“The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts.” – Mark TwainIn olden times, one’s social status depended on one’s caste or family lineage. With the disbanding of nobility and the diminished importance of caste, we are now always insecure about our status in society. We seek to bolster our self-image and social standing by trying to rise through the ranks, either by achievement or by the accumulation of wealth.To be sure, such impulses can have some beneficial effects in that they can spur us on to exert ourselves in personally and socially useful ways. But when they drive us relentlessly, it can lead to less desirable modes of being, where the reference points for our existence become our neighbours or peers.If we do at least as well as them, we are relatively satisfied; otherwise, not. In short, we try to keep up with the Joneses.A painting of Rousseau. Photo: Maurice Quentin de La Tour/Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.Let us turn to Rousseau, a Swiss thinker of the 18th century, to see the origins of such impulses in us. He had a term for it – amour propre. Roughly translated from French, amour propre means pride, conceit or vanity. Propre means oneself in consideration with others. So, amour propre is a kind of self-love that depends upon the opinions of others about us.He distinguished it from amour de soi, or self-love proper without regard to others’ opinions. He felt amour de soi, or love of oneself, was a natural sentiment. It predates the formation of society and makes us strive to preserve ourselves and our interests by tending to our biological needs.Guided by reason and modified by pity, amour de soi produces humanity, virtue, empathy and compassion. Amour de soi also resists the invasion or encroachment by others when it comes to self-preservation.Amour propre, on the other hand, is an altogether different sentiment and not natural to one’s self. Amour propre makes us value ourselves more than anyone else and inspires not only the desire to be recognised, respected and esteemed by others, but also all the evils that beset society, such as dependence, dissimulation, deception, oppression and domination.Other thinkers like Plato and Hobbes saw a version of amour propre as being natural to man. Plato saw thumos (spiritedness) as one of the three constituents of one’s soul, the other two being appetitive and rational.Hobbes thought that men even in the state of nature (that is, the state man was in prior to the formation of society – a speculative construct) were affected by considerations of pride or vainglory. An engraving of the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Photo: William Faithorne/Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-4.0.Rousseau, on the other hand, thinks that amour propre is a sentiment that we acquire only once we enter society in one way or another.Rousseau speculates that in the state of nature, men wandered solitarily, fulfilling their biological needs from nature and not seeing any need for association with others. Sexual relations were sporadic and temporary, and families did not coalesce.But when men began to see advantages to hunting in groups, they began to associate with one another. Then settled communities formed. This led one to become conscious of the look or gaze of another and wanting to be esteemed in the eyes of others.Thus came into being competition with others. Those who were more able and better started to command more respect and honours. This led to vanity and contempt in those so regarded and shame and envy in those less esteemed. This led to unhappiness and a fall from innocence.It can also lead to an acute awareness of injustices meted out to one, and acts of revenge and cruelty are born. This in turn can lead to all sorts of social conflicts.So, be aware that keeping up with the Joneses is not without its harmful consequences. If you avoid it, it may also be easier on your purse, because you can avoid wasteful conspicuous consumption.Dr D. Samarender Reddy is co-founder & director, 7Qube Biz Solutions.