I have much to get off my chest

It’s no secret that I’m extremely classist, and bitter, and have violent fantasies of hurting rich kids. I’ve even told my parents that I resent the circumstances. I don’t resent them, I just resent not having a silver spoon, so to speak. To give an example of my deep hatred: do you remember that scene from Scarface? The one where Tony Montana is supposed to blow up a car, but there is a kid in the car, and Tony doesn’t go through with it. I would totally have done it, and enjoyed the bourgeois kids demise. I think I’ll always be burdened with this massive chip on my shoulder. You can do everything right in life, and still not get ahead. It seems you have to win the birth lottery to get anywhere. I’ll probably never lose this hatred, and whether it be whining on the internet, or actually taking action and joining a revolutionary mob with a guillotine. I’ll also never lose my desire to have money and power, but not necessarily fame. The thought that there are people out there that just get handed the keys to the kingdom is beyond revolting, and infuriating. In short, I’m mad that I wasn’t born rich, and I want those that were to be punished dearly for it. As for my future, I envision that I’ll be dead on the street, or a big success. There is no middle ground. Before anyone says get help, remember, help costs money, and I’m not rolling in the dough. Mental healthcare in this country was gutted thanks to Ronald Reagan. I consider republicans to be my natural enemy. They rig the game to keep me down. I have to vent like this to keep myself from exploding.

Rich people are not special. Rich people are full of crap and are slowly decaying into nothingness. It all goes back to SPONCH. I want you to remember the acronym SPONCH. That stands for Sulfur, Phosphorus, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Hydrogen. These are the elements life needs and is made of and are some of the most abundant elements in the universe. Nobody is made of special stuff. Take celebrities for instance: some people are all about the separation of performer and fan, but they are all equally worthless in a cosmic sense. I ask, what makes them special? Who do they think they are? Answer: nothing. Nothing but mere cosmic flotsam comprised of common elements from exploded star guts. Regardless of their ability to make pleasant sounds with their vocal cords, or put spherical objects through hoops and goals, it is all irrelevant. Don’t go gaga over famous walking, decaying matter in a universe of increasing entropy, join hands and realize we’re all screwed regardless of what we do. This is why I despise cops and soldiers so much. They act as tribal border guards, protecting and enforcing the will of these gilded nothings. Worthless, disposable dogs just following ZE ORDERS! I don’t know who I hate more, the rich, or their lap dogs. Either way, humanity needs to do better, or it will be blown out like a candle in a maelstrom against a backdrop of forever darkness.

I guess I’m rather nihilistic at the moment. Basically, screw all institutions that exist to divide and conquer. I believe celebrities exist only to control the minds of the people and polarize them. This is why I hate them. That, and the fact that they are nothing special, as I spelled out, and that they have money and power. Mere political propaganda puppets. Screw all that worship them and screw all that serve and protect them, as well as the politicians.

So, how are you doing this afternoon?

But when YOU’RE rich, you’ll be DIFFERENT, right…

Not bad, thanks for asking.

So, how do you feel about Taylor Swift? :face_with_peeking_eye:

You don’t say…

In other words, you hate a certain class of people because of the circumstances they were born into.

I’m sure there are plenty of Neo-Nazis you’d fit in with just fine.

Yet he wishes to become rich and thus his children, if any, will be born into similar circumstances.

I don’t have any actual dispute with any of the factual statements you made - I’d only observe that this is the way it’s been throughout most of human history. A tiny percentage are born into wealth and power (or in the VERY ancient past were just born a little bigger/stronger/smarter) and use that unearned advantage to consolidate and accumulate more wealth and power. The only difference is that now, thanks to mass media, travel, and communications technology, those of us without are more aware of both the disparity and the unfairness. In the middle ages sure, maybe you were aware that there was a King living in unimaginable luxury somewhere, but he was put there by God, right? And it’s not like you ever saw the guy. Everyone you encountered was roughly in the same boat, scratching in the dirt to grow a living.

All of this is to say that things aren’t any worse now than they’ve pretty much always been, and for most of us - even me, living paycheck-to-paycheck and just scraping by - our material circumstances are vastly better than the peasant class of our ancestors.

Lighten up, Francis.

I belive the tl:dr is: waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.

I’ll add, I grew up in a bad household (I had a good amount of abuse as a kid and experienced some things that still have me a bit screwed up). We had times where my upbringing was rough. There was a time when we had no money for Christmas presents and our gifts were church donations. I had zero support from my family when I graduated high school, I did my best to put myself through college based on just what I made working retail, but eventually had to drop out. I spent a brief time homeless. I got into the career I got into based solely on determination and refusing to give up. I’m doing pretty well for myself, but still not rich, and it’s all from pulling myself up from my bootstraps.

At no point did I ever hate anyone who had it easier than me. My life has sucked many times, and who knows, if circumstances turn out poorly it could happen to me again. “There but for the Grace of God” and all that. How miserable would I be if I wasted any thought and energy to hating people just because they didn’t have to go through what I did? That’s pathetic.

As much as you hate people in power, your biggest enemy sounds like yourself.

Rather than snipe at you @cjackson, I rather say “Get help.”

You’re angry (probably with cause), and frustrated (again), and feel destruction is a proper solution (dangerous).

If typing to us internet randos helps, great. But it sounds like you’re on the verge of doing something destructive to self and/or others. Sure, our systems are badly damaged, verging on broken, but I’d make a point of finding something to do, from something as simple as going for a walk/run until tired, to building a model or something else requiring focus, or just finding someone IRL to talk to.

I, and others on the board, have had destructive moments, and often it’ll just spiral into itself in a feedback cycle, which isn’t going to end well for anyone.

So, again, with no ill intent: “Get help.”

Old-fashioned moralists might say that you were suffering from “envy”, that is to say “wounded pride”. Sort of like how even more than they hate Stacy, incels greatest hate is reserved for Chad: that lucky bastard arrogant Alpha who is effortlessly attractive to women.

I wouldn’t reject the sudden influx of a few hundred billion dollars, but I have zero envy for the people born to it. cjackson, I’m not quite in a position to tell you you’re operating from a factually wrong understanding — because I’ve never been rich either, just upper middle class for most of my lifetime — but I do think there are things about the lives of the kids born to filthy rich parents that you just fundamentally don’t get.

Some basics, if you’re willing to consider them:

Your parents will dangle the probability of you inheriting all that financial power. They will convey to you that it will be yours if you fall in line with their edicts and expectations. The parents of poor kids have nowhere near that kind of leverage. Maybe you think you’d tell them to blow it out their asses, you’ll either inherit or you won’t but you won’t lose any sleep over it. Think so?

You will enter early adulthood without a single marketable skill. You will never have learned, your parents never anticipating any legitimate reason you’d ever have to make use thereof. All your paid positions will be things they arranged through their network of contacts. Maybe you think that once you saw the setup, you’d grab any job you could get and even if it took several iterations, you’d learn to wait tables or assemble clock parts or mow people’s yards or empty garbage cans or whatever, just for the sake of some freaking independence? Think so?

You will, by that point, have acquired a huge array of behavioral nuances. Any potential employer at Shell gas station or North American Van Lines or Kelly Temps or MacDonald’s will interpret them to mean you have an attitude problem, that you are lazy, and you are utterly unconcerned with the quality of the work you do. They mostly won’t hire you and if they do they mostly won’t keep you on. You’ll be as poorly suited for working there as the immigrant kid with the impoverished parents is for working in your Dad’s investment bank’s portfolio prospectus reviewing team.

But let’s say you manage to beat the odds and hold down a job at Wendy’s for over a month. Your mom will buy that Wendy’s, maybe not in person and directly, but in some meaningful sense it will come under her purview, and you will be transmoted to the sidelines of what you got hired to do, instead sent to managerial training where you’ll be put under the wing of someone with a set of instructions about what the acceptable shapes of your future happen to be.

Starting around the age of eight or so, you’re going to find it really hard to be sure that anybody, anywhere, actually likes you as opposed to seeing you as a resource. Someone to befriend because of what you can do for them, now or someday. It may make you cynical or it may make you an anguished desperately lonely person. You will often wish you’d had the good fortune to be born an orphan or something. You’ll often contemplate killing your parents.

You won’t inherit a few hundred billion on your 21st birthday. A trust fund will be available to you with rather narrow restrictions on how much you can take out. And they’ll know every time you do. You’ll come into your full fortune in your 40s or 50s if they approve of you, otherwise you’re gonna end up feeling a lot like the current King of England. Waiting until you’re an old man yourself for your folks to finally die and let you play with the shiny buttons.

That’s just the basics. No, I don’t envy the little bastards, I really don’t.

I’d love to have real power, lest I leave you thinking otherwise. The power to actually change the shape of the world? I could tolerate a lot of awful things to have that. But those rich folks, they don’t have that. Imagine that what you most wish to do is end inequality. The power they have won’t enable them to do that.

They’re as much a product of how our social structure operates as anyone else, just as acted upon, just as completely puppets to its deterministic qualities. Yes there are wide range of things they have the power to do that you don’t and probably never will. But they are nevertheless rather narrowly defined by the parameters of how the system works.

I just saw a glittering but cheap-looking lure go zipping by in the water by my boat. You?

Well, life is a shit sandwich. But I’m doing fine. While not ‘rich’ I don’t need to worry about money. But I always have more on my plate that I can seem to handle. But handle it I do. Always have, somehow.

Cousin 100 miles away is dying of cancer. A very good friend. I can help, but I also need to be home. I need two of me.

Was 5 degrees f today, we are getting low on propane for heat. Propane company that has been delivering for 20 years now says they won’t deliver if there is snow on the ground. Ummm… That would be everyone in this entire valley. They’re nuts. So I drive 100 miles home to plow for them, again. Shit yeah the road is still snow packed, IT’S THAT WAY 6 MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR. They apparently have a bunch of new drivers.

I have our heat turned down to 60 degrees, trying it conserve, but we can manage that.

Haven’t seen my Wife in 5 days. I’ve been taking care of terminally ill cousin. But my Wife will be home in 3 hours. We will probably play chess or cribbage.

To the OP - “How am I doing?” Kinda a crappy week. But will power through it. It’s what you do.

For @cjackson, did you ever get your 4K television? Or is that the reason for this ranting?

(And for the record, I have a 4K TCL that I got on a Black Friday sale from Walmart, I love it.)

Well, we’re “rich.” Net worth in the mid single millions. Mid-fifties. I’m arthritic and losing most of my old vocations and can’t work construction any more unless I want to supervise REALLY rich folks’ homes at Big Sky. My wife has MS. Neither of us were wealthy as kids, and both of us deal with depression. Now, dealing with all that with money is better (by far) than not, but given the choice I’d swap some things around. I’ll give you a million $$$ if you can give me less pain.

You’re not wrong. Yesterday I got so mad at someone on the internet I felt homicidal.

I’d probably be a dictator.