I recently came across a November 2012 opinion piece published in Business Insider and titled “A Message From Us Rich Plutocrats To All You Little People” by American entrepreneur and author, Nick Hanauer.
At first I thought Hanauer was serious, but it then dawned on me that it must be satire since his past published works would suggest that Hanauer is not a plutocrat apologist.
It turns out that his piece was written in response to an excerpt from Chrystia Freeland’s book “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else” that is a result of her decades-long research into the trend of the 0.1% of the world’s most wealthy individuals. Apparently, it’s not about the “1%” anymore since even the majority of that elite club are seeing their own fortunes eclipsed by those of the super-rich. (Will we next see these “unfortunate” millionaires start their own movement called “We Are The 99.9%“?)
Obviously, you know things are bad when income inequality has reached such an absurd level of imbalance.
While reading that excerpt from Freeland’s book, I came across this startling passage: “For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire self-regard, and that self-regard — especially when compounded by their isolation among likeminded peers — can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others.”
My first reaction was one of sadness. Once again, here is evidence that money — in the end — does nothing but bring misery and isolation to humankind. How can the pursuit of wealth be worth that?
Based on my reading of Hanauer’s satirical take on the issue where he jokingly states that “Our manhood is at stake“, it struck me that the answer may come down to the male “id”, that part of a man’s “unreconstructed animal nature” where psychodynamic “conflicts are acute in the male for whom dominance and identity are preoccupying concerns.”
In other words, our centuries-old obsession with money may actually be tied to the male drive for dominance and power.
Does this mean that the solution to Humanity’s relentless pursuit of wealth accumulation would be to “lobotomize” that part of masculine nature? It would certainly be the quick way, but we should be evolving as a species and making conscious decisions about why giving up money would be in the best interest of us all.
