one of the lamest and prevalent motivations about the majority of people i've found is they are motivated primarily by ego based attainment after basic needs are met. much of this falseness and misplaced people anywhere from certain relationships, jobs, social circles, titles etc could mostly be alleviated by not tacking on adulation or connotations of superiority to any position, person or attainment. this would create a society that would then not be superficially motivated but by actual interest and passion for what they genuinely like, care about or interested in.
i have noticed that even most people who believed they were attracted to me were not interested in me but by some aspect, for instance. even i know part of the stepfather's actual interest in me was that he was upset that i might outshine him in life, even though it was lame that he would feel in competition with a female and a child?? but people are fuking crazy! he was a horribly seethingly jealous and malignant type person with a huge ego. people like this are so dangerous , they should reach the top just so their itch can be scratched because they make everyone else suffer around them if their ego is not satisfied. but he actually liked what he was doing, it's just that he wanted to tear down anyone who 'might' (within his reach) attain higher than him simply because he wasn't going to get the kind of respect that others would in a different type of position than what his interest was which was basically lower blue collar after military etc. then since he wasn't going to be able to reach a status of superority over others, so he used religion to become a pastor to try and gain reverence from others, not as if he deserved it though.
if society wasn't like that, then maybe me and others would have been spared some of this unfair abuse that assholes whose greed for status or ego is paramount!!! fuk!!! besides that, i know many people whose sole primary achievement was based on attaining a level just for the social respect and adulation. people are actually quite lame and not what they seem. this is how most people are!!!
even without these added connotations, there would still be people reaching for the pinnacle of their chosen careers or whatever, due to actual interest or care and not just for some idea of a higher status or notoriety. this is one of the reasons why i was even abused so much is by people whose extreme need for respect by society overshadowed and secondary to any real sense of who they are, what they cared about or their values. if society didn't perpetuate a system where bruised egos or ego was such a prize, then you wouldn't have so many impostors in the world or at least a large chunk of it, as well as the people they tear down or stomp on to get it.
this is really the simple basis of a large part of the motivation for sabotaging and abusing/putting other people down, even if they are undeserving of it themselves because society perpetuates this, considering the baseness and simplicity of people's actual motivations.
i mean, people are so simple that if an advertisement tomorrow said buy or attain this, look this way, do this, act this etc and this will mean that you are someone better than or superior than or whatever, people would do that just for those reasons rather than because they actually like or agree with it.