Whether or not he plagiarized his dissertation doesn’t affect the argument.

I don’t deny the tendency to observe/compare,as you seem to imply. I say that it is not an automatic controlling factor in one’s self perception and happiness unless one is addicted to doing it.Why would one be addicted to doing it?Exceptional insecurity? Neurosis? The activity in itself, when compulsively overdone, is vexatious, counter productive, and creates unhappiness. It’s the person not the environment.

Originally when you introduced the topic you said that to be happy you had to be doing better than 2/3 of the people around you and you framed it in a residential real estate, money making and material possession sense. You have taken it into the medical profession and swim/bike/run events, but it still doesn’t work separate from some unfortunate psychological conditioning. Maybe there is an epidemic of that conditioning, but the responses you claim are by no means innate to humans.