Alex, one of the reasons I subscribe to your newsletter is because you seem genuinely rooted in good faith --- you seem to want to get to the bottom of what's going on with the intense polarization occuring in the US right right now, and are willing to take on a myriad of different perspectives to do so (as long as they too have something to offer in good faith). I really appreciate your compassionate approach to talking about this topic.
One thing this article got me thinking about as someone who went to private schools for the children of elites, is that I definitely felt a lot cultural pressure on me to grow up to be someone influential (which is an interesting definition of elite I am still chewing on). This pressure followed all the way into graduate school for public health and then into activism and organizing, where I ending up burning out. This isn't the whole story of what motivated me to spend a lot of my time in activism (I went through a lot of personal hardship that also motivated it), but this cultural pressure from growing up around elites definitely had an impact.
Something I realized after burning out, was that I am not good at being influential and I don't think I have any business trying to be. In fact I am kind of a nerd that just likes doing my nerdy shit and spending time with close friends and family. And so I just let the pressure to do "something" with my life drop. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in being engaged in the world, but rather instead focused on participating in things within my city, building a happy family, and doing my best within my specific line of work. At first I felt guilty about this, but now I'm much more content.
I've realized after moving away from the US, that the desire to just have kind of a mundane and locally-focused middle class life is so much more common here in Norway. There are much fewer rich people in Scandinavia, and most middle class people aren't trying as hard to become elites, they seem pretty content to remain where they are. So I am wondering if there is something more specific about the US vs other western countries, where there exists a stronger social pressure to seek status? I think economic insecurity and wealth disparity is probably driving most of it, but I am wondering if has something more specifically to do with the private school systems in the US and academic competition? Too much pressure on kids who are good at school to compete and "be someone" maybe? There aren't really as many elite primary schools or universities in Norway, most people just go to public school and then public university or trade school. Also there's not even that huge salary discrepancy between someone with a PhD and someone who graduated from trade school, so people seem less motivated by money and more motivated by whatever interests them.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting to hear your cross-Atlantic perspective. Turchin argues that social democracies and particularly the Nordic countries have a greater balance of power across business, labour and government and that leads to a more stable system - as a European it’s something I’m grateful for.
That's really interesting and I'll have to read the book. Maybe in a less stable society as you mention, there is a larger fear that if you don't have everything you will be left with nothing. While I am grateful for living in Europe too, there is a sense here in Scandinavia that things are starting to become less stable, and everyone keeps telling me here "we're just a few decades behind the US." Norwegians all seem to nervously be looking to the political chaos going on in the US as they see their fate tied up in it.
I was in Norway recently and talked to some people there who might have appeared to be 'elites' in the UK or US but it turned out they had 'normal' jobs. They confirmed what you are saying, that society is much more 'compressed' in terms of income and status (and is all the better for it, IMO).
This piece is both brilliant and courageous. It is consonant with lots of my thinking and doing over the last number of years.
I became a person of color at the age of 12. When my parents moved us from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts in order to join a still puertorican fundamentalist religious community.
Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X at the age of 15 “woke” me up to the discourse of race and gave me powerful language to contend with my experience.
This blend of racialized left ideology and my fundamentalist religious experience shaped my life and my career.
Until quite recently, I have been immersed in work as a facilitator in social movement spaces.
But growth, thought and spiritual development placed me in conflict with the “woke” “movement fundamentalism” of the space.
At the spiritual level I experience it as a pseudo-religious ideology that actually justifies and encourages resentment. Poison for the human soul.
I am not blind to economic AND racial injustice. I know them in my bones. But I could not be more clear that the elite approach to contend with these is not something that could possibly work. There is a sense of superiority at its very core.
An additional thing to note is the way in which too many of the still too few working class people of color that make it to and through university are actually initiated into the ways of the elite. We are the folks doing the dance of encouraging and manipulating social justice ideology “on behalf” of our people while also keeping our recently earned social status.
I often remind people I work with that my neighbors, in the poor and working class Black Boston neighborhood where I live, would look at me like an alien if I started talking about intersectionality instead of befriending them, talking about jobs, personal, even spiritual concerns, and social service needs.
Tuesday, my soon to be wife, and I, teach a class called “What Should White People Do?” Which is specifically designed as an alternative to the dominant discourse on DEI and Racial Justice.
The class is followed by an ongoing “Racial Justice Community of Practice” for people working in the field of philanthropy, a central tool for the social justice elite you describe here.
We will be bringing this piece you wrote into our next session.
This was beautiful to read. Just intellectual and poetic enough whilst remaining digestible. You put to words what I am unable to. Thank you for writing and exploring this societal complexity with humility.
As usual well done. However, since this is about the bigger picture, I would like to point out a critique that sits inside this well constructed analysis. If this essay is about elite capture of the left then you've hit the mark. However, if it is more broader than i think it misses a more in-depth analysis of how the right elite, as well as the working class cohorts play into this game. That is not to say you did not address right elites and it doesn't necessarily say that there has to be an equal distribution that is conveyed. Notwithstanding, i wonder how much we learn about this game without a deep assessment of this multipolar problem.
I think part of it is the overwhelming weight that is put on the social justice movement as an engine that is driving or exasperating inequality through their obvious faults. The analysis of these social problems in our polity is often constructed as a "working class" backlash to the flawed identity intersectional politics. Though it is quite apparent that this partly contributes to the illiberal environment we confront, it's hardly a stand alone or predominant driver. This group of elites is an easy target to pick off. However, i wonder if said analysis give too much credit to the left without similar deep dives of analysis.
What is often left off the table is an analysis of how working class politics play into this meta crisis. We make up reasons why they flea to a Trump or some other populist without examining their contribution and history as beneficiary or contributors to the meta crisis. We often make the working class persona into the ultimate victim ( ie, haven't received raise in 40 years or to seeing their jobs go away), which subsequently justifies their outrage. The working class leadership have faulted in their complicity with the said elites. The reality is that historically the working class (contributors, leaders, policymakers) have muddied the waters by advancing separatist policies in unionism, housing and politics. Today, their pension funds are managed by the elite with investments that are counter productive, sometime leading to offshoring. There needs to be more of an analysis of their origins and its relationship to elite capture.
Jul 6, 2023·edited Jul 6, 2023Liked by Alexander Beiner
Very interesting analysis Alexander. Quite thought provoking to take a zoomed out lens on the elite power games. Have you put much thought into the notion that social justice ideology is a form of post-Christian protestantism without any of the good stuff (i.e. forgiveness, love, God etc)? Tom Holland makes an interesting case at the end of his great book, Dominion, for example.
Really great essay. New to your work -- was sent your way by some of my own readers who said we had a lot of overlap. Turns out they're quite right: I argue something very similar in my upcoming book.
I think the only (very) minor disagreement with this otherwise profound analysis is regarding the origins of social justice identity politics / intersectionality. While it's become quite common to argue that there is a degree of "elite capture" of a lower-class liberation theory occurring, the initial theorists of intersectionality and social justice politics were themselves elite members of minority groups. That puts them much more in line with the other elites and the capitalist class than with the people their theories are supposed to help.
Thanks Rhyd - congrats on your upcoming book, looks great and I’m going to pre-order soon. Would love to hear more about your take on the origins of intersectionality - on first glance makes a lot of sense - thinking of Occupy and the progressive stack (would love to see a full history of that - sounds like your book will be a good port of call). Will send you a proper message when I’m back in a couple of weeks :)
Thanks! And yes, I cover a little about Occupy (for instance, a General Assembly that was shut down by someone bumped to the front of the speakers list through the progressive stack) and particularly the role its failure had in moving the left more to identity politics and away from broader solidarity around anti-capitalism.
Let me know if you'd like my publisher to send you a reviewer copy rather than pre-ordering it. :)
Alex, This article is one of your best and stimulators thought on many levels. The socio- economic problems facing the USA and similar western nations, have been festering since the 1980’s. On top of this we have the psycho- spiritual effects of an ideological system that raises individual material success and competition to a religion. Democratic decent citizenship with collective ideals has evaporated. Combine this with a psycho-spiritual thirst for meaning and purpose and you have a perfect storm for societal disintegration. Here in Australia wealth and income inequality is growing and ordinary blue collar workers are disillusioned and angry. Populists like Trump seem to be voicing their fears, concerns and prejudices. In tough times people look for available scapegoats to blame, as they are more easily identified than the root causes of their problems.
I particularly connected to the bit where you pointed out that it is often the same supremacist mindset that drives both bigotry and the shaming of earnestly unintentional expressions of ingrained bigotry.
I sometimes think of it as an expression of toxic masculinity, if you’re willing to entertain the western occult definition of “masculinity” as an active, analytical, aggressive force, while “femininity” is more of any given human’s innate receptive force. Meanwhile, “toxic” can be defined as a too-high dosage of a potentially helpful medicine.
Maybe this wont come across without the full context of the podcast intro I went into depth on it in (essay transcribed here: https://creekmasons.com/nodes-in-the-net/nitn-6/) but in a way it’s Terrance McKenna’s “dominator” energy to dunk on someone about a social faux pas.
Active, analytical energy can be useful, but too much, as when you’re shaming and ostracizing someone, potentially ruining their life over an honest slip, can be toxic. And we all have some masculine, just as we all have some femininity, in the archetypal sense; it doesn’t matter whether it’s a man doing the calling out.
ALL THAT SAID. There are certain contexts where one person’s trauma and oppression makes them a main character whose bullies I shouldn’t defend. If that traumatized person feels called to air their hostility in a vent of righteous anger, that’s their prerogative, and the “elite-aspirant” that I am (privileged in SO many contexts), I know I shouldn’t police those sincere tones. Part of the problem of being on the internet is that I’m broadcasting to people who are actively experiencing trauma and oppression just as much as I am to whoever might benefit from this balanced perspective.
Wow what a long comment!
Final thoughts.
What I really liked about your article was its nebulous political affiliation. You criticized both sides of the culture war adeptly, without too much minimizing of either side’s flaws. But because context isn’t absolute, as you pointed out, some people will be on the wrong wavelength to vibe with your nuance. How do you feel about that?
I think it is key not to take the bait of needing to be liked or approved of. Fine to want it at least to the degree required to be able to communicate successfully, to have some common ground, but not to give the shop away.
Hello Ali- I am looking forward to taking the non- ordinary course. I am already signed up. I am planning on doing a 6 rounds of ketamine therapy protocol and am sensing that waiting until after the course might be the most useful. Any thoughts on this?
That's what I figured- thank you for confirming. I am really looking forward to your course and your book is on the way. I'll make sure that I need that too before I do it.
Thank you for your work Alex! Love your breadth of work, drawing from multiple fields, especially cliodynamics which deserves more attention than it receives!
I come at it from a quantitative direction, emulated Turchin's earlier Ages of Discord, which is on the same topic. My biggest difference with Turchin is he thinks elites "volunteered" to resolve the previous episode of immiseration and polarization. I propose that these eras can end in either political crisis (e.g. civil war) or in financial/economic crisis. The last cycle resolution came in response to the stock market crash (it fell 85%) and Depression. I have several posts on exactly how this problem was resolved last time without any political strife.
This time we got out crash in 2008, and the elites handled it very well for themselves. SInce then they have taken pains to prevent any sort of economic crash forcing them to resolve the problem They seem pretty blase about the threat of Civil War, that when I started thinking about this stuff in 2000 seemed fantastical. And yet, here we are. It is getting a bit scary.
I am really happy I discovered your writing and conversations today! In response to some of the comments here, I think that as long as people primarily devote themselves to status seeking, assessments, comparisons and resentments, we aren’t going to find our way out of what amounts to a closed and very dangerous trap. So much of 20th century sociology and secular psychology, as in Alfred Adler, did see social status as the most important goal, to be achieved either by building your own up or tearing others’ down. I don’t feel that engaging in this “game” is wholly good and constructive even at the lower status end of the scale, even though it is easy to justify and even laud it here. There are other values, truths and purposes which make for happiness and meaning.
I think this problem would largely sort itself out if we had a truly logical benevolent reset of the global financial system.. and I'm grateful it looks like it's coming.
"Agenda47: A New Quantum Leap to Revolutionize the American Standard of Living"
Alex, one of the reasons I subscribe to your newsletter is because you seem genuinely rooted in good faith --- you seem to want to get to the bottom of what's going on with the intense polarization occuring in the US right right now, and are willing to take on a myriad of different perspectives to do so (as long as they too have something to offer in good faith). I really appreciate your compassionate approach to talking about this topic.
One thing this article got me thinking about as someone who went to private schools for the children of elites, is that I definitely felt a lot cultural pressure on me to grow up to be someone influential (which is an interesting definition of elite I am still chewing on). This pressure followed all the way into graduate school for public health and then into activism and organizing, where I ending up burning out. This isn't the whole story of what motivated me to spend a lot of my time in activism (I went through a lot of personal hardship that also motivated it), but this cultural pressure from growing up around elites definitely had an impact.
Something I realized after burning out, was that I am not good at being influential and I don't think I have any business trying to be. In fact I am kind of a nerd that just likes doing my nerdy shit and spending time with close friends and family. And so I just let the pressure to do "something" with my life drop. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in being engaged in the world, but rather instead focused on participating in things within my city, building a happy family, and doing my best within my specific line of work. At first I felt guilty about this, but now I'm much more content.
I've realized after moving away from the US, that the desire to just have kind of a mundane and locally-focused middle class life is so much more common here in Norway. There are much fewer rich people in Scandinavia, and most middle class people aren't trying as hard to become elites, they seem pretty content to remain where they are. So I am wondering if there is something more specific about the US vs other western countries, where there exists a stronger social pressure to seek status? I think economic insecurity and wealth disparity is probably driving most of it, but I am wondering if has something more specifically to do with the private school systems in the US and academic competition? Too much pressure on kids who are good at school to compete and "be someone" maybe? There aren't really as many elite primary schools or universities in Norway, most people just go to public school and then public university or trade school. Also there's not even that huge salary discrepancy between someone with a PhD and someone who graduated from trade school, so people seem less motivated by money and more motivated by whatever interests them.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting to hear your cross-Atlantic perspective. Turchin argues that social democracies and particularly the Nordic countries have a greater balance of power across business, labour and government and that leads to a more stable system - as a European it’s something I’m grateful for.
That's really interesting and I'll have to read the book. Maybe in a less stable society as you mention, there is a larger fear that if you don't have everything you will be left with nothing. While I am grateful for living in Europe too, there is a sense here in Scandinavia that things are starting to become less stable, and everyone keeps telling me here "we're just a few decades behind the US." Norwegians all seem to nervously be looking to the political chaos going on in the US as they see their fate tied up in it.
I was in Norway recently and talked to some people there who might have appeared to be 'elites' in the UK or US but it turned out they had 'normal' jobs. They confirmed what you are saying, that society is much more 'compressed' in terms of income and status (and is all the better for it, IMO).
This piece is both brilliant and courageous. It is consonant with lots of my thinking and doing over the last number of years.
I became a person of color at the age of 12. When my parents moved us from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts in order to join a still puertorican fundamentalist religious community.
Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X at the age of 15 “woke” me up to the discourse of race and gave me powerful language to contend with my experience.
This blend of racialized left ideology and my fundamentalist religious experience shaped my life and my career.
Until quite recently, I have been immersed in work as a facilitator in social movement spaces.
But growth, thought and spiritual development placed me in conflict with the “woke” “movement fundamentalism” of the space.
At the spiritual level I experience it as a pseudo-religious ideology that actually justifies and encourages resentment. Poison for the human soul.
I am not blind to economic AND racial injustice. I know them in my bones. But I could not be more clear that the elite approach to contend with these is not something that could possibly work. There is a sense of superiority at its very core.
An additional thing to note is the way in which too many of the still too few working class people of color that make it to and through university are actually initiated into the ways of the elite. We are the folks doing the dance of encouraging and manipulating social justice ideology “on behalf” of our people while also keeping our recently earned social status.
I often remind people I work with that my neighbors, in the poor and working class Black Boston neighborhood where I live, would look at me like an alien if I started talking about intersectionality instead of befriending them, talking about jobs, personal, even spiritual concerns, and social service needs.
Tuesday, my soon to be wife, and I, teach a class called “What Should White People Do?” Which is specifically designed as an alternative to the dominant discourse on DEI and Racial Justice.
The class is followed by an ongoing “Racial Justice Community of Practice” for people working in the field of philanthropy, a central tool for the social justice elite you describe here.
We will be bringing this piece you wrote into our next session.
Deeply grateful for what you are up to!
gibranrivera.com
Beautifully expressed as always Gibrán - looking forward to discussing on the next community call 🙂
This was beautiful to read. Just intellectual and poetic enough whilst remaining digestible. You put to words what I am unable to. Thank you for writing and exploring this societal complexity with humility.
Thank you :)
Alexander,
As usual well done. However, since this is about the bigger picture, I would like to point out a critique that sits inside this well constructed analysis. If this essay is about elite capture of the left then you've hit the mark. However, if it is more broader than i think it misses a more in-depth analysis of how the right elite, as well as the working class cohorts play into this game. That is not to say you did not address right elites and it doesn't necessarily say that there has to be an equal distribution that is conveyed. Notwithstanding, i wonder how much we learn about this game without a deep assessment of this multipolar problem.
I think part of it is the overwhelming weight that is put on the social justice movement as an engine that is driving or exasperating inequality through their obvious faults. The analysis of these social problems in our polity is often constructed as a "working class" backlash to the flawed identity intersectional politics. Though it is quite apparent that this partly contributes to the illiberal environment we confront, it's hardly a stand alone or predominant driver. This group of elites is an easy target to pick off. However, i wonder if said analysis give too much credit to the left without similar deep dives of analysis.
What is often left off the table is an analysis of how working class politics play into this meta crisis. We make up reasons why they flea to a Trump or some other populist without examining their contribution and history as beneficiary or contributors to the meta crisis. We often make the working class persona into the ultimate victim ( ie, haven't received raise in 40 years or to seeing their jobs go away), which subsequently justifies their outrage. The working class leadership have faulted in their complicity with the said elites. The reality is that historically the working class (contributors, leaders, policymakers) have muddied the waters by advancing separatist policies in unionism, housing and politics. Today, their pension funds are managed by the elite with investments that are counter productive, sometime leading to offshoring. There needs to be more of an analysis of their origins and its relationship to elite capture.
So many good points here - thank you for these thoughts. I’m taking a day off today but will answer properly after the weekend!
Look forward thank you Alex
Very interesting analysis Alexander. Quite thought provoking to take a zoomed out lens on the elite power games. Have you put much thought into the notion that social justice ideology is a form of post-Christian protestantism without any of the good stuff (i.e. forgiveness, love, God etc)? Tom Holland makes an interesting case at the end of his great book, Dominion, for example.
Alexander, if you have not already done so, in regards to your work with psychedelics, I suggest you look into the work that German philosopher Thomas Metzinger has been doing and writing on this topic. https://www.matthewgeleta.com/p/thomas-metzinger-neuroethics-psychedelics
Thanks Jim - I’m aware of Metzinger and not sure he’s really into sociology but happy to check out that interview
Really great essay. New to your work -- was sent your way by some of my own readers who said we had a lot of overlap. Turns out they're quite right: I argue something very similar in my upcoming book.
I think the only (very) minor disagreement with this otherwise profound analysis is regarding the origins of social justice identity politics / intersectionality. While it's become quite common to argue that there is a degree of "elite capture" of a lower-class liberation theory occurring, the initial theorists of intersectionality and social justice politics were themselves elite members of minority groups. That puts them much more in line with the other elites and the capitalist class than with the people their theories are supposed to help.
Thanks Rhyd - congrats on your upcoming book, looks great and I’m going to pre-order soon. Would love to hear more about your take on the origins of intersectionality - on first glance makes a lot of sense - thinking of Occupy and the progressive stack (would love to see a full history of that - sounds like your book will be a good port of call). Will send you a proper message when I’m back in a couple of weeks :)
Thanks! And yes, I cover a little about Occupy (for instance, a General Assembly that was shut down by someone bumped to the front of the speakers list through the progressive stack) and particularly the role its failure had in moving the left more to identity politics and away from broader solidarity around anti-capitalism.
Let me know if you'd like my publisher to send you a reviewer copy rather than pre-ordering it. :)
Alex, This article is one of your best and stimulators thought on many levels. The socio- economic problems facing the USA and similar western nations, have been festering since the 1980’s. On top of this we have the psycho- spiritual effects of an ideological system that raises individual material success and competition to a religion. Democratic decent citizenship with collective ideals has evaporated. Combine this with a psycho-spiritual thirst for meaning and purpose and you have a perfect storm for societal disintegration. Here in Australia wealth and income inequality is growing and ordinary blue collar workers are disillusioned and angry. Populists like Trump seem to be voicing their fears, concerns and prejudices. In tough times people look for available scapegoats to blame, as they are more easily identified than the root causes of their problems.
Nice work bringing all these sources together!
I particularly connected to the bit where you pointed out that it is often the same supremacist mindset that drives both bigotry and the shaming of earnestly unintentional expressions of ingrained bigotry.
I sometimes think of it as an expression of toxic masculinity, if you’re willing to entertain the western occult definition of “masculinity” as an active, analytical, aggressive force, while “femininity” is more of any given human’s innate receptive force. Meanwhile, “toxic” can be defined as a too-high dosage of a potentially helpful medicine.
Maybe this wont come across without the full context of the podcast intro I went into depth on it in (essay transcribed here: https://creekmasons.com/nodes-in-the-net/nitn-6/) but in a way it’s Terrance McKenna’s “dominator” energy to dunk on someone about a social faux pas.
Active, analytical energy can be useful, but too much, as when you’re shaming and ostracizing someone, potentially ruining their life over an honest slip, can be toxic. And we all have some masculine, just as we all have some femininity, in the archetypal sense; it doesn’t matter whether it’s a man doing the calling out.
ALL THAT SAID. There are certain contexts where one person’s trauma and oppression makes them a main character whose bullies I shouldn’t defend. If that traumatized person feels called to air their hostility in a vent of righteous anger, that’s their prerogative, and the “elite-aspirant” that I am (privileged in SO many contexts), I know I shouldn’t police those sincere tones. Part of the problem of being on the internet is that I’m broadcasting to people who are actively experiencing trauma and oppression just as much as I am to whoever might benefit from this balanced perspective.
Wow what a long comment!
Final thoughts.
What I really liked about your article was its nebulous political affiliation. You criticized both sides of the culture war adeptly, without too much minimizing of either side’s flaws. But because context isn’t absolute, as you pointed out, some people will be on the wrong wavelength to vibe with your nuance. How do you feel about that?
I think it is key not to take the bait of needing to be liked or approved of. Fine to want it at least to the degree required to be able to communicate successfully, to have some common ground, but not to give the shop away.
Hello Ali- I am looking forward to taking the non- ordinary course. I am already signed up. I am planning on doing a 6 rounds of ketamine therapy protocol and am sensing that waiting until after the course might be the most useful. Any thoughts on this?
Hi Heidi! If you’re able to wait then that could be good as you’ll have more skills to navigate the experiences after the course :)
That's what I figured- thank you for confirming. I am really looking forward to your course and your book is on the way. I'll make sure that I need that too before I do it.
Haven’t read all the way through yet but I believe you have the Somewheres and Anywheres turned around.
Oh actually I noticed it in the email version but it appears to be correct here.
I found this article uplifting and moving. Thank You
Thank you for your work Alex! Love your breadth of work, drawing from multiple fields, especially cliodynamics which deserves more attention than it receives!
You might find my review of End Times useful.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-critical-review-of-end-times-by
I come at it from a quantitative direction, emulated Turchin's earlier Ages of Discord, which is on the same topic. My biggest difference with Turchin is he thinks elites "volunteered" to resolve the previous episode of immiseration and polarization. I propose that these eras can end in either political crisis (e.g. civil war) or in financial/economic crisis. The last cycle resolution came in response to the stock market crash (it fell 85%) and Depression. I have several posts on exactly how this problem was resolved last time without any political strife.
This time we got out crash in 2008, and the elites handled it very well for themselves. SInce then they have taken pains to prevent any sort of economic crash forcing them to resolve the problem They seem pretty blase about the threat of Civil War, that when I started thinking about this stuff in 2000 seemed fantastical. And yet, here we are. It is getting a bit scary.
I am really happy I discovered your writing and conversations today! In response to some of the comments here, I think that as long as people primarily devote themselves to status seeking, assessments, comparisons and resentments, we aren’t going to find our way out of what amounts to a closed and very dangerous trap. So much of 20th century sociology and secular psychology, as in Alfred Adler, did see social status as the most important goal, to be achieved either by building your own up or tearing others’ down. I don’t feel that engaging in this “game” is wholly good and constructive even at the lower status end of the scale, even though it is easy to justify and even laud it here. There are other values, truths and purposes which make for happiness and meaning.
I think this problem would largely sort itself out if we had a truly logical benevolent reset of the global financial system.. and I'm grateful it looks like it's coming.
"Agenda47: A New Quantum Leap to Revolutionize the American Standard of Living"
https://rumble.com/v2bksa4-agenda47-a-new-quantum-leap-to-revolutionize-the-american-standard-of-livin.html
"In preparation for the Global Currency Reset and arrival of the Quantum Financial System currently running parallel.."
https://occ.gov/search.html?q=quantum%20financial%20system#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=quantum%20financial%20system&gsc.page=1