So it was just kind of a coincidence that one little monument was covered in sand.
They were talking on the news today about a guy who was an 80 year old billionaire.
What’s that like?
I mean, you work your whole life to build this thing, this money, and well, you grow to learn, to paraphrase William Gibson, the very rich are barely human at all. Your money is a self replicated, self managing meta-creature with agencies and impulses of its own. Your fortune is so large it cheerfully generates miraculous sums as a by-product of its twists and turns through the currents of finance. Your deeds have become this entity, this thing.
You can buy any item, humor any drive. You’ve done a great many things, had women, men if you want. You could be a paragon of virtue, or a pillar of smoking sleaze. If you wanted, you could craft a law and see it put in place, or stop one, you could easily have a man murdered, buy a private nation, control a real nation, learn to fly, hunt a man for sport, whatever. You have Total Freedom. You’re a success, a big noise. You have Got The Edge and you have Personal Power that Tony Robbins would choke on if it was dancing up and down his fucking spine.
But you’re 80, you’re dying right on schedule.
What’s that like?
One great big festering neon distraction,
I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied.
Learn to swim.
Mom’s gonna fix it all soon.
Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be.
Learn to swim.
Fuck L Ron Hubbard and
Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all those gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.
Learn to swim.
Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.
Learn to swim.
Fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.
Learn to swim.
Cuz I’m praying for rain
And I’m praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom please flush it all away.
I wanna watch it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.
Time to bring it down again.
Don’t just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.
I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t
Welcome any change, my friend.
I wanna see it all come down.
suck it down.
flush it down.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said–“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart….Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Ozymandias – Percy Shelley
I think it would be insanly boring to be that rich…I love all the gunk of poor living….it actually feels like ..well ..living.
People say money can’t buy happiness. Which is true. It takes a little extra something past that. However, try and find happiness without it.
Money. Isn’t it funny how the people who would truly do wonderful things for others never get it? Instead some already rich asshole gets 310 million dollars and gives it to his drug addict family and donates the rest to churches. Honestly, I would bebuilding boys and girls clubs and doing random acts of kindness for the rest of my life. I would love to walk up to some hard luck dude or some chick and hand them 3,000 dollars and tell them to blow it, save it, or give it away…I don’t care. I just want to make someone’s day.
That is not Total Freedom. That is slavery. To money, to what’s cool, to what other people have, to what the stock market is doing, and so on. I bet there was never a day where he didn’t think about making sure he didn’t LOSE that money, which means he has to stay on his toes, financially.
As for being old, maybe he’s content with the fact that he knows he’s had a good life (I don’t it, but it’s possible, right?) and that he’s leaving heirs with some comfort. Maybe that means something to him.
Frankly, I couldn’t deal with the issues that come from being stinkin’ filthy rich. In the last years, I have purposely downsized my life, ten times over. I have minimal belongings. I think simple is best. But not everyone is simple. Obviously.
nah. That’s a sour grapes argument, ie “Well who would want to be a lord in a castle anyway? All that paperwork.”
Maybe in his 50s, in his 60s, but when you’re a retirement age billionaire, the stock market could crash and you’d still be rich.