“Filthy” Rich

I’m reading another article right now about how average Americans are making claims to destroy the filthy rich bankers. The greed and disconnection from the rest of us makes them wealthier (and us angrier) than most of us could imagine.

Ouch…if they had only made better choices with their/our money. If they had lived off of less and not been so greedy when so many of the rest of us had so much less, maybe we would forgive them. Maybe even allow them a pass from the public flogging we now demand…

This attitude bears an uncomfortable question. How are we doing with our own little investment banking firms?

“What investment banking firm?” you say.

Most of us standing in a position to protest or voice an opinion in this western world live in the top 5% of the global population. We must look like filthy rich hedge fund managers to the majority of the developing world. How are we doing managing the waste that we put out for the rest of the world?

— Whoa, hold up. If your first thought was, “yeah, our western governments are kind of wasteful”, turn that pointing finger around for a second. How are YOU doing at this? —

When we spend our discretionary income (much of the world spends 30-70% of it’s income on life-sustaining food) on gadgets, games and $4 coffee, might there be those from somewhere in the voiceless, forgotten world, pointing their cynical, impoverished fingers at us?

What if we ALL turned our attention from the distastefulness of seeing wealth squandered by those economically above us, and focused instead on the reality that we have so much compared to so many. This could spawn a movement of gratefulness and generosity, perhaps even affecting those selfish bankers we now criminalize. They themselves are imprisoned by an incessant desire to get more from the guy who’s got more than him. We would never be captured by the same greed they are…or would we?

One thing seems fairly certain, it is rather difficult to change someone else’s behavior. Contrarily, the key to our choices are held by hands that are all too familiar.

Our own.