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Entry: The Haughty Polloi Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_haughty_polloi#8395 Post contents: Real material poverty is easier to identify than material riches, especially these days when all money is fiat currency, in the long run as worthless as Confederate dollars (except as curiosities for numismatists like me :-) Some of those Confederate notes were beautifully engraved.) I mean, after you've seen real poverty - eg, the submerged 70 percent of the Chinese (been there, seen that), or all too many poor White Americans for that matter - then one ought to realise that a very basic threshold of material comfort really is like vast wealth compared to how most of the Human race live. My small house under crystal clear skies in Western Australia - near one of the most unspoiled beaches in the world - and a full refrigerator and case of Tasmanian lager, and good comfortable shoes, and small garden where I've begun to plant tomatoes and okra etc (mmmm, curried okra!) are all princely luxuries the majority of people in the world will never enjoy. But that leads to another problem suffered by many of the so-called "rich": how many of them actually ENJOY their material wealth, or their lives at all? (That's what's cool about Taki; he really does ENJOY life! So his riches aren't wasted on him.) Beyond that basic threshold of material necessities and then a few comforts, the measure of wealth then transforms from quantity to quality. Take collecting, for example. Just because a Jackson Pollock painting costs a few million dollars doesn't mean it's better (or different at all) than some fingerpainting by a monkey. But there are some obscure painters out there whose works' quality rivals Monet's or Corot's, yet they're selling for a few hundred dollars. The only difference between them and Monet is publicity. So you can spend millions and furnish your house with ugly crap, or spend a few thousand dollars and furnish it as beautifully as a gallery in the Louvre - and that's no exaggeration. As for the kind of company money can buy, the conversation in a provincial Scottish pub (just one random example) is generally more stimulating and enlightening than you'll get with, say, Paris Hilton. Not to mention that most of the working class Scottish girls are prettier and have better manners than La Hilton. And at any rate, we're all just "renting" on this Earth during our several decades of transit here. Those among the super-rich who are good responsible tenants - those who regard themselves as "stewards" of their family wealth and of the common-wealth, protecting and preserving it for the benefit of posterity - they're great. If inherited wealth is used in that way, with a sense of duty to others (and to God, the ultimate Landlord), then it's a good arrangement. But there are others, like Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, who are just irresponsible tenants who ought to be evicted. And one way or another, everyone's lease comes to a final, unrenewable end, and then all we'll possess will be whatever truthfulness and integrity our souls had. (Hm, I respond to one of Taki's posts and end up preaching the way of Bushido.......) Sent at: 2008 07 04