Celebrity and money are like a reality distortion field.
I hope I never acquire either in large quantities - it does not seem like a desirable thing
Regardless, if we use our resources to help others, that happiness will return to us from within us. There is only one source of happiness: to make others happy and then reap the benefits via the universe's natural karmic flow.
Most people are only concerned with selfish desires such that even their charity is for their own benefit, such as their public image or tax breaks. Truly doing something to help another human being -- without any self-concern save reaping the karmic happiness return -- is truly rare on Earth, but once one tastes that sweetest of nectars, one wants nothing else, ever. This world would be a different place if we human beings judged ROI in this most compassionate of ways.
> Adding to his woes, the government seized roughly $80 million from him.
That to me means that he was distinctively rich
I mean, can't be doing all _that_ badly.
ugh. why do you suppose there is a two degrees of magnitude difference in crime between poor and rich nations? there is no connection to theft not sounding that bad when you are starving?
also, are you supposing all the gangs breaking into&robbing homes are actually bored millionaires?
Even in America alone there are a vast number of people living in extreme poverty. And the overwhelming majority will live perfectly normal lives, even if it means on occasion living off iceberg and ramen, as was the case for myself when growing up.
If poverty/desperation drove crime then there would be vastly more criminals, especially in rural areas, yet criminality remains relatively rare.
You'll find far less tolerance for criminal behavior among those who grew up in poverty, because they are the ones who have lived through it all and seen with their own eyes the sort of people who go down the wrong road. And the fault for going down that road lies with nobody besides those people.
The more I watch the behavior of the wealthy the more I see that either 1) there is never enough to satisfy them or 2) (more likely) getting it is the thing they enjoy — so why would they stop at some arbitrary point?
I think his wealth or lack of is orthogonal. The article in fact mentions his motivations being more along the lines of enjoying living on the edge, living dangerously (see his documentary work).
I think the same is true of positive attention. We’re social creatures, that’s part of how we survive. In the past we wanted to be part of a group, and having status in a social hierarchy could be a matter of life or death. Now that there are billions of people, and social networks make it possible to interact with a LOT of them. Humans evolved in circumstances where we weren’t ever likely to have as much attention as we wanted, so our wiring tells us to glut ourselves on as much attention as we can, which can hurt us (obsession, narcissism, etc.).
William Gibson, as usual, summed it up perfectly in Idoru:
“[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”
Recent events, especially here in America, only ever prove Mr. Gibson's understanding of the widespread lowness of the human condition. But all his "prescience" is really due to his profound humanity.
Terry Gilliam said much the same thing when talking about making Brazil in the 1980s.
"People think I am a prophet and that Brazil described the world we’re living in now a few years ago. But we were living in that world then; people just weren’t paying attention the way they do now."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/terry-gilliam-is...
It’s better to have $5 million than to be broke. That absolutely true. But there is a level of wealth and position where you absolutely must participate in the most evil parts of society to stay where you are. The level of money that you can quietly have is not one that rich people are impressed by. There is a higher level, which you cannot have without the support of society, and the support of society is something you do not get unless you are actively participating in terrible things, either as a willful actor or, more likely in this case, a patsy who usually has no idea what’s going on.
I do wish this article had been more concrete about what those terrible things were, though. And I have no sense of where the man was truly a criminal or just way out of his depth. When people in the arts and sciences get caught up in these things, it tends to be the latter.
Think of it as game theory; or think of it like simple mob dynamics. Play Wolf or Mafia, and get an idea of how powerful information asymmetry can be.
Look down stream at where our cobalt, our lithium, our chocolate comes from; what we've done to Africa and South America and indigenous people everywhere; look what Epstein did, and who with, and how media covered it; look at the history of colonialism; look at how people who spoke out against Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria/US torture/drone assinations/Israeli occupation and atrocities were and are being treated by the political and media class. Look at how climate protesters are smeared while polluters are green-washed; not sometimes, but as a matter of course. There's not many ways to explain all the above without the original claim as a large factor.
I'd recommend Chomsky, Naomi Klein, John Perkins, Sarah Kendzior and Whitney Webb if you want to learn more.
No I'm not. I said "there's something to it". I'm not OP, and I think OP could be understood to be speaking as "in the vast vast majority of cases" rather than an unbreakable now-and-forever rule. It's wise to interpret people in the most charitable reasonable light, generally.
> but is it absolutely true, and absolutely true today
If it's true in 99% of cases, or 100%, the difference is pretty small. Seems odd to focus on.
And we weren't discussing whether or not this would be true in a hundred years, but what the situation is now and historically. Certainly there is a potential for radical change; I would even call it necessary.
(emphasis added)
I’m a founder of a venture backed seed stage startup, as a missionary not mercenary founder i do not seek extraordinary wealth but my shareholders do and I have fiduciary duty as well as substantial ownership. I struggle to accept without clear demonstration that my mission’s success means I “ABSOLUTELY MUST participate in the most evil parts of society”. This is a very strong claim, I don’t think it applies to me!
At the very least you have to exploit the labor of the bottom 99% of society in order to attain 1% wealth.
When you get to the level of Musk, I think it's almost self-evident that it isn't possible to attain that much wealth, without being directly responsible for a significant fraction of all the evil in the world.
That's slightly different from "participating in evil parts of society" but I think that it certainly would be difficult maintain that kind of wealth but somehow avoid participating in the activities of your peers.
Is that true?
I get what you are saying. In my mind it is more like: it would be nice to be wealthy, but you don't want to get wealthy enough that you show up on the radar of the world's bad actors.
Why not let me take it off both of your hands so you can live the ascetic lives you crave? Deal?
Or it reveals actual reality: if you have lots of money, you probably don't have as many restrictions on what you can and can't do, so it may allow your "true self" to be actualized. Your true self may not be as noble as you think.