Reality becomes surreal...

[exile]

I don't even know where to begin with this one...:erg: I keep wanting to say something about the chickens coming coming home to roost, but that doesn't seem to capture the scale of how bizarre this seems...

... or maybe it's not bizarre at all, but just what you'd expect... :idunno:


http://www.nypost.com/seven/07132008/news/regionalnews/anguish_of_stock_splits_119728.htm?page=0

 

[Kacey]

The bubble has indeed burst - and people who substitute possessions for emotions are falling fast and hard.

 

[RandomPhantom700]

Sounds like Cindy and Tom's marriage wasn't anywhere near ideal in the first place. This is what's to be expected when a relationship is buoyed only by high finances.

I can't help but think the fault lies with the Cindys in these relationships though. The economy plummets, your husband loses the income you were accustomed to, so you deny it and blame him?

 

[exile]

The bubble has indeed burst - and people who substitute possessions for emotions are falling fast and hard.

That's the way I'd like to think of it—payback time for people who figured that money could buy everything... but I'm suspicious of my own tendency to turn everything into a morality tale. I just can't figure out how these people live.

I think of the great Dutch speed skater, Johann Olav Koss, who could've had anything he wanted—including the Prime Ministership of Holland, probably—had he decided to go that route at the end of his career as the unvanquished men's champion of speed skating. Instead, completing his medical training, he inaugurated a foundation to bring medical care to the poorest children in Africa—and that's pretty bloody poor!—and got heads of state and major philanthropists to kick in. And he rolls up his sleeves and goes down there to work himself in the hospitals he's founded. To me, this guy is already an immortal. And he doesn't have to try to be this way: it's who he really is, by all the evidence.

And then we have the people this story is about...

 

[Sukerkin]

Thanks for that, Bob. I don't think I had ever consciously heard of (Dr. ?) Koss and it's the odd tale like that that make me think there's something to being human after all.

 

[Archangel M]

Shallowness at its "finest".

 

[exile]

Thanks for that, Bob. I don't think I had ever consciously heard of (Dr. ?) Koss and it's the odd tale like that that make me think there's something to being human after all.

He is a genuine, certified MD—was in medical school all the time he was winning Olympic gold—and is, to my mind, the guy we should offer up to the emissaries of the Galactic Federation if they ever land on our planet asking us what we can tell them to persuade them that we should be admitted. But even though he's prominent in a way a lot of other people aren't, he's not unique—we all know people like that, even if we don't know that they're like that.

What I find troubling about the story I linked to is the unbelievable shallowness, the ethical/emotional numbness (or maybe deadness) of the people involved in this most intimate of relationships... how could they talk to each other? What did they say? Can you live with someone for that long, have children and raise them, over the abyss of this complete moral/spiritual/whatever-you-want-to-call it vacuum?.

Apparently you can... I guess that's what I find so troubling....

 

[TheShadow]

What is love?

A House in the Hamptons.

Power.

 

[exile]

What is love?

A House in the Hamptons.

Power.

No. What is love? Five feet of heaven with a ponytail... oops, wait—wrong thread...

Damn, we need a feature that lets you put musical notes at the beginning and end of selected text...

 

[Makalakumu]

What is love?

A House in the Hamptons.

Power.

A little working could turn this into a cool haiku.

Regarding the article, I am not really surprised. I had a really good friend who was an investment banker on Wall Street in the 80s. He was living the high life of $5000 dollar call girls, concaine platters, fast cars, and millions of dollars.

He got married, tamed the fast life a bit and jammed a mansion full of expensive merchandise, a wife, and two kids.

One day he woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and just started crying. He couldn't beleive how unhappy he was. He talked to his wife and they sold everything and moved to the south pacific where she opened a medical practice and he surfs and writes novels.

So, I guess my point is that this kind of thing doesn't always end badly. People sometimes can navigate their way through the maze of priviledge. It's just hard for me to understand though. I grew up in poverty and this kind of excess is just beyond my experience.

 

[exile]

A little working could turn this into a cool haiku.

Regarding the article, I am not really surprised. I had a really good friend who was an investment banker on Wall Street in the 80s. He was living the high life of $5000 dollar call girls, concaine platters, fast cars, and millions of dollars.

He got married, tamed the fast life a bit and jammed a mansion full of expensive merchandise, a wife, and two kids.

One day he woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and just started crying. He couldn't beleive how unhappy he was. He talked to his wife and they sold everything and moved to the south pacific where she opened a medical practice and he surfs and writes novels.

So, I guess my point is that this kind of thing doesn't always end badly. People sometimes can navigate their way through the maze of priviledge. It's just hard for me to understand though. I grew up in poverty and this kind of excess is just beyond my experience.

Sounds to me as if the expensive summer camp mentioned in the article charged enough to keep several villages in the Congo alive for a year. And that was... how did the person in the story put it... 'the straw that broke the camel's back'???

See, that's what I was getting at about surreality... you have people, including people in America, dying of deficiency diseases while people elsewhere in the same country are divorcing because the $50,000 trip to Nice has to be cancelled this year... :barf:

Yes, yes, I know that's not the real, basic reason. But whatever that real reason is, it says something about the emptiness of the relationships involved which is just as disturbing.

 

[TheShadow]

A little working could turn this into a cool haiku.

What would we call love?

A large house in the Hamptons?

The lure of power.

 

[TheShadow]

One day he woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and just started crying. He couldn't beleive how unhappy he was. He talked to his wife and they sold everything and moved to the south pacific where she opened a medical practice and he surfs and writes novels.

Good thing he had the Benjamins to afford the move.

Still seems like hes far from an aesthetic lifestyle.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

This type of thing is a problem when your marriage is based around stability or finances and not for love. In the end marry because you love someone other wise what is the point? :idunno:

 

[Sukerkin]

I so completely agree with the sentiments in the posts above that there is really little to add.

In all relationships there are certain fiscal realities that cannot be ignored because they are the things that keep the wheels on the bus. But they should never be the only reason for a relationship to endure.

Fortunately most of us are never rich enough to find out that the only reason our partners are with us is our bank balance but I would hope that if we were in such a relationship (and the leech-partner was not a talented actor/actress) we would notice that our wallet got a bigger kiss than we did.

 

[MA-Caver]

Actually, money CAN buy you everything... but it's not what you need. Lots of people go through this life thinking that if they have THIS they'll be okay. Our societies feeds on that, the marketing industry thrives on our inadequacies. Everything that you see advertise is just a subliminal message saying "you're not okay, until you buy... THIS!" Why are all the advertising familes that we see on commercials are middle to upper middle class families. Never a family just getting by (i.e. an older car in the garage, a house more than 25 years old, not quite sparkling clean kitchens with dirty dishes in the sink, clothes are not quite so new and so on... a message being sent to the subconscious saying you NEED this to look THIS good. So people become materialistic because they spend the money to buy THIS and don't look at the long term gratification, they're feeding their need for INSTANT gratification.
Why do a lot of MA students (not all) really leave the dojos after a couple of belts or even weeks? Because it's taking too damn long that's why!
So when "erroneous self-perceived deficits" are at the forefront of one's psyche they'll keep at it to maintain that sense of status.
Look at this line from the article:

Refusing to scale back, she booked a house in the Hamptons for this summer, splurged on shopping trips and continued the posh interior redecoration of their city home.

Think about what magazines she must be reading? Better Homes and Gardens?? Not on your life! Something a lot more upscale than that old rag.
Get the idea?
It's another reason why a lot of Jackpot Lottery winners go broke after a couple of years (or sooner). Their personal "comfort zone" just hit the stratosphere and WOW it's nice up there! They'll be damned if they want to come back down to the squalor that they were living in before. So they do what their pre-wired psyches are telling them to do. Get the best and ONLY the best! Marketing, marketing, marketing.
In the MA world, the McDojos are doing the same thing. Person A has friend B who talks excitedly about paying for classes at a McDojo (unbeknowist to them that's what it really is) and ends up with a black belt after 8-9 hard months of training! Wow! Too Cool! Person A decides he wants one too so he looks around and happens to find a real dojo (not honestly knowing the difference), and after 3-5 months of real hard training he's nowhere NEAR getting that BB. "Aww man screw this! I'm outta here! That so called sensei is ripping me off!"
I could go on with examples of the automobile industry who hire psychologists to find new ways of working our sense of inadequacies to the surface. If they didn't know that we respond to a needle in our sense of inadequacies then a car would be just a car, they wouldn't have to put numbers or letters on the damned things.
Why does a movie make more money from product placement? Tom Hanks is struggling with a difficult problem, so he grabs a Coke from the fridge. Heck why not a pepsi? Anyone remember some (older) movies/tv shows where the actor/actress was drinking an unknown brand of beer or soft-drink? Don't see that anymore do you? Why?

Some of the things that our societies need to work on.

 

[Ninjamom]

A friend made an interesting observation today - we were discussing the ancient question of, "Is the glass half-full or half-empty?", when he came to the conclusion that any engineer would know: the real problem is we are using a glass that is too big.

When we set up an arbitrary standard of 'the way things should be', we are just setting up for disappointment and dissatisfaction. I'll take gratitude for a cup that runneth over instead of longing for larger glasses to hold more, any day!

(BTW, looking at our financial situation when we got married, I can say with all confidence that my husband and I did not marry for money.)

 

[Makalakumu]

What would we call love?

A large house in the Hamptons?

The lure of power.

That is a sweet Haiku!

 

[Makalakumu]

Growing up in poverty ruined me on today's society. I went to school and built a better life for myself, but my values are so different then most of the people who didn't traverse a class barrier.

For example, I love me old things. I will use something up and eschew buying anything new until the old one is completely used up. When I was kid, I played baseball. My glove came to me as a hand-me-down and I took the best care of that thing as I could. I repaired it lovingly and made sure that thing was going to last, because I know that my mother could not buy me another one.

I picked the old glove up and played catch with my son and I love the feel of the thing. I remember restringing the old thing when I was ten and I remember all of the love I poured into it.

Today, people just throw thing away the moment they look a little tattered...and that encompasses the people just in my class. I can't even imagine how people with that much priviledge behave. It's amazing how foriegn the life of a single human being can be from yours.

 

[MA-Caver]

Growing up in poverty ruined me on today's society. I went to school and built a better life for myself, but my values are so different then most of the people who didn't traverse a class barrier.

For example, I love me old things. I will use something up and eschew buying anything new until the old one is completely used up. When I was kid, I played baseball. My glove came to me as a hand-me-down and I took the best care of that thing as I could. I repaired it lovingly and made sure that thing was going to last, because I know that my mother could not buy me another one.

I picked the old glove up and played catch with my son and I love the feel of the thing. I remember restringing the old thing when I was ten and I remember all of the love I poured into it.

Today, people just throw thing away the moment they look a little tattered...and that encompasses the people just in my class. I can't even imagine how people with that much privilege behave. It's amazing how foriegn the life of a single human being can be from yours.

Yep, same here, although I grew up in the middle class range of my father's income (my mum was a stay-at-home wife/mother), out on my own I've been a little less now and again. So one learns to make something last and last til you just can't use it anymore. Purchases are a toss up between the best you can buy and the best deal for the money to simply waiting until the money is at hand to buy it... then take care of it long as possible.
An old baseball glove lovingly cared for is a sweet thing to the owner. Many of us have similar material items that we've carried down through the years that have given us simple pleasures.

Still another thing that needs fixing in our society... the love and care of the old stuff.

Make for a hellva lot less garbage too I'd bet.