No, really like. The thing that was probably like. THE BIG radicalizing moment from "I don't like it at all but what are we gonna do, tell people how to spend their money, they worked for it", before I even realized that no one "works for" even a single billion, before all of that fell into place, the thing is that they're so fucking unhappy. Like. They're miserable! They're historically miserable, the ultra-rich! Even a lot of the comic-book fictional ones are miserable! They are not happy people and you'd think. You'd think that having more money than Jesus Christ's Vampire Sister could spend in her younger brother's lifetime would free you up to have hobbies. Shower theaters in grants to put on opulent productions tailored to your tastes. Singlehandedly set up fandom conventions for your personal interests. Go to a movie every night and eat at a different restaurant just because. Take up Warhammer without worrying about the cost of having THE BEST battle setup in your basement. Hell, indulge in my personal dream of having a fully 3D-modeled megadungeon and loot for your personal fantasy RPG campaign and provide all your players with lovingly detailed miniatures. Fund a season of Dimension20 laser-targeted at your interests. Find a fanfic author and say "for the next 3 years, make sure I have a stream of my special interest characters". Joyously indulge in your favorite activities. Learn to paint. Meet people into your kinks, I don't know, ANYTHING. I'm not even talking about "oh, fund 100,000 peoples' college tuition and buy up 300,000 more peoples' student debt per year just to cancel", this is just... personal happiness. They're completely joyless. Utterly miserable people.
Instead the only time I've seen a billionaire remotely happy, on a deep level, more than just a little "haha, ok" smile, is when Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a fistfight and Zuckerberg fuckin, he came to life, it was like someone lit a spark in him, for a brief moment it was "oh my god I'm not alone, someone cares" and just
how terrible is that? How awful, that you're on top of the world, and you cannot be happy? You have everything, you want for nothing, we are literally built for pleasure and you can't find it with everything at your disposal?
This isn't some pseudo-mystic connection to "oh, but suffering is important, suffering is what lets us be human, remove suffering and we are no longer human" or any bullshit like that; my mysticism has a place for suffering but not like that. This is just like.
Realizing that they can't even be happy it's like, where did your soul go? What is the point of your life? Why do you live like this? HOW can you live like this? I may struggle for brief moments of happiness but I have them, how can you have less happiness than I do when you have more of everything else? How have you mutilated your essential humanity like this, to the point where you're unrecognizable to me, where if I look into your eyes I don't know what I'd see looking back at me?
Yeah anyway that was one of the big radicalization moments for me, and the rest toppled from there.
The human brain isn't wired to comprehend objectively how good your life is compared to everyone in the world.
Your emotions are determined by a baseline. Whatever is normal is your neutral. You feel good and happy when things are better than your neutral. You feel sad and bad when things are worse than your neutral. You can only experience your emotions relative to your own baseline. You cannot experience joy relative to someone else's baseline.
Yes, we all know that in many parts of the world there are many people who don't have consistent access to toilets. Including in very developed countries like India or the US. But we don't feel absolute joy, delight, relief, and comfort every time we use the toilet in our homes. Because it's our baseline.
We also all know that there are rich people who get very peeved when they have to deal with flying coach like the rest of us and complain that it's crowded and loud and worse. But we're all used to flying coach so we don't really care.
We can only experience our emotions relative to our own personal baseline.
Here's the thing: Your baseline moves as your life gets better or worse.
No matter how bad your life gets, your brain is wired to move your baseline down so that you stop being so miserable. You will always eventually adapt to your new, worse, standard of living. Someone born into a wealthy family who becomes poor will eventually stop missing fancy foods and will be very happy when they can afford takeout.
But it also goes the other way, no matter how good your life gets, your brain is wired to move your baseline up so that you stop feeling happy about things that used to be special. Someone born in a poor family who becomes rich will eventually get used to their luxuries and stop feeling joy about it.
I used to only buy lunch once a week because even doing that was pushing my budget. I'd get an $8 falafel salad and savory every bite as my special once a week treat. Now I have a job that pays twice as much and I buy $8 lamb over rice every single work day and it's just normal to me. It doesn't bring me there same delight and specialness and if for some reason I actually have to prepare and pack a lunch for work I hate it and feel unhappy. Like it's such a huge burden to do this thing one time that I used to do every single day for years and years.
Now imagine if you became a billionaire. If that's your baseline, where having anything you want at any time is normal and achievable any day at any time, where your every meal is the finest food there is.... How do you experience joy? What exactly is better than your baseline? Your baseline is the top. It's the highest up it can get. It takes something really really extreme and novel to push you to feel joy because nothing is really above your baseline.
Of course you become depressed. Of course nothing feels meaningful or worthwhile.
But here's the flip side: everything is below your baseline. If anything at all goes wrong or is not the highest of quality, then that is below your baseline and you are miserable. You might objectively know that 99.9999% of the world would give their organs to eat the food you eat but your brain only knows how to feel emotions relative to what it's used to. So if the food is not perfect, it tastes bad. You might objectively know that most people never fly in a private jet in their life, but you're used to it, so having to fly first class on a commercial airliner with the people who are only millionaires actually makes you unhappy and feel bad. Even though most people on the plane would be very happy if they got to be in first class. To you, it's a downgrade, so you are unhappy. Most people on the planet have never and will never fly in sn airplane at all.
Because of this, they can't allow themselves to let go of their wealth. If they only allowed themselves to come back down to our level and live like a normal human being then their baseline would adjust and many things in life would be above and below it and they'd experience a normal range of human emotions. But their emotions don't work this way. The idea of losing any of their wealth at all even very small amounts would mean sinking below their current baseline and experiencing unhappiness. Even though they're already miserable. They can't imagine giving up their private jet let alone having to fly coach. Relative to their baseline it's hard to even imagine tolerating it. So they continue to cling to their wealth at the expense of everyone else in the world.
Also remember that humans naturally want to work and to find satisfaction in their work. Humans want to build things and work on projects and create art. These pieces of don't work so nothing in their life provides the satisfaction of working. They don't know the joy of accomplishment because they never experience laboring to get it.
The last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Puyi, was a miserable boy. Everyone bowed before him his entire life. He was given everything. His baseline was always the highest it could ever be. He only derived joy from novel cruelty to others. When the communists deposed him they forced him to live as a number proletariat. He loved it. He became so very happy. In his memoirs he wrote about how much he loved his life after being deposed. Becoming a normal man was the best thing to happen to him. He became human. He took joy in little things he never appreciated when he was the child emperor. He felt accomplished and satisfied through work. His baseline was normal and he was happy every day whenever something was just a little better than before.
