Everyone has something to say about why President Trump acts the way he does- speaking and acting, at times, for the sole purpose of demanding attention, treating his relations with others as a competition, and, of course, taking on a job for which he was completely unqualified. Most recently, a friend told me that President Trump quite simply has a strong and uncontrollable need to be on top.

Well… yeah. But that's not a characteristic we can peg to Trump alone. If the problem with Trump is that he thrives off of gaining superior status, then he's actually a perfect representation of the people of the United States of America. And you may have this problem, too.

According to the narrative we're told and which we continue to tell others, to be a person of value is to gain the respect of as many people as possible. We strive for success- which is not a problem, really, except that in most cases, we don't even know why we're reaching for the top, or what we're reaching toward at all.

We act strictly for the purpose of padding our resumes all the time. We aim for promotions or jobs for which we're hardly qualified because we want a better-looking or higher position. We usually can't explain why we feel that we specifically are the ones who should be in charge; we just know that it's what we're supposed to be doing. Is it?

Generally, we do it for the pay- but that doesn't get to the root of the question; it only indicates that we participate in a system that rewards people for attaining higher positions. We have split our entire society- using both money and social capital as motivation- between the controllers and the controlled, the powerful and the masses. The whole structure is designed to make us fight one another to be the former.

Trump is no different from the rest of us in this regard. He's doing exactly what society said he should do, and the privilege of his social position meant that this was the highest position for which he could reach. On a massive level that's in perfect proportion to his circumstances, he's essentially beefing up his resume and building social capital. We can resent him all day long for that, but at the end of the day, we're operating in a system that's teaching everyone else to do the same thing.