So, you run. You work the late nights. You get the promotion. You buy the car.

And for a moment—a brief, glorious moment—you catch the carrot. You feel great. You are the King of the World.

But then, something cruel happens. The brain adapts. It’s called Hedonic Adaptation, but let’s look at it through the Donkey’s eyes. As soon as you eat the carrot, the Donkey gets bored. The new car just becomes “the car.” The new job just becomes “work.” The new salary just becomes “the budget.”

The Donkey extends the stick again. It finds a new carrot. A bigger carrot.

“Okay, nice Honda,” the Donkey says. “But look at your neighbor’s Tesla. That is what happiness looks like. Run.”

This mechanism is what scientists call the “Winner Effect” on steroids, coupled with the brutal reality of “Hedonic Adaptation.”

Here is the cruelest trick of the brain: The neural circuits for wanting something are totally separate from the neural circuits for liking something.

Dopamine is the “Wanting” chemical. It shouts, “GO GET IT! IT WILL BE AMAZING!” It is aggressive. It is relentless. It focuses your entire world on the object of desire.

But once you get the thing, dopamine shuts off. It has done its job. The feeling of satisfaction, of “Liking,” comes from a different system (opioids and endocannabinoids). And that system is designed to be fragile and temporary.

Why? Because if Gronk sat around feeling blissfully satisfied for a week after eating one berry, a lion would eat him. Nature doesn’t care about your happiness; it cares about your survival. And the best way to ensure survival is to keep you in a state of mild, chronic dissatisfaction.

So, the finish line moves. It has to move.

It creates a phenomenon known as the “Hedonic Treadmill.” You run, you achieve, you get a spike of joy, and then your baseline happiness resets to exactly where it was before.

You engage in “Relative comparison.” You don’t compare yourself to the King of 1900. You don’t even compare yourself to you from ten years ago. You compare yourself to the person standing on the treadmill right next to you, who seems to be running just a little bit faster.

This is why a millionaire can feel poor if he lives in a neighborhood of billionaires. It sounds ridiculous to the rest of us, but his Mammoth is screaming just as loud as anyone else’s. His reference point has shifted.

We are biologically wired to normalize our success and fixate on what we lack. You could be King George V, or you could be Dave in Ohio, or you could be a billionaire on a yacht. If you are listening to the Dopamine Donkey, you will always feel like you are just one thing away from happiness. You will spend your whole life waiting for the moment when you can finally exhale, not realizing that the Donkey will never let you.

Part 3: The Mirage Factory

If our biology provides the engine for the rat race, our culture provides the fuel.

We live in an economic system that relies on us running. If everyone decided tomorrow that they were content with what they had, the global economy would collapse. Companies need to sell you things. To sell you things you don’t biologically need, they have to manufacture a need.

They have to build a Mirage Factory.

The Mirage Factory is the vast, interconnected machine of advertising, media, and pop culture that pumps out a singular message 24/7: Your life is not enough.

It shows you images of people who are happier, prettier, richer, and more loved than you. It suggests that the gap between your life and their life can be bridged with a purchase.
Feeling lonely? Buy this cologne.
Feeling insecure? Drive this truck.
Feeling unfulfilled? Wear this watch.

But it goes deeper than consumerism. It taps into Status Anxiety.

In the past, you only had to compete with the people in your village. Maybe the blacksmith had a nicer horse than you. Okay, you could deal with that.

Today, you are competing with the entire world. You open your phone and see a 19-year-old crypto millionaire in Dubai, a fitness model with 0% body fat in LA, and a friend from high school who just “found herself” in Bali.

The Mirage Factory creates a distorted reality where “average” looks like failure. Be honest: When was the last time you saw a movie about a perfectly content accountant who goes to work, comes home, loves his wife, watches TV, and goes to sleep? Never. Because that story doesn’t sell.

We are sold a narrative—let’s call it The Script—that says a “good life” must be extraordinary. It must involve fame, massive wealth, world travel, and a legacy.

This creates a “Fog of Should.” You walk around in a cloud of other people’s expectations.
I should be earning more.
I should be traveling more.
I should be thinner.
I should be starting a side hustle.

The Mirage Factory acts as a megaphone for the Social Survival Mammoth, amplifying the fear that if we are not “crushing it,” we are failing survival itself. It convinces us that the luxuries of King George—the pineapples, the spices, the warmth—are just the bare minimum, and that true happiness lies in something called “Optimized Existence.”

Part 4: The Golden Handcuffs and The Time Trade

So, we join the race. We sign up. We get on the treadmill.

We convince ourselves that we are doing it for “security” or for “our family.” But look at the math.

Once we reach a basic level of income—enough to cover food, shelter, and safety—the correlation between money and happiness flattens out significantly. Yet, we keep trading our most non-renewable resource—time—for more money.

We fall into a trap known as “lifestyle creep.” You get a raise, so you move to a slightly more expensive neighborhood. Now you need two cars. Now you need private school. Now you need a lawn service because you are working too hard to mow the lawn.

Suddenly, you are earning three times what you earned ten years ago, but you feel poorer. You are locked in. These are The Golden Handcuffs. You can’t stop running, because you have built a life that requires you to run at full speed just to stay in place.

We outsource our lives. We pay strangers to cook our food (DoorDash), clean our houses, and even raise our children (daycare/nannies), all so we can spend more hours in an office (or a Zoom call) to earn the money to pay the strangers.

We become efficient, optimized machines. We optimize for productivity, for wealth, for “success.” But we forget to optimize for the only thing that actually exists: The present moment.

We spend our 20s worrying about our 30s. We spend our 30s building for our 50s. We spend our 50s saving for retirement. And then we get to the end, look back, and realize we spent the whole journey staring at the map, waiting for the destination.

Part 5: The Cost of the Race

We must count the cost. If the race were harmless—if it were just a fun game of “who can collect the most marbles”—it wouldn’t be a problem. But the race is killing us.

Remember Gronk? His stress response—the flood of cortisol and adrenaline—was designed to last for about fifteen minutes. You see a lion. You run. You survive (or you don’t). Then, you rest. Chronic stress didn’t exist for Gronk.

Modern Dave is different. Dave is bathed in cortisol from the moment his alarm goes off until he passes out from exhaustion.

• The rush hour traffic.
• The passive-aggressive email from the boss.
• The credit card bill.
• The realization that he hasn’t called his mother in three weeks.

Dave’s body treats these threats exactly the same way Gronk’s body treated a lion. His blood pressure rises. His digestion shuts down. His immune system suppresses itself. But unlike Gronk, Dave never gets to sprint, and he never gets to rest. He just simmers.

This is the Human Misery Spectrum. On one end, you had King George’s world: High physical suffering (toothaches, diseases) but perhaps lower existential dread. On the other end, you have Dave’s world: Almost zero physical suffering (miraculous comfort), but maximum psychological distress.

We have traded acute pain for chronic anxiety.

We see this cost in our relationships. We are so busy “building a future” for our families that we script-walk through the present with them. How many Daves are sitting at a dinner table right now, physically present but mentally answering an email?
We treat time as a transaction. “I have to do X so I can get Y.” We stop doing things just for the joy of doing them. The Explorer in our mind—the part of us that just wants to play and be curious—is strangled by the General Manager, who demands ROI on every minute.

This is the ultimate tragedy of the rat race: It steals the only thing you actually have. It steals Now.

Part 6: Stepping Off the Treadmill

Is there a way out? Can we fire Gronk, shoot the Donkey, and shut down the Mirage Factory?

Not entirely. You cannot surgically remove your human nature. But you can learn to manage it. You can install a meaningful update to your mental operating system.

It starts with a shift in perspective. It requires summoning a different character from your mental cast: The Gardening Architect.

The Architect in you loves the future. He loves plans, goals, and building big things. That’s good. We need him. But the Architect often forgets to live in the house he is building.

The Gardener loves the present. She loves the feeling of the soil, the sun on her back, the slow process of growth. She knows that the flower is not just the bloom; it is the seed, the sprout, and the leaf.

To leave the rat race, you don’t have to quit your job and move to a yurt (unless you really want to). You just have to change the game you are playing.

1. Uninstall “Factory Settings” and Build a “Custom OS”
Your brain comes with pre-installed software—we call these your Factory Settings. This includes the Mammoth, the Donkey, and all the cultural programming from the Mirage Factory. The Factory Settings perpetuate the Rat Race. They tell you to follow The Script: Go to school, get a stable job, get a mortgage, buy stuff, retire, die.

To stop running, you have to realize that you are the Tinkerer of your own mind. You have admin privileges. you can uninstall beliefs that don’t serve you.

You need to build a Custom OS.
This means sitting down and asking the hard questions:

• “Do I actually like this expensive car, or do I just like that people look at it?”
• “Do I actually want a promotion that requires 10 more hours of work a week, or am I just afraid of looking stagnant?”
• “What would I do with my day if status didn’t exist?”

Maybe your Custom OS values time over money. Maybe it prioritizes creative freedom over a corner office. Maybe “success” in your Custom OS looks like having dinner with your family every single night at 6:00 PM without looking at a phone.
Once you define the finish line based on your own values—your Life Compass—you can actually cross it. You can look at your life and say, “I have enough.” And the moment you say that, the race ends.

2. Retrain the Mammoth
When you feel the pang of Status Anxiety—when you feel jealous or inadequate—treat it like a biological glitch. Say to yourself, “Ah, that’s just my Mammoth freaking out about a fake tribe.” Do not take it seriously. Laugh at it. Remind yourself that Dave in Ohio lives better than King George. You are safe. You are fed. You are warm. You are a King.

3. Practice “Negative Visualization”
The Stoics had a trick. Instead of fantasizing about what you don’t have, vividly imagine losing what you do have. Imagine your car was stolen. Imagine you lost your job. Imagine you broke your leg.
Now, come back to reality. You have your car! You have your job! Your legs work!
This simple mental pivot hacks the Dopamine Donkey. It creates a burst of gratitude for the “status quo.” It makes you realize how rich you already are.

4. Opt Out of the Hidden Competitions
You don’t have to play every game you are invited to. You can look at the “Who has the whitest teeth?” game and say, “Pass.” You can look at the “Who has the most prestigious job title?” game and say, “Not interested.”
There is a secret freedom in being a “nobody” to people who don’t matter, so you can be a “somebody” to the people who do.

The Final Insight

Let’s go back to Warren Buffett.

“An average person lives a better life than a king from 100 years ago.”

The tragedy is not that we want more. The tragedy is that we don’t realize we have already won.

We are standing at the top of the mountain, panting, sweating, looking up at the clouds, trying to find the next peak, the higher peak. We are so busy looking up that we haven’t taken a moment to look around at the view.

The air conditioning is miraculous. The Spotify playlist is a marvel. The antibiotic pill is a magic spell. The fact that you can read these words, transmitted instantly across standard-less voids of space and time to a glowing slab of glass in your hand, is wizardry.

The rat race is a cage with no door. You are running inside it because you think you have to. You think the lock is complex. You think the walls are high.

But if you stop running, just for a second, and push on the door… you might find that it swings open. It was never locked.

The world is not a competition to be won. It is an experience to be tasted.

You are the King. Try to enjoy the kingdom.