When I was in Mexico City last year and traveled between the slums and the uber rich suburbs like Polanco and San Angel and seeing the disparity of wealth between the have and the have nots I began truly resenting all the rich Mexicans who have made their money exploiting the poor in that country. There's a reason why the rich have broken glass bottle tops on their tall masonry walls surrounding their homes. It's because they are the focus of intense hatred and resentment among most of the poor there.
I began thinking of all the filthy rich people in the US I resented. Most that I know made their money as Wall Street types. Contributing nothing to the common good or benefit of society they are parasites worthy of being strung up as the aristocracy was in the French Revolution. They have actually wrecked many peoples lives and livelihoods by engineering mergers and take overs that eliminated good companies and their workers.
As the divide between the haves and have nots grows in America and the middle class erodes I begin to resent these people more and more. We all have been brainwashed to think that these rich people are living the American Dream through hard work and sacrifice but I think in all actuality most I know have stolen their money legally.
I'm know a few of these Wall Street types and it's an interesting dichotomy I have to deal with. I have realized a few things:
Because it's institutionalized, they universally do not think of themselves as bad people. They believe that they are virtuous because their deep WASP background teaches them the old Calvinist belief that God shows his favor for people by making them prosperous and rich and that good acts are not necessary for salvation. This may seem, in this day and age, ridiculous unless someone is particularly religious. None of my relations who are in investment banking are religious in the least but it's most definitely the culture in which they were raised. It's the culture of money, politics, privilege, private education, their friends, and their ancestry which reflect these Calvinist precepts even if they've never set foot in a Calvinist church. They're taught to believe that in the realm of business, anything is fair game because the capitalist system is, in itself, a virtuous thing. To do whatever is necessary to make the most profit possible is good for everyone within the system. In any event, their competitors do it so they must do the same or sink and that alone helps the internal justification necessary to do what it is they do. If someone is poor, it's because they haven't worked hard enough to overcome their circumstance, want to be poor, or haven't valued education enough to know how. It seems that for every poor person out there, the Masters believe there is an opportunity for success which has gone unheeded or purposefully discarded. It's a bit perverse.
Nearly all of them have some sort of narcissistic personality disorder. Inside they are deeply insecure and need what wealth can buy them in order to feed their insatiable need for security and approval. They buy the best suits, the big houses with rooms they don't need in the right zip codes, drive expensive cars without ever enjoying the capabilities of the cars, vacation at places they can drop in cocktail party conversations to impress others, and pull every string they possibly can to get their kids into the right schools. Were I only to know these people through their business dealings, I'd say they were confident, smooth, brilliant, and had it all. But that's not how I know them. I know them when they're at home, when they've had too much to drink, when they're in private, among family and friends, and they let their true selves show. The insecurities which dog them are endless; many of them engendered by their own parents to, "succeed, succeed, succeed!" and be ruthless doing so. They tend to have distant, never-satisfied fathers, and domineering status-conscious mothers. They feel whatever it is they do is never good enough for themselves or their loved ones, and even then, they find it difficult to love for they can't share their true selves with people who, by being loved, will hold so much power over them. To let down their guard with someone who could hurt them so much is unthinkable.
One of my best friends worked at a big name Wall Street firm and nearly lost his mind doing so. Like someone else I know, he was positive that it was he was wanted because it was what he was groomed for both by himself and his education and his family and friends. Success was a matter of jumping into the pool and working hard. What he didn't bet on was how much of his soul he would have to sell to stomach what it was he was doing. I'm not saying what he was doing was illegal, but it was unethical. He found, like everyone else, the system was rigged to keep the brokers and the very rich rich at the expense of everyone else. The pressure he put on himself nearly killed him when he developed a very serious illness and was told he only had from a few hours to days to live. He got out right there and then and went on to become quite successful at another entrepreneurial business. It was not long after then he contacted me, after many years of deciding I was a loser for not following the same path, and decided I was one of the few real friends he had. He's much happier now, with a family, and despite some current financial difficulties due to the economic situation, he's back to being the guy I used to know and admired for always bringing out the best in me and others.
What made him different is that in the end, he never felt trapped. He always had true self-confidence, always knew what he was and wasn't good at, and was driven more by his own expectations than those of others. He also is, and always has been, an empathic person. He's extremely cautious about revealing himself to anyone he doesn't completely trust yet he sympathizes easily. At heart, he's a good and kind person even if he wasn't necessarily raised to be. He's one of the few people I know who is truly happy for the good fortune which comes to his friends when it seemingly drops out of the sky. He's not prone to envy or jealousy even if he is fiercely competitive so that if he loses something he doesn't blame someone else but rather finds a work around or reassesses his own performance to do better next time. That takes real character founded on self-confidence and wisdom. Most of the contemporaries he left behind don't have that and so continue on their path, becoming more bitter, self-destructive, emotionally inured, and most vociferous about the "right" and "good" person they've been in life because to acknowledge what they've been is far too difficult once the truth slowly dawns on them (if it ever does).
Of course some of these people are just plain sociopaths and never had a conscience to begin with so they just do what they do.
As regards other rich people, no I don't resent them even if I think someone doesn't deserve their wealth. I know a large number of rich people who aren't investment bankers at Wall Street firms and certainly plenty of them are good at earning money or keeping it, but they're usually strikingly ignorant about things outside of their area of expertise. Some are good people, some are not-so-good people, and many are so status-conscious that their lives revolve around doing what the people of their class do. Money doesn't make their lives any happier, but they've never lived without it so resort to doing anything to keep it. I feel sad for them in many ways.
Most of the really rich people I do know are classic old money. They are much freer and self-confident than their more nouveau peers because they've never had to impress anybody or live to anyone else's standards. Maybe they haven't had to work beyond managing their finances or, at least, trusting the right people to do so. Some even care about what they're invested in are ethical businesses. That's not a bad thing and I don't hold it against them if they're not aware enough to know. We all need to discover our own moral compass. They are far easier to deal with, more real, and frequently interesting people in their own right. I'm happy for them if they're happy, and sad for them if they're not. It's true it's easy to be a fuck-up when you have a lot of money but I find wealth is really no barrier when it comes to that and most have themselves sorted out by the time they're my age.
