I was watching Good Will Hunting tonight on TNT, and considering a conversation i'd had earlier in the week with friendINthePROGRAM, Ron, about how we both seemed fairly sure that we hoped for (or at least weren't against) fundamental, global economic collapse... At least then things wouldn't be boring (which, at least according to Effi Briest, is the worst thing you can encounter).I think i've come to a point in my life where i'm comfortable admitting, Good Will Hunting is my favorite movie... without all the hemming & hawwing of depending on situations or crowds... It is, quite simply, my favorite movie...
But mostly, i'm wondering... are we ok with complete economic (& therefore social) breakdown? We're taught (if we are taught) that we should set up delayed gratifications, in the form of "retirement", a program where we are taught to NOT live the live we want to or are able to live, and instead, give away a portion of that money to (theoretically) inherit later.
Having no research or information in this area, but being interested in it from afar, i will now claim that large portions of the folks who put their money away for this 'systematic delayed gratification' never get to experience it, or, if they do, they're old... so it's not as fun enjoying it, as it might have been when they were younger...
Ok, that's the basic argument... discuss... (soon, you'll have an opportunity to talk about letters...)
One of the fundamental problems associated with this in Western culture is the notion of sacrifice. In delaying gratification, we are sacrificing immediate pleasure for future pleasure. And so on and so forth. But the real trickiness of the situation is that we are always sacrificing something for someone else. In this case, we sacrifice immediate pleasure by "saving" or "investing in our future" and in turn the banks take that money and distribute it to other people so that they can attain immediate pleasure. This act of sacrifice is also billed as a way for us to "live more comfortably in the future", but really we're sacrificing immediate pleasure again so the federal or state governments do not have to fit the bill on our old-ageness.
ReplyDeleteNow that our government has stepped in to "rescue" financial institutions, a majority of Americans are going to be asked to sacrifice immediate pleasure in the form of higher taxes to help bail out the number of rich investors that made poor decisions in the guise of fighting off global economic collapse. Perhaps a better question would be not whether global economic collapse would necessarily be that apocalyptic or even interesting, but in many ways what would actually change? Especially that if you consider the fact that most large economic transactions require the moving of largely symbolic pieces of paper from one person to the next without actually signifying anything of material wealth: I'll give you this debt voucher, you give me that debt voucher.
yeah, that last is especially interesting to me, patrick... that these 'papers of debt' are what really are being exchanged...
ReplyDeleteBut what of the Fight Club model of just burning up all of those slips of paper (and the buildings in which they sit)...?