How many times have you seen this scene: a billionaire listed on Forbes as one of the richest in the world, driving a cheap car, wearing inexpensive clothes, sleeping in on? their car or office because they don’t own a house, and sometimes taking the train with the majority of the people. But why? Why do the extremely wealthy portray themselves this way? Why is being poor becoming the new version of being rich?
The Fake Ones :
The legend says that Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, with immense wealth, built a small village in the backyard of her luxurious palace. The village was designed to resemble a real farming village, complete with cows, goats, and chickens, alongside five cottages like those in the French countryside, excluding the dirt and unpleasant smells and Infectious diseases of course. One of the cottages was exclusively for the queen while the other four were for real farmers working in the simulated farm. And When the queen felt bored in her lavishly decorated palace adorned with expensive French engravings and paintings, or when she was annoyed with something, she would dress as a peasant and descend to her farm and do farm work. When her mood changed, she would stop pretending to be poor, wear her luxurious clothes again and ascend to her palace as if nothing had happened.
Queen Antoine is just one example among countless historical figures and others living among us today, trying in every way to show their detachment from worldly matters. They only strive to create something useful for humanity, while wealth, wealth doesn’t matter.
One of the examples in recent years is Sam Pinkman Fred who used to appear as a young man who knew nothing but work and donating to charities and political parties, and he worked day and night to achieve the happiness of his customers.
But ultimately, the world saw his true face. This angelic face orchestrated the largest scam in history, involving figures like Donald Trump and Prince William.
Even global brands have started noticing this trend, They start selling seemingly worthless items at sky-high prices. For example, Balenciaga sold completely dirty and torn shoes for $2000. And the retail giant Urban Outfitters, say that its aesthetic is “chic vagrancy.”
I won’t delve into the contradiction of this new term because you’re already familiar with it.
When you see a wealthy person trying to appear poor, they are attempting to convey a message, saying, “Look at me, I own a company worth billions of dollars, yet I’m poor just like you. Isn’t that wonderful?”
You might say : What’s exciting about this? Who cares about what the wealthy do?
Just wait a little and I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, because this topic is more profound than you imagine.
Class Contradiction :
On the other side of society, the dark sides, the real poor part, you find some people trying hard to look rich. And I am talking here about people who work day and night to buy a car that is above their social level. Don’t be surprised; I didn’t make this up. A study found that 61% of those earning over $250,000 don’t own expensive cars. This means more than half of the fancy cars we see on the street belong to people who are trying to look rich but are actually poor. Take a tour on one of the humble streets, and you will find a BMW parked in front of a modest house.
This is the result of the fact that we care more about our clothes than our minds, running after the latest fashion trends and the newest phone in the market.
Big companies control our minds and Our lifestyles, ultimately these Big companies are owned by wealthy people living the life of Upscale homeless.
We’ve immersed ourselves in this lifestyle to the point where the things we own end up owning us. Let me tell you something you know but don’t want to remember: you are not your job or your money or your car or your shirt. People trying to fake their reality by looking wealthy have forgotten this; they’ve forgotten themselves and delved into a materialistic world where the human has no value except what he wears.
( you can watch this article as a video from here )
A study says that 82% of Americans’ clothes didn’t see the light last year. Before you comment on this, let me tell you about another study stating that the average number of ads seen by one American citizen ranges from 4000 to 10000 ads per day. This overwhelming amount of advertisements makes us crave products we don’t need, and this desire leads us to work in jobs we don’t love.
The equation has become as follows : we work in jobs we don’t love to buy things we don’t want to please people we don’t like. And then where does the money go? Into the pockets of the rich who live far from excessive consumption.
But Just as not all poor people are like this, not all rich people try to appear poor. There are exceptions to every rule, and exceptions don’t cancel the rule but confirm it.
Yes Not every wealthy person lives a simple life while pretending to be poor like Antoinette and Sam Pinkman Fred. There are people who actually embrace the idea of not excessive and exaggerated consumption.
The Real Ones :
These wealthy people are the productive class who understand the game well; they simply don’t fall into the trap they’ve set — the consumption trap. How did Mark Zuckerberg become rich? He created Facebook; in other words, he produced something. What did ordinary people like me and you do? We consumed his product, and most of us became addicted to this app. I can’t imagine Mark being addicted to Facebook. What about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates? All of them produce things that people consume and often become addicted to.
All of them live the life of Upscale homeless, trying to distance themselves as much as possible from the consumption pit — a pit that most of us find ourselves in without realizing it.
In addition, by emulating poverty, the wealthy avoid the problems that arise when the poor discover their wealth. If you possess wealth and people around you know you’ve become rich, they might interpret it as their right to take a part of your wealth or Or you are evil and gained your wealth by exploiting others or doing bad things to people.
It’s a mindset that says: to climb to the top, you must step on those beneath you, and that’s incorrect. Yes, there are some bad people who earned their wealth by doing bad things, but this is not a rule, rather it is only an exception. This idea is designed to keep us poor throughout our life.
Bill Gates evil? Well, don’t engage in hard work like he did to become a successful villain like him. Stay as you are, the perfect version of a good citizen. That’s what our system says; it creates blind slaves, individuals who work and consume, work and consume, living to consume.
If you go out now and ask a random person on the street, someone you don’t know, what is the one thing he wants to get right now, if this person has a billionaire mindset, he might talk about acquiring an asset or succeeding in a project. But if you ask someone with the consumer mentality we have, he’ll likely tell you he wants an iPhone or a Ferrari or something related to consumption, not production. It’s the consumer mentality, the mindset that keeps us poor. The system is designed to keep the poor poor while he dream of becoming rich so they can own a product from the rich person’s company. The rich, on the other hand, are not influenced; they buy because they need those things, not because they desire them. There’s a significant difference between desire and necessity.
Most people are driven by their desires, and the rich know how to exploit these desires. People become like slaves in their hands. In this way, money is drawn from each of us into the pockets of a small group of producers, increasing the gap between the poor and the rich. But how does this happen?
One of the reasons our poverty increases every day is the financial system itself. The financial system as a whole is designed to widen this gap. Let me explain more:
Most people believe that banks take money from someone’s savings to lend it to someone else, but that’s not the truth. 97% of the money in the economy is digital, not physically existing. The bank creates it when you go to borrow. The bank generates virtual money and deposits it into your account. The more loans people take out, the more debt they have, the more money the bank creates digitally. And If no one is indebted to the banks, the digital money disappears from the economy, leading to its collapse.
Our economy relies on this illusionary digital money; it depends on us to keep it standing. Real money is what you give to the bank every month. Meaning that the bank takes real money from us to give us fake money. All the real money goes to the top 10% who are not indebted, sitting at the top of the pyramid. They are a group of people who produced something, while we take loans to consume it. In this way they ensure the continuous rotation of the wheel.
But there’s another question that arises: Why do they do this to people? Why not establish a fair system that equals people? Are all rich people really so evil like this? In reality, no, not all rich people are evil, but the idea of a system that equals individuals is impossible to apply for the human and even animals.
Do you know about the Universe 25 experience?
In July 1968, the American behavioral scientist John Calhoun began one of the most famous and controversial experiments in history, called the Universe 25.
The experiment began with John bringing eight rats, four males and four females, and placing them in a cage approximately two cubic meters in size. He left the rat alone for some time until they adapted in their new environment and started reproducing. The enclosure was equipped with everything the rat needed, it was like paradise for them. In fact, John did this experiment 24 times before, and this was Experiment number 25, that’s why he called it the Universe 25. Each time, he ended up with the same horrifying result. The barn turned from paradise to hell without John’s intervention.
I’ll tell you what happened, but I want you to focus with me because what happened in the rat barn, we are seeing some of it now in our society. After the rats adapted to their new society, they began to multiply at a terrible speed, to the point that the number of mice became more than 600 before the end of one year. But on day 315, the behavior of the rat began to change remarkably. They became aggressive with each other in an incomprehensible way.
To understand this well, you should know that rats have a competitive nature similar to human nature. Males compete with each other for power and dominance within the group to assert themselves over the entire herd and control it.
In other words, some must become the alpha males while those defeated go to another place to start anew. But in the barn there is no other place far from the alpha rats. That’s why alpha rats started to continuously attack and gather the weak rats in the middle of the barn. The problem here is that the beating the weak rats suffered was without reason.
The strong rats controlled a large number of female rats, introducing them into their rooms. Over time, the strong alpha rats began to attack and kill the small rats, even mothers started to expel their babies outside knowing they couldn’t face the outside world. Gradually, the strong rats began to leave their designated food and feed on the flesh of the weak rats, becoming cannibalistic. And A clear social hierarchy formed, exactly like the one in human society:
- The first class, Calhoun called : the class of weak rats or the miserable rat : it’s the class of weak rats whose rights are continuously taken away. They cannot defend themselves and cannot live a decent life, even though they literally live in the paradise of rats.
- The second class is the class of strong rats. These are the rats that control everything, highly aggressive, capable of doing anything they want without anything stopping them.
- Then a New rat appeared, which Calhoun called the beautiful rat. These rats distanced themselves from the conflict with other males and also avoided females. They started caring only about eating and drinking and their appearance and cleanliness, becoming obsessed with cleaning themselves.
When these rats grew up, something unexpected happened. The male beautiful rats began engaging in sexual activities with each other without caring about females. All of this led to a significant decrease in the reproduction rate, to the point where the barn, which had reached 2200 rats, began to collapse frighteningly.
Do you understand what is happening in the barn now? It is going through a moral decline similar to what we are experiencing now, even though we don’t live in paradise, but the means of comfort have become available in every home. That is why we cannot be equal financially, there must be rich and poor, strong and weak, This is our nature. The weak always strive for dominance and fall into the consumption trap built for them by the rich.
Social Media :
Social media has a significant impact on this issue. Numerous studies indicate a frightening decline in intelligence and physical health in the current generation compared to previous generations.
Of course, there are many reasons for this decline, and social media is one of them. The rapid and intensive consumption culture, coupled with the allure of fame and money, creates a desire among artists and content creators of all kinds to target the largest audience possible at any cost.
and as a result of this the phenomenon of dumbing down was formed, Dumbing down is simply oversimplification, whether educational or entertaining. The roots of this movement can be traced back to the early 1930s, particularly in the film industry, describing the process of simplifying science artistic work to reach a larger audience with less education and cultural background.
The initial goal of this movement might have a noble intention, aiming to simplify topics and reduce their complexity to make them accessible to a larger audience, thus spreading knowledge and benefiting both the recipient and the artist or creator. But the practical application of this idea faces a Lot of problems.
The phenomenon of “dumbing down” has led to the superficial and stupid content, dumb trends.
All of this led to a decrease in the rate of attention and the spread of stupidity terribly, and The rise of stupidity equals an increase in the number of easily influenced people. In your opinion, is it possible for one of these puppets to resist himself when he sees a McDonald’s or Coca-Cola advertisement?
I don’t think so. Most of those we are talking about now have closed the article before reaching The fifth line. Do you know why?
But what about the rich people? And When I say rich people, I am talking here about billionaires. The logic does not accept that the owner of a company worth billions has a weakness in concentration or an inability to control their desires. To become an excessive consumer, you must be foolish, and a fool cannot become a billionaire unless he inherits their wealth. And Even if he inherits it, he will lose it sooner or later.
The problem of social media exists among the majority of people. If you search your friend’s or younger sibling’s phone, you’ll find many similar things. The most common are celebrity news, you know , This hit this, this gay insulted that gay , this one took this one’s girlfriend .. And other unseen news that is of no use except that it increases our stupidity. This constant exposure to pointless information contributes to increasing our stupidity. In Addition to creating a blind desire to imitate celebrities.
This streamer bought a belt from Shin Company. I will buy one like him. This rapper wears pants produced by Zara. I will buy one like him. This is pure stupidity. Consider the TikTok user who becomes famous for dancing or doing silly things. Most of them are foolish, living off advertisements and the number of fans they have. Focus on most, not all. Many of them pretend while living a normal life in reality.
Imagine a stupid person, a failure in life, a failure in social relationships, creating a TikTok channel and posting videos of themselves dancing or doing something silly. Suddenly, they become influencers with a large audience and fans, and many people start imitating his clothes and behavior. We’ll delve into this point soon and break it down further. It has a strong connection with the consumerist mentality.
Not to mention the repetitive and consumptive content, challenges, vlogs, pranks, reactions, and TikTok trends. The list goes on indefinitely with content that achieves incredible views and consumes a significant amount of time without any benefit. Don’t tell me you enjoy seeing someone scared or angry or shocked, What’s funny about a shocked face? What happens to these people? Just consuming this kind of content increases your consumption without any meaningful benefits.
In fact, this triviality existed previously as well. The question here is why it has spread so terrifyingly in recent times and what its relationship is with the consumerist society?
Social media confuses people’s minds, filling them with trivial chaos that affects their productive behavior. Imagine a person influenced by these things since childhood, someone who follows every new trend, spending most of their time on social media from a young age. Will this person, as he grows up, become the new Elon Musk? Will they launch a rocket into space and bring it back to Earth safely? Does he even have the ability to think about such things? Let’s simplify it a little. When he grows up, will he become a good role model for his children?
Man is the product of his environment; your habits and thoughts are related to the environment you live in , and nowadays, this environment also includes what you see on your phone, your history.
The relationship between social media and the consumption disparity between the rich and the poor has many points , including Decreased awareness of the slavery system .
The brain is like muscles, develops well with proper training and a healthy diet, and good sleep. The result is strong and attractive muscles. The same applies to the mind. If you are someone who reads books, tries to improve yourself and refuses to submit to desires, and invests your money rather than losing it on stupid things, the result will be a man like Warren Buffett or Larry Fink.
But as a result of the poor content they consume, their level of knowledge and competence, and awareness of everything around them decreases, from their money to their personal problems.
And this brings us to the second point, which is the desire to own what a specific celebrity possesses:
Following celebrities in what they do is an idea that only exists in the poor minds because the wealthy don’t imitate; otherwise, they wouldn’t remain rich, because Celebrities often lose their money on worthless things, and imitating them is in fact a financial suicide. Look at what happened to Mike Tyson, who at the height of his career was buying tigers and gold bathtubs and other trivial things. his wealth went from 300 or 400 million dollars to zero and even in debt.
The same story goes for Nicolas Cage, from millionaire to debtor. Ronaldinho, the best player in history, Adriano, Maradona, and many others who once had fortunes worth millions and sometimes billions but ended up below zero. Ronaldinho was even imprisoned because he had a fake passport, and he didn’t have the money to pay bail and get out of prison, even though the amount was very small.
In the past, companies competed for him; So, Nike used to manufacture custom shoes exclusively for him with his name, and every year a new version would appear. People would rush to be the first to buy them. From all this stardom and money raining down on him like rain, he descended into poverty. This is why the wealthy don’t imitate celebrities, unlike what we do.
Conclusion :
Let us conclude this article by saying that everything a person does starts with an idea. The one who makes millions of dollars annually actually started with an idea. The sum of his ideas led him to the life he dreamed of. Similarly, the one losing millions also started with an idea, and the sum of his ideas led him to the point where he lost everything. The accumulated ideas in our minds shape our lifestyle, and our lifestyle is what controls our future. because an idea creates a habit, a habit creates an identity, and identity creates our destiny.
You get the idea to buy the latest PlayStation on the market and implement it. Over time, playing on the PlayStation becomes a long-lasting habit. This habit turns into an identity, making you a professional PlayStation player. From this identity, you will shape your destiny. What did you achieve after 20 years? you become nothing but a professional Minecraft player.
Idea — Habit — Identity — Destiny.
But if you are financially intelligent, your thoughts will reflect in your actions. You will develop habits that you do every day. As we said: Many habits create identity, and your identity is what will make you rich or poor.
Now, let me ask you a question: Do you want your destiny to be wealth or poverty? Let me simplify it a bit: Do you want to be a consumer or a producer?
