pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I’ve said it a few times, some people just think far too much of themselves to order from the menu….

What does this mean? I think that the more insulated the ego is from the forces of reality, and the force that is other people, i.e. the way in life you must compromise all things to remain functional within the tribe, the more fragile that ego becomes. The sure fire method of self ostracization from the slings and arrows of what other people may bring to you, welcomed or not, is to make the tribe unnecessary to you. I think there are two methods to this…

Method 1 – chase the impossible…

Become so wealthy that you transcend any necessity to be forced to interact with other people on their terms. Through your wealth then dominate the space you are in and direct and narrate your own existence. Define everything around you on your terms and judgement, ennoble yourself with chosen sycophants as your cohort. Dispense with observation or measure and describe things as you wish them to be. Act as if you make things what they are by feeling that they should be, become the embodiment of your own ephemeral ideologies (whims). Define people as you wish them to be, define yourself as you would wish to be seen and make sure that you gain the power to prevent others from defining you. In flexing the power that is enabled by wealth, you can protect your fragile ego, and the ego protected can only weaken. Fragility begets fragility and so on…

Real people, non-wealthy people must, by necessity, achieve through effort and talent, and in doing so they must break down barriers put up by others, competitors. The wealthy do not need to do this, they are self enabling, but without realising, so they often have to make a big noise about what it is they do because a fragile ego requires a lot of validation. It is easy to give an hour when you don’t have to go to work, it is easy to give a pound when you have many millions of them. Time and money have a different meaning depending on how you may value them. What is not easy is to give what you would miss because it is the right thing to do, this is how decent people boost their self worth, and there is nothing wrong with being proud of yourself for doing what is right.

I said define, this is an important one I feel. I’ve known people who have been rich, I’ve known people that have been poor and became rich, but every time I have seen anyone that is wealthy interact with somebody that isn’t I have seen a power emerge that is enabled by the realisation, on the part of both parties, that there is an imbalance of a financial nature. This is the power dynamic that is an unequal relation. This even happens when the wealthy person does not intend it to, when the less well off person is the one that acts differently because of their skewed logic telling them that rich people have greater abilities, and higher value offerings in conversation, than they might have. This sort of cap-doffing and forelock tugging is simply a social affect that’s proved hard to shift. It’s like that Fast Show sketch with the toff and the groundsman, or when people listen to the orange nitwit’s rambling nonsense because they figure he must be wise because he has wealth. People are unfortunately seduced by wealth, and those that have it, into thinking it is no accidental or structural, but most wealth is created by wealth that already exists or is the product of luck, very little is made from small beginnings. The belief would then be that people who have inherited wealth are somehow wiser than those that have had no opportunity to gain it, and that cannot be correct.

The wealthy fall into the trap of thinking that by defining the world they get to make it so, we’ve seen this mistake play out with our politicians being groomed by their sponsors to occupy roles that they then are wholly inadequate to perform in because they have nothing like the intellectual capital in the disciplines they are set up to manage. We see this in the workplace too, “I like you, you can be the new head of blah” says the CEO when promoting the guy that laughed loudest at his shit joke or nodded his head while the latest nonsense was being spouted at the latest pointless gathering. By seeding the space they are in with those they choose, they come to believe that they hold the power to enable the capability to do the thing offered to those picked people. The picked people then, instead of feeling empowered by their own efforts, feel thankful because faith has been shown in them by those they have falsely identified as the locus of wisdom. This is a mistake, it would be better to be surrounded by corrective argument than to inspire confidence in those that lack spine, yet harbour ambition. Plato said that anyone who sought power should be prevented from having it.

Method 2 – give up, give in, tune out…

Just stop giving a shit… Seneca said that “a person is as happy as they believe themselves to be”, this means that happiness is a perspective, not an attainment. I like this, though I’m not a huge fan of stoicism because of the problem of rampant positivism preventing human progress. If everyone stopped having to have their ego stroked, their value recognised, and their acts validated, then we would all benefit. The man that wants nothing is the happy one, the woman that is okay in her own skin is the one that doesn’t waste her money, or risk her life, to be differently configured, the child that appreciates attention more than stuff will grow to be the better rounded one.

Do I go to the gym to make my body a better machine to serve me well and break down less, or am I there to get a competitive bum in the human meat market? This matters more than the act, it indicates the real motive, and that is more important in terms of the self. The self that seeks validation is weak and flirts constantly with disappointment, the self that chases inner self related goals is strong and resilient.

The only way you can get to define your surroundings is if you accept that there is nothing that you can do to change the space you have no power over, this way you accept what is and realise you could do nothing about it should you wish to, so you cultivate the lack of desire to do so. This is what stoicism is to some people, the cultivation of apathy. Not the more modern look at it as a way of felling good about inaction, I think that is a very Abrahamic endeavour, but to be totally indifferent to what is.

You’ll be happier if you just order from the menu, because that’s what’s on offer.

Paul S Wilson