People of high status are resented and criticized.
Australian and New Zealand idiom, with equivalents in Japan and Scandinavia. It is the enforcement mechanism behind crab mentality, and both operate hardest on the person's own group.
In practice
- A colleague promoted out of the team finds her old lunch table has turned polite.
- A village shop that wins a national award loses its regulars to the one in the next village, which has won nothing.
- Standing
- Near-identical proverbs exist in Japan, Korea and Scandinavia, each treated locally as a national trait, which is evidence about proverbs rather than about nations.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- Proverbs that recur across cultures