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2 things on this: 1. Terrance Malik did a pretty good job of capturing the boolean of this article in knight of cups. the rich, despite this study, still have the same existential crises as us plebs. also, there's something inherent about trying to find purpose in life that even escapes the niceties of privilege. 2. those 'niceties' are currently being accounted for through policies made over 25 years ago [0]. they have been, essentially, mistaken as our prime purpose for life. when in reality, it's more that they are a sort of short cut for being 'allowed' to pursue what you perceive as your purpose [one day, collectively, we will realize that we can only provide this to x number of people for y quality of access to that pursuit]. essentially what i'm saying is that the policies were created to allow the entire system to inflate and eventually crash, while letting the rich create a nice puffy cushion for themselves to land on when it does crash. rather than say, the same thing happening but without the cushion. this is rather just typical human behaviour at scale. ray dalio has been talking about it. we're reaching the end of a 300 year cycle. no one alive has experienced it before, but it happens regularly in human history. i think it is a natural phenomenon. inheritance is more to blame than any other element. we die and our bodies go to the same place, but our capital does not. we do know that capital allows us more opportunity to pursue more 'life', and i imagine that even people who only get that chance through inheritance sometimes believe they worked for it/deserve it whatever... but we shouldn't mistake the idea that wealth is the end game. it is, in many senses, just the beginning. but it is not the only. an example of this would be having kids. or finding love etc. wealth is just tylenol. temporary alleviation of symptoms. sometimes it allows us to do more art, or have more kids, or find more lovers, but its no guarantee. what we're all seeking is a common understanding that money is a tool; for each of us to pursue life as we see it. not the perverted way we've used it [and we live in a democracy so must take responsibility for its misuse]. the attitude in this article, to me, is less about wealth, and more about ego. it's egotistical people who can't understand the poor. and we get seduced by their confidence. ayn rand is a good example of this. the preacher who ended up on welfare. when the bandaid comes off, just remember that it's not your fault, it's not society's fault, but it's our fault. fix the bugs, account for fault tolerance, and act accordingly. all that said, burning down the buildings, destroying the statues, raiding the halls of congress, is not the answer. but tampering the egos just may be. i think the only way we can do that is to not allow power or wealth to concentrate. that's the lesson to be learned. to an extent we must let it, but that's the thing. finding that sweet spot. understanding that is how the rich can understand the poor, how we can understand each other, and how we will eventually understand the greatness of that sweet spot. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKe38mVpHgk |