Can You Not be a Cliche and Think for Yourself?
I need a category called Sunday morning ramblings, maybe, but I hope you enjoy this.
I have worked in the internet space since 1996, and I seem to remember a lot of hopes in the 90s that the internet was going to bring us all together. That seems pretty funny now honestly. I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about how social media feels like a CIA experiment gone awry. We are bifurcated now, members of “belief-tribes”. We’re not Catholics, Jews, midwesterners, or soccer moms as much as we are internet caricatures connected by common beliefs, willing to argue with each other whether or not true communism has ever been tried.
The Observant Outsider
I look at life a bit like an outsider honestly. I don’t have a tribe per se because let’s face it, I strongly identify with a few things that really don’t align very well with each other or anyone else. Who am I? I am a financially conservative entrepreneur, who believes in minimalism, sobriety, veganism, fitness, stoicism, tranquility and I’m a headbanger. I am a technologist, who disdains corporate politics. You won’t see me ever working at Chase for example. I am an anti-statist. You would have to know me to understand how these all come together, but I am not easy to label. Case in point, I have been an active yogi for years, but I don’t burn incense or talk about essential oils. Instead, for fun, I develop option trading strategies in excel and backtest them with years of data before implementing them with my own money. Maybe I’m just a nerd.
Common Experiences are the Common Thread
Because of this, I probably have fewer acquaintances, fewer quasi-friends, with a very, very close group of friends where the relationships aren’t built on common beliefs as they are built on common experiences. My close friends are all people with whom I have built companies or other types of organizations. Because I don’t look for echo chambers, my relationships aren’t built on us assimilating with each other, and I am a lucky person to have lived this way. I don’t really talk about politics with any friends for example. Is that very different from most people? I think it is as I eavesdrop a lot at Philz.
Hi, I’m Nick Carraway, Can I Observe You?
When I was in high school, one of my best friends told me that I was Nick Carraway, the character from the Great Gatsby, who lives next to Gatsby. He is the moral compass of that book as you see the lives of the idle rich through his eyes, yet he never judges. He just experiences it all and is a friend to Gatsby, probably the only person who doesn’t want anything from him. My friend Dave told me this one night as he said I was the only person in our clique of eight people who got along with everyone else and never gossiped behind the backs of others.
I really think the best thing can do in life is to experience as many different groups of people as possible as it is so eye-opening. This hit me like a ton of bricks when I stumbled on to this article yesterday, Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update.
Luxury Beliefs and The Belief Tribes
The author talks about going to Yale as a poor kid. He starts off the article with “I was bewildered when I encountered a new social class at Yale four years ago: the luxury belief class.”
He continues, “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost while taking a toll on the lower class.” Please read the article linked above. It will crank your noodle.
This got me thinking, what if the tribal dynamic so apparent today was really a difference in beliefs because rich people need to feel exclusive? I have lived in the bay area for a long time, so I know a lot of rich people. Billionaires today don’t act like a billionaire of days gone by. Unless they are elderly, they don’t have chauffers or wear mink coats or dress formally often. Mark Cuban is the typical silicon valley billionaire these days. They really look like everyone else and excessive consumption is hidden if at all enjoyed. So if you can’t be chauffeured to work in a Rolls, what do you do to maintain your feeling of superiority? Do you develop a belief system that allows for this? What if the lower classes who aspired to be these people simply latched on to the same beliefs, as a status symbol? I call this wanna-be syndrome.
Read this Book, Millionaire
We have seen lower classes try to emulate the upper classes throughout history. A great book titled “Millionaire” details the happening in Paris during the first stock market bubble in the 18th century. The bubble was based on the speculators working for wealth in the new world.
To the horror of the aristocracy, poor people got rich speculating on the stock market. What did they do when they got rich? They immediately tried to emulate the aristocracy, with gilded carriages and flamboyant clothes. Do you think they bought these things because they enjoyed them or because they aspired to be admired? I think the latter.
Do You Own Your Moral Compass?
So I challenge everyone with this. Is your moral compass really yours, or are you trying to be someone you aspire to be? Is that someone simply a member of a social class with more money than you? Could your desire to achieve the label “rich person” causing you to turn off your brain? Are you simply regurgitating what you feel are the beliefs of the tribe you wish you were part of? Are you wanting, and not thinking?
I’ll let you in on a secret, a lot of rich people are creeps, so don’t worship them. Some are great, some are creeps, just like everyone else. Desiring financial independence is noble, make no mistake about it. Your path to getting rich is all in your hands, as I have written about a few times. It has to do with your actions, not your subreddit.
Heavy for a Sunday morning. Have an outstanding week.




