I finished reading Crazy Rich Asians which I highly enjoyed. Some thoughts:
The characters in this story are crazy status obsessed, and my guess is because status games were the only real games that had ever existed in their lives. Anything they ever wanted, they could just buy, but you can’t pay other rich people to think you are impressive. So all of their energy goes into doing things that will make others think their awesome/fashionable/wealthy/classy/etc. The degree to which the book plays this line is obscene.
Though you’re never given exact numbers on Nick’s family fortune, the book builds up an aura of impenetrable wealth. There is no way you will ever become as rich as the Youngs. I’ve already been someone who’s been a grumpy curmudgeon about showing off/signalling/buying positional goods, but a thing that this book made real to me was just how deep these games can go.
If you pick the most straight forward status markers (money), you’ve decided to try and climb a status ladder of impossible height with vicious competition. If you’re going to pick a domain in which you care more about your ordinality than your carnality, for the love of god choose carefully.
This reminds me of something an old fencing coach told me:
Fencing is a small enough sport that if you just train really diligently, you could make it to the Olympics. If you want to be the best in football, you have to train really diligently, be a genetic freak, and be lucky.
Whether or not that is/was true, it’s an important thing to keep in mind. Also, I think I want to pay extra attention to “Do I actually think that XYZ is cardinally cool, or is it just the most impressive thing anyone is doing in my sphere of awareness?” Implication being that if it’s the latter, expanding my sphere will lead to me not fealling good about doing XYZ.
I finished reading Crazy Rich Asians which I highly enjoyed. Some thoughts:
The characters in this story are crazy status obsessed, and my guess is because status games were the only real games that had ever existed in their lives. Anything they ever wanted, they could just buy, but you can’t pay other rich people to think you are impressive. So all of their energy goes into doing things that will make others think their awesome/fashionable/wealthy/classy/etc. The degree to which the book plays this line is obscene.
Though you’re never given exact numbers on Nick’s family fortune, the book builds up an aura of impenetrable wealth. There is no way you will ever become as rich as the Youngs. I’ve already been someone who’s been a grumpy curmudgeon about showing off/signalling/buying positional goods, but a thing that this book made real to me was just how deep these games can go.
If you pick the most straight forward status markers (money), you’ve decided to try and climb a status ladder of impossible height with vicious competition. If you’re going to pick a domain in which you care more about your ordinality than your carnality, for the love of god choose carefully.
This reminds me of something an old fencing coach told me:
Whether or not that is/was true, it’s an important thing to keep in mind. Also, I think I want to pay extra attention to “Do I actually think that XYZ is cardinally cool, or is it just the most impressive thing anyone is doing in my sphere of awareness?” Implication being that if it’s the latter, expanding my sphere will lead to me not fealling good about doing XYZ.