The Profound Joy of Ascendence from...Wherever

Everything feels great on the way up, even if you're still far down.

Everything feels awful on the way down, even if you're still way up.

Your position on the up/down scale doesn't matter. You can't even feel it, unless you constantly tell yourself stories about it. It's really all about trajectory.

This explains why billionaires stay greedy. And why Hell is a less comfortable chair.

And it's yet one more explanation for self-destructive people, who I described as surprisingly rational:

They're acting out a drama, just as we all are, but tweaking parameters for more challenging gameplay. They're simply working at a more advanced level, like increasing resistance on a StairMaster. They've rejected the easy win, that's all.

A deliberate drop resets the game for another climb. It's an accepted move in many contexts when things get dull. But applying this broadly for some reason looks like madness.