I used to be a college professor. We had a joke: The reason the competition is so fierce in academia is that the stakes are so low. And they are. Most (non-superstar) academics spend their time getting grants and schmoozing administrators and students. Research and teaching are low priorities, if they still exist at all. Stabbing your colleagues and keeping your job are all that matter.

I have been a soldier, a gardener, a landscaper, a laborer and done many other so-called lower class jobs with so-called lower class people. None of those people came close to the shallow, back stabbing, arrogant, hypocritical colleagues I worked with at the end of my teaching career. The lower the stakes get, the lower they go. There is no bottom.