When I was a child I remember people who had lots of money!
A doctor for example, would have a big house in a nice street with big trees. The house would have a small garden in front, and the doctor would own a medium four door sedan just one or two years old! Even more, he would have a lady who would go every day to his house to clean, cook and do the laundry. He and his family would have a very comfortable life, and his kids would have new toys every Christmas! They would be considered people with lots of money. That doctor would be the example to follow to reach the highest levels a human being could aspire to when it came to money.
Nowadays it seems something like that would be just a starting point!
Today people talk about having millions to be considered wealthy. It becomes necessary to own houses the size of a fancy hotel! It can’t be just one, medium four doors sedan which is one or two years old; it has to be several brand new exotic cars, including big sport utilities, convertibles and super cars! There should be vacation homes, also the size of a fancy hotel, located in the mountains or some exotic beach with crystal clear waters. There should be a yacht and a private jet. And the kids should have enough money to blow up themselves with very expensive drugs, while spending lot of money in very expensive clothes, jewelry and exotic, fancy gifts for their friends. Being wealthy these days is about spending money like if money was coming out of trend!
Before, we knew we had to get an education and work hard for several years to reach that level of comfort, like the doctor we knew. It was an attainable goal we could pursue. We knew then we could reach the top if we persevere long enough. It wasn’t easy and very few would reach the goal, mostly for the lack of perseverance. But we knew, if we applied ourselves strong and long enough, we would reach the goal.
Today? Good luck!
Modern society has raised the bars on what suppose to be an ideal and successful, wealthy life. No longer is a matter of following a clear, established path as it used to be. Instead, it comes now to create a specific, one time path. It depends more on personal creativity and perseverance to reach the new standards of success. The road to the top is now a lot longer than what it was before.
But the worst problem is that, by being so high the standard of success, and by not existing clear paths to follow in order to reach those standards, the characteristics a person should have in order to be able to jump from the common level to the actual high levels become too many. People have to know how to “fly”! No paths, no established length of the road to reach destination, with identifiable barriers to overcome in the process. Today it is all mystery. Before there was the low level, the high levels and a clear road to travel. Today there is the low level, the highest levels, and nothing in between!
With this, what could be seen before as a matter of perseverance, now it has become a matter of having extreme capabilities…or just good luck! People have to go blindly in pursue of attaining the highest levels, not knowing what road, what barriers, for how long, and not even knowing if they are in the right road, or just wasting their time! In many ways it has become a matter of having good luck!
No wonder why stress is a lot more common than fresh air!!
And then there is the other problem. In order for the highest levels to exist, people cannot longer rely on their hard work to make the amounts of money required to be part of the high class. To make millions, unless you get paid several thousand dollars per hour working hired in a company, you have to have a business. In a society that has already covered all and every needs people may have, the only way to make money in big numbers, is to have business in providing for needs people don’t have. So artificial needs are created. And even worst, in order to have repeated business, addictions have been artificially created!
This means, rather than having a symbiosis between the high and common levels as it used to be in the past, where both levels provided to each other in order to profit from the other, and a relationship existed between the two, now the highest level enslaves the common level, to the point of destroying it, in order to profit at the amounts that now are required to sustain such highest levels, and no relationship exists between the two, other than Master and Slave, Hunter and Prey, and even Owner and Property! Symbiosis has been changed for Antibiosis!
It becomes even funny to see how the human instincts of curiosity, desire of possession, desire of power, and the need for self identification, have taken humanity from a level of cooperation for growth, to a level of internal conflict and self consumption.
Interesting processes to observe and analyze, don’t you think?
Raul
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