Yeah. Pity the Rich is one of our Church’s first slogans. And my favourite. For us it refers to how difficult it'd be for a rich person to make the same level of sacrifice I do when I burn £50. The highest yearly earner in the UK (even ignoring weath) would have to burn £250k to match that. I get shit for burning £20… imagine what people would say about £250k! Of course, we think this exposes inequality in a visceral way.
Your argument is strong, too. If we switched our admiration for pity we could maintain our own humanity whilst rebalancing power. Xx
Well it's like that statement from Jesus in the Widow's Offering:
"Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
Also, now you've made me want to make a video on the controversial politics of moneyburning and wealth sacrifice
Interesting interpretation. I kinda like it. Though it feels like it maybe loses something too if you make it too allegorical… because, using your framework above, it kinda means that the rich have more absolute ‘love’ to give…
While I’m with you that there are layers of allegorical meaning here, the books of the Bible were written in a socio-political context, so there must be social commentary going on (e.g. it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the allegory decides to use wealth as the basis for its story, and there is obviously tension about the institution of the temple etc). I suspect one of the quasi-political statements is that those in power, and who are wealthy in coin, can be poor in spirit, and that they imagine that the quantity is what matters rather than the intention and intensity of feeling i.e. that there is a bigness of spirit to the woman with small quantities of coins
I was brought up in a Christian context in South Africa, and this story was always recounted by the priests as a parable of humility and a warning against pride and hubris. Would be interesting to see how the prosperity gospel Christian-capitalist crew in the US deal with the same story
I am with you there Scott. That's exactly my take.
The sort of mapping to the more spiritual allegorical makes the widow the richer, but it is not a faith mapping, not an isomorphism. So you don’t go in the esrever direction. We do not pity the widow in the sense we pity the rich. We pity the widow for her material conditions, but she might tell us to go take care of our own business.
The prosperity gospel (from what I can tell) is irreligious. Those folks shouldread the bible more or more carefully, and at least get to the parable you quoted. They can stop there I think and read no further, all wisdom is there, as the Sufi’s say “In a single drop” (but “the ignorant multiply it”) — “Split the atom‘s heart, and Lo! within it thou wilt find a sun.” --- I forget who that was, Rumi? ((But pretty much the spiritual equivalent of nuclear energy! 🤣))
There is a long tradition that has always answered “yes.” Rich dude - ‘Heaven’ - Camel - Eye - Needle.
The atheist/agnostics just always end up reinventing things that genuine traditions have always known, just like capitalist-bros.
It is just depressing to see people exalt material wealth and possessions. They should be exalting the source from whence their stuff came — some poor worker somewhere. The worker is spiritually the richer.
Except that people in all walks of life can have more or less integrity, depending on various nature/nurture factors. The poor worker may still be abusing his wife and kids, and the corporate boss may be genuinely using his wealth to at least partly ensure his employees are cared for. I think we have to be careful about exalting anyone just because of their group identity - it is getting us into a lot of pickles these days! And on the other hand of course in a system built upon exploitation we could argue the worker is only abusive because of the way he is treated by the system. It's just quite complex.
Yes, fair enough. I've often written about the same. The lowest paid workers and unemployed are "the most generous," because they spend all their income. All monetary economies run on sales, not savings. But that's "in the macro" where "generous" is not a trait of an individual. (My MMT perspective.) It's totally different in the micro. They have no choice but to spend all their income, so it is like the meager virtue of a school boy helping the old lady across the road because his mother told him to or he wouldn't get any icecream.
Hi Brett, thank you so much for making this video. I see it as a key reframe for inspiring nonviolent action: what we DON'T need more of, is more historical trauma of the French Revolution sort that has leftists groups STILL enacting "circular firing squads", AND has wealthy people doubling down on attempting to control everything, otherwise "heads are going to roll around here....."
Instead, we need principled, active, and strategic nonviolence; AND, we also need to develop immunity to "divide and conquer" tactics by learning to work creatively with the differences among ourselves. Basic mediation, facilitation, conflict transformation.... we have the ability to develop these social literacies at mass scale.
Back to money -- there is research on how we need some basic level of course, but above that, more does NOT make us happier, as you are pointing out... I believe the term is "money as a satisficer". We DO need some basic amount of it to ensure our survival, the way that society is presently constructed... but above a certain point, the only increase in happiness comes from giving it away.
Thanks for the insights Rosa. Yes, I’m often interested in these more ‘oblique’ strategies that bypass head-on confrontation in a way that undermines the moral authority of a power group, and - yes - this is a debate that has gone on for a long time (e.g. Gandhi etc)
I think you’ve probably uncovered something important here, which is that those who reject ‘pitying the rich’ sometimes have this subconscious sense that to do so is some kind of capitulation to them - i.e. it is giving up on the battle - when in reality it is an alternative (and quite possibly more effective) strategy for undermining elite power
mmm... well, we can look at it as "undermining elite power"... I tend to see it, as reclaiming our own. I mean, if one thinks about it... what is it that keeps the 99.9% confused?? What are we doing with our own power??
I don't know who it was who first said it, but I've long been drawn to the quote, "the only problem with power, is when we think we don't have any..."
I agree, Rosa. I think this is key, and it is what we are waking up to in these times. We have surrendered our power for so long we had forgotten we have it. The tragic absurdity of current events dictated by those in positions of power and influence is showing us how essential it is we reclaim it.
Really enjoyed this Brett, and I agree there’s often much tragedy to be found in the super-rich. Like your example of the suddenly-rich crypto millionaires, often the capacity for tragedy was there all along, and the changed financial situation amplified it or at least made it much more visible. Elon’s tragedy goes back to childhood for sure.
I’ve found the lens of projection onto money (per Peter Koenig’s work) as being very enlightening about all of this. These billionaires externalise a disconnected part of themselves by projecting it onto money - their safety/security/self-worth/success/freedom and so on. Their seeming drive for ever more money is really a drive to realise that disconnected part of themselves. The tragedy is that because they’re looking externally for something that needs cultivating within, the drive can never satisfied and so they always need a bigger super yacht. The biggest tragedy is that the thing they were looking for was actually there, within them, all along.
We all project in this way, so it’s not only about the mega-wealthy.
Yes something in me resonates strongly with your reasoning here. The reason it’s easy to miss is that I get confused with my feelings of resentment towards billionaires, and this leads to shame. So I like you’ve put it out, because it’s supportive of moral ambition.
Another tragic aspect of the rich and very rich is that they think they’re richer because they’re better, smarter and work harder.
In truth, they’re either born into wealth and connections or simply got lucky being in the right place at the right time. Having to tell themselves a constant lie to justify their own existence must weigh heavily on their soul.
Absolutely. In recent years the craziest examples of this have come from the crypto millionaire-billionaire crew, many of whom were the kind of people who happened to have access to good computers and decent technical knowledge and at least a few thousand dollars in savings sitting around (which basically narrows this down to a very specific demographic), and who then suddenly became immensely wealthy without doing anything, and who then had to find ways to either justify that or deal with it
For example, I’ve seen certain elements of the libertarian crypto community see themselves as a kind of ‘chosen people’ who were ‘selected’ to bring Freedom to the world, and who were hence enriched by crypto speculation to help free humanity. The delusions go deep
Been thinking lately about the longing for agency and a sense of control over the world ultra-rich people experience, and how mistaking money for that is what drives insatiable cycles of accumulation. In that sense, their tragedy is being at odds with the fact that we inhabit an uncertain universe. This idea is hard enough to assimilate for any of us, grief as a complex process speaks in that regard. Imagine how difficult it would be if you cling to the belief that you can do something about it, and use the enormous amount of power (which is different from agency) you have amassed to reinforce that delusion. I agree, it is pitiful.
For sure - I also think the billionaire obsession with immortality and longevity research has a lot of this dynamic: trying to use money to stave off fear of mortality, and refusing to accept that uncertainty you mention
Absolutely they are sad and socially impoverished, but I still want them held accountable in law. Let's not let compassion get in the way of a good whipping!
Thanks Jane. Just to reiterate that I wasn’t calling for compassion or leniency from the law. I’m calling for a cultural devaluation of their lifestyle - aka. you don’t yearn for the life of a person you pity, and we want people to turn away from viewing them as role models. A person like Trump, for example, has been very successful at turning a ‘bad boy billionaire’ supervillain persona into a popular political platform, whereas he’d never be able to do that if there was a sense of tragic pity around him
Yes... when you call it a cultural devaluation of their lifestyle, it sounds much better! And actually, if they were broadly pitied in society they might decide to get help and there might BE help, much as there is for drug and other addiction. Which I suppose is what it is, addiction to make up for deficits in nurturing.
Fabulous :) What I want is an actual wealth cap, so that nobody can be worth more than a million quid, which is quite enough for anybody to live on. Of course all the necessities of life would need to be publicly owned, but that would result in fair/good wages (possibly UBI) for everybody including farmers, and consumerism would go way down, saving the planet.
Hi Brett- thats a very interesting perspective....however there are alot of people who feel that these billionaires are lucky enough to have vast resources to help the globe -> one can do a lot good things if that money is put to good use. - protect wildlife, clean up the oceans, support organic farmers, give people fresh drinking water and get rid of plastic bottles, fight fin tech, ensure free holistic integrative medical care, conscious education, taking on corrupt politicains etc the list can go on ... so in that sense they are lucky as they have power and resources and can do these things on grand scales that others cant - on the other hand I agree they are paranoid, greedy and ecologically destructive and probably dont care about these issues
Thanks for the insights Sonera. One thing I’d say is that - systemically - ecological destruction, factory farming, ocean pollution etc go hand-in-hand with billionaire formation, so they’re two sides of the same coin, which means hoping that billionaires put the gains of capitalism back into combating the societal-ecological losses of capitalism seems optimistic
Interesting video Brett. One can get a small sense of this from the world of music. Once we had small record collections, now we have access to an almost infinite collection, instantly. How much happier are we? Not a lot. In fact, it seems mostly to have devalued recorded music. However, much like the super-rich I'm not sure many of us would want to go back to the world of musical scarcity. Being rich is boring (I imagine!) but it doesn't mean you want to be poor again.
Interesting insight Dom. Yes, there is a kinda ‘ratchet’ effect with much ‘progress’ in the sense that you don’t get much happier but you struggle to go back. That said, vinyl is having a big comeback - sales have steadily increased in the age of Spotify
Necessity is a fondamental ingredient to feel a "meaning of life", the connection (sense of belonging) to reality/god/universe, brought by some kind of simbiosys is something you cant buy with money...
The happiness in feeling home everywhere and "taken care of" by nature, is something unspeakable...
Your intuition is definitely not wrong! I think many of us know this and it's a basic of many religions - as has already been noted in the comments.
What I am perceiving more and more is that many, if not all, of these powerful figures are only where they are because their unhappiness (often from childhood trauma) has been used in conjunction with talent-spotting by those already on the scene or behind the scenes to manipulate them, above all through flattery. There's quite a lot of Faustian bargains being made, I think, as is clear in the music industry. I definitely pity anyone who has lost touch with themselves to the extent that they agree to sell their souls for fame and fortune, yet without losing too much sleep over this pity!
I would say that the super rich do not have the same moral engagement with humanity as the rest of us. As they do not in any way engage with normal people and normal society. they have no way of learning that or being confronted by it. So as they don’t feel regular emotions, I don’t believe that they suffer the feelings of guilt hurt pain that normal people feel. I genuinely believe that they don’t have a conscience because they don’t need to have a conscience as everything around them validates their lives.
To be super rich in this age means that you have got there through the death of others. I’m sorry but that is totally the case. As there is no empathy for that, it’s hard to be compassionate for these people. Clearly, they are unwell, but would you feel compassion for a robot? Because all in all that’s what they’ve become they’ve spent their life being programmed into a set value system that contains no human emotion so just as if my computer malfunctions I won’t have sleepless nights feeling sorry for it
Well, I didn't argue for compassion. I argued that we should see them as tragic figures caught in their own webs. This is what I was saying in the section on Aristotle's Poetics
Yeah. Pity the Rich is one of our Church’s first slogans. And my favourite. For us it refers to how difficult it'd be for a rich person to make the same level of sacrifice I do when I burn £50. The highest yearly earner in the UK (even ignoring weath) would have to burn £250k to match that. I get shit for burning £20… imagine what people would say about £250k! Of course, we think this exposes inequality in a visceral way.
Your argument is strong, too. If we switched our admiration for pity we could maintain our own humanity whilst rebalancing power. Xx
Well it's like that statement from Jesus in the Widow's Offering:
"Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
Also, now you've made me want to make a video on the controversial politics of moneyburning and wealth sacrifice
That is the relevant parable.
But it is also allegorical. As most of the Bible/Qu'ran/Gita/Tripitaka is supposed to be? The widow put in more of her “soul.”
Temple treasury ~ community.
Copper coins ~ love in the form of reciprocity and help.
Wealth ~ the widows capacity to love and nurture others. Spiritual wealth.
This imho is how to read "scripture" for the better, not by the atheist-marxist-materialist way. just my 2cents worth ;-)
Thanks Bijou
Interesting interpretation. I kinda like it. Though it feels like it maybe loses something too if you make it too allegorical… because, using your framework above, it kinda means that the rich have more absolute ‘love’ to give…
While I’m with you that there are layers of allegorical meaning here, the books of the Bible were written in a socio-political context, so there must be social commentary going on (e.g. it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the allegory decides to use wealth as the basis for its story, and there is obviously tension about the institution of the temple etc). I suspect one of the quasi-political statements is that those in power, and who are wealthy in coin, can be poor in spirit, and that they imagine that the quantity is what matters rather than the intention and intensity of feeling i.e. that there is a bigness of spirit to the woman with small quantities of coins
I was brought up in a Christian context in South Africa, and this story was always recounted by the priests as a parable of humility and a warning against pride and hubris. Would be interesting to see how the prosperity gospel Christian-capitalist crew in the US deal with the same story
Yes.
I am with you there Scott. That's exactly my take.
The sort of mapping to the more spiritual allegorical makes the widow the richer, but it is not a faith mapping, not an isomorphism. So you don’t go in the esrever direction. We do not pity the widow in the sense we pity the rich. We pity the widow for her material conditions, but she might tell us to go take care of our own business.
The prosperity gospel (from what I can tell) is irreligious. Those folks shouldread the bible more or more carefully, and at least get to the parable you quoted. They can stop there I think and read no further, all wisdom is there, as the Sufi’s say “In a single drop” (but “the ignorant multiply it”) — “Split the atom‘s heart, and Lo! within it thou wilt find a sun.” --- I forget who that was, Rumi? ((But pretty much the spiritual equivalent of nuclear energy! 🤣))
There is a long tradition that has always answered “yes.” Rich dude - ‘Heaven’ - Camel - Eye - Needle.
The atheist/agnostics just always end up reinventing things that genuine traditions have always known, just like capitalist-bros.
It is just depressing to see people exalt material wealth and possessions. They should be exalting the source from whence their stuff came — some poor worker somewhere. The worker is spiritually the richer.
Except that people in all walks of life can have more or less integrity, depending on various nature/nurture factors. The poor worker may still be abusing his wife and kids, and the corporate boss may be genuinely using his wealth to at least partly ensure his employees are cared for. I think we have to be careful about exalting anyone just because of their group identity - it is getting us into a lot of pickles these days! And on the other hand of course in a system built upon exploitation we could argue the worker is only abusive because of the way he is treated by the system. It's just quite complex.
Yes, fair enough. I've often written about the same. The lowest paid workers and unemployed are "the most generous," because they spend all their income. All monetary economies run on sales, not savings. But that's "in the macro" where "generous" is not a trait of an individual. (My MMT perspective.) It's totally different in the micro. They have no choice but to spend all their income, so it is like the meager virtue of a school boy helping the old lady across the road because his mother told him to or he wouldn't get any icecream.
Hi Brett, thank you so much for making this video. I see it as a key reframe for inspiring nonviolent action: what we DON'T need more of, is more historical trauma of the French Revolution sort that has leftists groups STILL enacting "circular firing squads", AND has wealthy people doubling down on attempting to control everything, otherwise "heads are going to roll around here....."
Instead, we need principled, active, and strategic nonviolence; AND, we also need to develop immunity to "divide and conquer" tactics by learning to work creatively with the differences among ourselves. Basic mediation, facilitation, conflict transformation.... we have the ability to develop these social literacies at mass scale.
Back to money -- there is research on how we need some basic level of course, but above that, more does NOT make us happier, as you are pointing out... I believe the term is "money as a satisficer". We DO need some basic amount of it to ensure our survival, the way that society is presently constructed... but above a certain point, the only increase in happiness comes from giving it away.
Thanks for the insights Rosa. Yes, I’m often interested in these more ‘oblique’ strategies that bypass head-on confrontation in a way that undermines the moral authority of a power group, and - yes - this is a debate that has gone on for a long time (e.g. Gandhi etc)
I think you’ve probably uncovered something important here, which is that those who reject ‘pitying the rich’ sometimes have this subconscious sense that to do so is some kind of capitulation to them - i.e. it is giving up on the battle - when in reality it is an alternative (and quite possibly more effective) strategy for undermining elite power
mmm... well, we can look at it as "undermining elite power"... I tend to see it, as reclaiming our own. I mean, if one thinks about it... what is it that keeps the 99.9% confused?? What are we doing with our own power??
I don't know who it was who first said it, but I've long been drawn to the quote, "the only problem with power, is when we think we don't have any..."
I agree, Rosa. I think this is key, and it is what we are waking up to in these times. We have surrendered our power for so long we had forgotten we have it. The tragic absurdity of current events dictated by those in positions of power and influence is showing us how essential it is we reclaim it.
Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay!
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Reading and Writing"
Great quote in this context!
Really enjoyed this Brett, and I agree there’s often much tragedy to be found in the super-rich. Like your example of the suddenly-rich crypto millionaires, often the capacity for tragedy was there all along, and the changed financial situation amplified it or at least made it much more visible. Elon’s tragedy goes back to childhood for sure.
I’ve found the lens of projection onto money (per Peter Koenig’s work) as being very enlightening about all of this. These billionaires externalise a disconnected part of themselves by projecting it onto money - their safety/security/self-worth/success/freedom and so on. Their seeming drive for ever more money is really a drive to realise that disconnected part of themselves. The tragedy is that because they’re looking externally for something that needs cultivating within, the drive can never satisfied and so they always need a bigger super yacht. The biggest tragedy is that the thing they were looking for was actually there, within them, all along.
We all project in this way, so it’s not only about the mega-wealthy.
I wrote more about this in ‘Millionaires and their money worries’ a few years back. https://medium.com/the-happy-startup-school/millionaires-and-the-surprising-truth-about-their-money-worries-29ba02fafc85
PS. ‘Millionaires’ feels quite quaint now doesn’t it? I should probably update it to billionaires 😅
Yes something in me resonates strongly with your reasoning here. The reason it’s easy to miss is that I get confused with my feelings of resentment towards billionaires, and this leads to shame. So I like you’ve put it out, because it’s supportive of moral ambition.
Another tragic aspect of the rich and very rich is that they think they’re richer because they’re better, smarter and work harder.
In truth, they’re either born into wealth and connections or simply got lucky being in the right place at the right time. Having to tell themselves a constant lie to justify their own existence must weigh heavily on their soul.
Absolutely. In recent years the craziest examples of this have come from the crypto millionaire-billionaire crew, many of whom were the kind of people who happened to have access to good computers and decent technical knowledge and at least a few thousand dollars in savings sitting around (which basically narrows this down to a very specific demographic), and who then suddenly became immensely wealthy without doing anything, and who then had to find ways to either justify that or deal with it
For example, I’ve seen certain elements of the libertarian crypto community see themselves as a kind of ‘chosen people’ who were ‘selected’ to bring Freedom to the world, and who were hence enriched by crypto speculation to help free humanity. The delusions go deep
Been thinking lately about the longing for agency and a sense of control over the world ultra-rich people experience, and how mistaking money for that is what drives insatiable cycles of accumulation. In that sense, their tragedy is being at odds with the fact that we inhabit an uncertain universe. This idea is hard enough to assimilate for any of us, grief as a complex process speaks in that regard. Imagine how difficult it would be if you cling to the belief that you can do something about it, and use the enormous amount of power (which is different from agency) you have amassed to reinforce that delusion. I agree, it is pitiful.
For sure - I also think the billionaire obsession with immortality and longevity research has a lot of this dynamic: trying to use money to stave off fear of mortality, and refusing to accept that uncertainty you mention
Absolutely they are sad and socially impoverished, but I still want them held accountable in law. Let's not let compassion get in the way of a good whipping!
Thanks Jane. Just to reiterate that I wasn’t calling for compassion or leniency from the law. I’m calling for a cultural devaluation of their lifestyle - aka. you don’t yearn for the life of a person you pity, and we want people to turn away from viewing them as role models. A person like Trump, for example, has been very successful at turning a ‘bad boy billionaire’ supervillain persona into a popular political platform, whereas he’d never be able to do that if there was a sense of tragic pity around him
Yes... when you call it a cultural devaluation of their lifestyle, it sounds much better! And actually, if they were broadly pitied in society they might decide to get help and there might BE help, much as there is for drug and other addiction. Which I suppose is what it is, addiction to make up for deficits in nurturing.
I picture a series of Billionaire Rehab programmes, funded by billionaire wealth
Fabulous :) What I want is an actual wealth cap, so that nobody can be worth more than a million quid, which is quite enough for anybody to live on. Of course all the necessities of life would need to be publicly owned, but that would result in fair/good wages (possibly UBI) for everybody including farmers, and consumerism would go way down, saving the planet.
Hi Brett- thats a very interesting perspective....however there are alot of people who feel that these billionaires are lucky enough to have vast resources to help the globe -> one can do a lot good things if that money is put to good use. - protect wildlife, clean up the oceans, support organic farmers, give people fresh drinking water and get rid of plastic bottles, fight fin tech, ensure free holistic integrative medical care, conscious education, taking on corrupt politicains etc the list can go on ... so in that sense they are lucky as they have power and resources and can do these things on grand scales that others cant - on the other hand I agree they are paranoid, greedy and ecologically destructive and probably dont care about these issues
Thanks for the insights Sonera. One thing I’d say is that - systemically - ecological destruction, factory farming, ocean pollution etc go hand-in-hand with billionaire formation, so they’re two sides of the same coin, which means hoping that billionaires put the gains of capitalism back into combating the societal-ecological losses of capitalism seems optimistic
Interesting video Brett. One can get a small sense of this from the world of music. Once we had small record collections, now we have access to an almost infinite collection, instantly. How much happier are we? Not a lot. In fact, it seems mostly to have devalued recorded music. However, much like the super-rich I'm not sure many of us would want to go back to the world of musical scarcity. Being rich is boring (I imagine!) but it doesn't mean you want to be poor again.
Interesting insight Dom. Yes, there is a kinda ‘ratchet’ effect with much ‘progress’ in the sense that you don’t get much happier but you struggle to go back. That said, vinyl is having a big comeback - sales have steadily increased in the age of Spotify
Necessity is a fondamental ingredient to feel a "meaning of life", the connection (sense of belonging) to reality/god/universe, brought by some kind of simbiosys is something you cant buy with money...
The happiness in feeling home everywhere and "taken care of" by nature, is something unspeakable...
Just to give a glimpse of some kind of Whole happiness ;)
Your intuition is definitely not wrong! I think many of us know this and it's a basic of many religions - as has already been noted in the comments.
What I am perceiving more and more is that many, if not all, of these powerful figures are only where they are because their unhappiness (often from childhood trauma) has been used in conjunction with talent-spotting by those already on the scene or behind the scenes to manipulate them, above all through flattery. There's quite a lot of Faustian bargains being made, I think, as is clear in the music industry. I definitely pity anyone who has lost touch with themselves to the extent that they agree to sell their souls for fame and fortune, yet without losing too much sleep over this pity!
I wrote about it in "Richphobia". You can download it for free here: https://www.oneday2050.org/richphobia My story is "My inner rehab". Enjoy! :)
Pity Elon Musk, he's not allowed into Berghain. https://open.spotify.com/track/5gzbp9gU98DsGcw6DlOGmI?si=o9fr1_5ETwKtlUSJ1zGe0Q
I would say that the super rich do not have the same moral engagement with humanity as the rest of us. As they do not in any way engage with normal people and normal society. they have no way of learning that or being confronted by it. So as they don’t feel regular emotions, I don’t believe that they suffer the feelings of guilt hurt pain that normal people feel. I genuinely believe that they don’t have a conscience because they don’t need to have a conscience as everything around them validates their lives.
To be super rich in this age means that you have got there through the death of others. I’m sorry but that is totally the case. As there is no empathy for that, it’s hard to be compassionate for these people. Clearly, they are unwell, but would you feel compassion for a robot? Because all in all that’s what they’ve become they’ve spent their life being programmed into a set value system that contains no human emotion so just as if my computer malfunctions I won’t have sleepless nights feeling sorry for it
Well, I didn't argue for compassion. I argued that we should see them as tragic figures caught in their own webs. This is what I was saying in the section on Aristotle's Poetics