The Trouble With Wealth
Jan. 5th, 2021 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteele
Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, Joel Osteen’s Prosperity Gospel, and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich bring a concrete image to my mind. In this vision, I see an aging con artist, their good looks long in the past, their waistlines expanding as old-people waistlines tend to expand. They sit in mammoth living rooms that would have made a medieval king’s castle look like a shack in comparison, watching television with a blank stare while absentmindedly planning their next stab at relevancy: a comeback, a new marriage, a new surgery to puff up what sags, a new car to pinch a last bit of dopamine from their jaded neurons.
People Who Consume Too Much
We modernites are a well-fed people. We all have at least one drawer of stuff we will never use. Some of us have entire basements, garages, and storage units full. We all need to downsize, present company included, yet the people with the most stuff are almost invariably the ones who clamor for MORE, MORE, MORE. For this reason, we have multilevel marketing companies and other sucker pyramid schemes to exploit the middle class. One of the most grotesque examples of multilevel marketier shamelessness I have seen are the companies that have sought to capitalize on the COVID scamdemic overreaction: now that every middle and lower class person is out of work and/or looking for work, the pyramidmeisters are out in full force, recruiting the credulous for their uplines.
Lack of money is cited as the number one cause of depression as well as the number one reason couples get divorced. “If only I had the money, I could do whatever I want,” is the common refrain. Money is the perceived panacea of our time. It is the balm that heals all wounds.
Napoleon Hill will be remembered primarily as a huckster who went bankrupt multiple times with multiple marriages, but his philosophies are essentially sound. Unfortunately, in Hill's case, one has to weed out the good advice from a sea of rapacious greed to get at it. In some ways, he was Donald Trump before it was cool. Osteen never once opened the doors of his megachurches or McMansions to the homeless or the needy. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, Texas in 2017, Osteen closed the doors of his megachurch and tweeted that he was praying for everyone’s safety. In other words, he answered the question What Would Satan Do: Deluxe Mammon Edition. As far as Byrne, she has written multiple sequels to her original tome and has never been photographed without her signature, only slightly desperate poop-eating grin.
Paris or Bust
I once knew a young man who had a bad case of lack-of-money-itis. He was reasonably bright and articulate. When he was happy, he was delightful and witty. His more regular state was black-pill depression. “If only I were rich” he said over many bitter cups of all night diner coffee. Being rich was his ticket out of depression. If he were rich, he would move to New Zealand; Italy. If he were rich, he would have a much better house. If he were rich, he could afford a nicer piece of insert popular electronic doodad here.Therein lies the rub: he was rich. His grandmother left him a three bedroom house with a very nice yard in the suburbs. His mother bought and prepared all his food despite the fact he was in his early thirties. His stepfather bailed out his struggling business ventures and paid for his continuing college education. He was one of those people I call a “Paris or Bust”, meaning that he is one of the many who will never be happy unless they have the work-free lifestyle of hotel money heiress Paris Hilton. Paris or Busts marry for money and regret it. They also easily end up homeless because money burns a hole in their pocket, whether it is real money or credit debt money.
I find it interesting when Paris or Busts say they would be more altruistic if only they had more wealth. This is simply not the case. Altruism is now, not later. Joel Osteen didn’t open the doors of his church or his homes to hurricane victims in 2017 because his ministry was never focused on altruism in the first place. Joel Osteen has always been more about making an empire for himself than helping his congregation be like Jesus. Joel Osteen is not like Jesus; he’s more like the opposite of Jesus. The proof is in the pudding. By their fruits ye shall know them.
A young Paris or Bust man who says “If I were rich, I would host Christmas for the orphans and give them tons of presents and a wonderful party every year” is lying. He who does not donate $10 to the local food pantry while he is middle class can become richer than Roosevelt — the embedded habits won’t change. The appetite for material wealth is like a drug addiction. If you grew up rich, you might remember being miserable and ashamed because of it, but there will always be that craving left behind of when things were easier. This is the way it was for me for a long time, and it is only my religious practices that got the monkey off my back once and for all.
A Minute on the Lips...
Material wealth is a Wendigo. Once a taste is had, the yearning to consume isn’t likely to stop without a fight. That’s why for every fantasy I have of earning a billion dollars, I counter with a fantasy of becoming penniless and homeless. I argue that people who addicted to wealth actually worry about becoming homeless all the time, but since they do not admit it in any honest way, it becomes a much greater fear for then than for a lower middle class person, who must always confront the specter of homelessness whenever a bill arrives or the car breaks down. The only people who don’t live in perpetual fear of being poor are poor people.
For many in this age, the concept that infinite independent wealth might never arrive like a rescuing knight on a shining steed is downright intolerable. Our lives of luxury have only served to whet our appetites for more. This is how you get a young man who lives on his parents dime and inherited a suburban house to think of himself as “middle class” or (if he is in a foul mood) “poor”. I’ve known a person who complained that her parents could not afford to finance her film career — her artsy, honors student upbringing gave her an inferiority/superiority complex and a hopeless, debased obsession with the type of celebrities who frequent the pages of W Magazine.
For such a person, there is no world outside the Bubble, where the prosperous must always compete for jobs, grants, mates, attention, photo opportunities, and apparent virtuousness. The longer one lives in the Bubble, the more blind one becomes to its soapy walls closing in. The Bubble in the US is often lily-white, so its residents become self-conscious when confronted by a black person. They immediately become the picture of fawning obsequiousness, their pandering training from news channels, popular movies, and sitcoms kicking in. They doth protest too much. Confronted by a white poor person, the hatred of the poor black person that has been viciously repressed rears its ugly head as bigotry towards the white poor person. Hillary Clinton’s moment of christening the poor as Deplorables did more to unite the poor and working classes of all races than Che Guevara could have ever dreamed: the class war was revealed in its naked, ugly, warty glory. Jesus said the poor are blessed and it is true in at least one sense. Though it will never be easy to be poor, it at least forces you over the hurdle of fear of being poor.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-06 04:30 pm (UTC)I've never personally been wealthy, but this career (along with other life experiences) has certainly made me jaded about them.
Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-06 06:07 pm (UTC)Some of them bag your groceries for no hourly wage and expect a cash tip after they load them into your car. My friend tried guarding her groceries during checkout, saying "Please don't help me; I can't afford to tip you." Nothing worked until she started saying she was paying with credit card and had absolutely no cash on her. Needless to say, she's had trouble making friends! And the get-togethers for new spouses on base tend to be recruitment parties for these pyramid schemes.
Since she started moving all over with her husband, she's been permanently unemployed. The only reason they can make their bills on time is because they have no children. She's more than willing to work, of course, but she has no chance to. That, and it really would mean a lot to them to have some extra cash: he was deployed immediately after that important Iranian was offed last spring, and care packages were the only thing her husband and his fellow service members had to look forward to. She not only sent packages to him but stuffed them full of extra snacks he could share. The boxes were delayed by months with the covid shutdown and they had entire conversations of him calling home to have her tell him about what was in them; he had all his buddies looking forward to them too.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-06 07:12 pm (UTC)Vera Lee
no subject
Date: 2021-01-06 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 12:28 am (UTC)It was the classic small town, too and I was one of those little tomboys who never wanted to come inside. What's the Progressive label for tomboy these days? Gender confused? Gender dysphoria? Good God.
But anyway, I'm the youngest of 4 girls. My mother left my abusive father when I was a baby and back then I guess that good Catholic girls just didn't DO that, no matter how much of a jerk the man was.
I remember very well throughout my entire life when my mother was still alive, her being depressed. She kept a clean house, provided for us and cooked regular meals but if it were not for my Grandfather, we probably wouldn't have had what we did have. I remember the foodstamp booklets. More obvious and shameful than the EBT cards of today.
I was emotionally neglected, mentally neglected. Supposedly I had an IQ of 152 in the 5th grade and the teachers wanted to enroll me in gifted programs. Needless to say, that never happened.
I think she was waiting for that perfect man to come along and save her from her misery. Years later she cried to me that "All I ever wanted was some help"
Now I understand where she was coming from on that and know that it was hard being a single mother, a blacksheep in a Catholic family and I'll give her credit for saving me from a lifetime with a jerk. And the men weren't lining up for her hand in marriage with 4 children, either but maybe that was a blessing in disguise, too. No creepy step father! We would have been a party for a pedophile.
But she had four beautiful, intelligent daughters and plenty of time on her hands. If she would have invested that time in to any one of us, her life would have been different. The answer to her damned misery was staring her right in the face. I resent her for that and hope that she had to answer for it in the afterlife.
I'm just a regular blue collar woman who doesn't live beyond her means and our only debt is our home, which was ought at a price much less than what we qualified for. We didn't want a maxxed out mortgage and it's served us well-our mortgage payment is half of what the going rents are these days.
What kills me is how the home improvement shows that I don't watch anymore love to push this green/smart agenda and will gut a perfectly good kitchen for all new green appliances or some such nonsense. Or some clueless extinction rebellion child preaching to us all that we need to drive electric cars. Ok, kid, are YOU gonna buy it for me? Cuz I sure can't afford it!
Being poor taught me how to make do and I've gotten quite skilled at fixing things, healing things and making beautiful things from what others would put out to the curb or donate to a thriftshop.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 12:45 am (UTC)Unfortunately, many "generous" rich people do the Epstein thing: charity is just grease for the wheels and cover for whatever abomination goes on behind closed doors.
The rich kids I grew up with (we are all now in our late 40s) are some of the most miserly cheapskates I know. They don't even donate to charity if it's a cause they are passionate about, and they are always the first in line when a store or a company advertises some free handout, promo, or piece of junk.
Re: Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-07 12:49 am (UTC)If there's an org where I and other people can donate care packages, I would be delighted to do that. It would be good planetary charity to Mars.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 12:53 am (UTC)Subjective wealth
Date: 2021-01-07 04:00 am (UTC)Let me give an example. When a I was in College, I met a girl whom father is a famous utterly millionaire doctor who gave her splendid doodads like cars and frequent overseas travel. However, she described herself as a "lower middle class student" and she wasn't able to understand why that statement made her a target of general amusement.
In the opposite extreme, I have a coworker who was promoted promptly once she married a lower-tier little boss and since then, she got involved in every office conspiration and looked eagerly to destroy reputations and reporting every petty wrongdoing, actual or imagined. As she was becoming a peril, I asked a friend to cast a divination on her motivations, and my friend told the oracle pointed my colleague was blinded by her new money and status, and she was willing even to kill if it could help her to keep that cash flowing to her purse. I couldn't help but laugh: "Her new money?! Hahaha, she's earning not more than $950 every month!" Well, those $950 are a fortune for her.
Nowadays, I own 2 apartments, I live in one and rent out the other. I have a well funded pension plan. By current standards, I'm rich. But I remember when I was a child thirty years ago, 30% of the children were undernourished, people lived on beans and rice and split napkins to save, and as a younger brother, I had to wear clothes discarded by my brother and older cousins. But in those days, I used to feel very lucky and "rich" when my dad splurged giving me a glass of coke to drink. That happened once a month, maybe.
What I see here about wealth is the ample room between the extremes of the filthy riches and dirty-poor.
In other news, you Ogham answer was pretty right on my last loving question. Karina Elizabeth confessed me her feelings: "Edu..." she blushed, "I love you. I'm in love deeper than I expected..." Thanks Kimberly ;)
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 07:07 am (UTC)The thing I found most surprising about it was that once this was finalized, he then also offered to volunteer his time: this was a eighty something man with more money than he knew what to do with, spending a night each week playing with kids, learning outdoors skills to teach them, and in general being a major part of our group. So there are lots of generous rich people out there.
Sadly, my family is also living proof that there are lots of greedy, self-centred rich as well. My parents earn enough to have six figure tax bills (each), own a house worth more than a million dollars outright, and yet I, with my five figure income, find more money to donate; and when I mentioned my church asked for tithes, they reacted with horror: "you mean your church tells you to give up money?!"....
Re: Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-07 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 02:33 pm (UTC)Re: Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-07 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 09:20 pm (UTC)I hate that sort of person. I worked at a homeless shelter, where someone tried to micromanage us; she decided she didn't want Druids there forcing them to fire me, and she got away with her demands because she provided most of the money.
Re: Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-07 09:21 pm (UTC)Re: Pyramid Schemes
Date: 2021-01-07 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 09:24 pm (UTC)This describes my parents. Each pays more in taxes than the median income (after getting high profile tax accounts to do every trick in the book to reduce tax bills), and yet my mother left her church because she felt she was being judged for not being able to contribute to collections.
I know her well enough to know she genuinely believed she didn't have enough money to contribute, despite taking an annual vacation to another country....
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 09:24 pm (UTC)Re: Subjective wealth
Date: 2021-01-07 09:26 pm (UTC)Happy to hear the news about you and KE!
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-08 03:27 am (UTC)And yet, you're one of many I've heard that same story from: people who have plenty gasp in horror at parting with 10%.
Re: Subjective wealth
Date: 2021-01-08 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-08 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-08 06:14 pm (UTC)