Edition
14
No wonder we all grow up totally confused by life and seek some
answers for the many decades. As a teenager you’re told:
life is short – live it up. But at your deathbed
it’s whispered: he lived a long life. Which
is it, or was it?
A squeaking wheel gets
the grease. But then there’s: a spouting whale gets
the harpoon, and, a sticking-up nail gets pounded down.
Which is it?
My confusion continues when
I hear of a major-league ballplayer getting only three million
dollars a year for the next three years and he’s upset about
it. But, a mother of three is told she’s getting a whopping
raise of a dollar an hour, and a teacher has to walk out in strike
to get a puny salary increase. I can answer this one, though:
it’s marketing, pure and simple. The mother and teacher
do not bring millions of dollars to their employers, hence are
not as valuable as the ballplayer.
There are now classes for young entrepreneurs
to help deal with the guilt they suffer from making horrendous
amounts of money from some small contribution to technology.
Okay, let’s establish a charity for single mothers and teachers
with donations coming strictly from those angst-driven techies.
That would solve that problem.
David Brooks wrote some answers in his
new book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They
Got There. He writes of “status inversion,” whereby
you ascend in estimation (your peers’ and your own) by descending
in lifestyle, dress and manners, i.e. wearing faded blue jeans
pricier than unfaded, newer ones. Or sipping designer water
that costs more than gasoline as they drive thirsty sport utility
vehicles. He calls this the melding of the bohemian and
the bourgeois: Bobos. In an United States swimming
in discretionary income, consumption is an assertion of Bobo
cultural values. All this may be just fine as a discussion
viewpoint for those sipping those waters or driving those cars,
but how does it play in the real world of the 24/7 people who
make up the huge majority of us?
Coming soon to a computer near
you: More questions into the absurdity of American Life.
