We're just using different filters.

The boundary between economic hardship and status threat is very thin and porous, and mostly one of perspective.

My viewpoint is essentially a Marxist one, yours seems to owe more to Dr Phil, or Joyce Brothers. Sorry--I don't really believe that, I just couldn't resist the zinger.

Marx wasn't very good at coming up with any cures, but he was spot on when it came to diagnosing the disease and its causes. I am an economic reductionist, and like being a materialist, a mechanist, it may have its inherent biases; but at least it is consistent and reproducible in the laboratory.

Speaking of filters, here's a neat trick. Get yourself two pairs of cheap or used Polaroid sunglasses you can afford to sacrifice for science. Remove all four lenses from the frames. Pick any two lenses and place them in line, and rotate one relative to the other until the light transmission through both lenses drops down to virtually nothing. You can use clothespins to hold the lenses in place and in line with one another.

You know the conventional explanation: the vertical and horizontal polarization planes cancel each other out and remove all the light coming through both lenses. Hardly any gets through, and if any light is visible at all, it is due to minor manufacturing inconsistencies in the lenses.

Now comes the fun part. Take a third lens and stick it in between the first two. You can now see clearly through all three lenses! How can this be?

So what does that prove? That there are no explanations, only analogies and metaphors.