Revelations Of What The Rich Do To Maintain Order In their Lives

THE RICH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WITH US.  

YES, EVEN BEFORE THE INVENTION OF MONEY.

One of the problems with being rich is that it changes your EXPECTATIONS of what your life OUGHT TO BE LIKE.  

Above all, this sort of person expects SECURITY.  They tend to equate LOSS OF SECURITY with DISORDER in their lives...Which may be a correct way of seeing it.  Any loss of security would force them to CHANGE and ADAPT, maybe even START OVER FROM SCRATCH.  And it would indeed feel like CHAOS for a while.

The other thing the rich come to expect -- AND THIS IS JUST CRAZY --  is that because their lives and incomes have moved in a generally UPWARD direction, that anyone they care about needs to experience the same thing.  Their CHILDREN, say.  An oil tycoon would be HUMILIATED if his oldest son turned out to be a FRY COOK or BUS DRIVER.  Egad, that would be CHAOS!  A violation of the NATURAL ORDER!  No, they need to start out rich and move up even from there!  You know, like Donald Trump, the real-estate broker who started out humbly, as a multi-millionaire, and worked his way up into the billions with ONLY a one-million-dollar startup loan from his old man that he had to PAY BACK.  What an achievement!  Way to underline your old man's sense of the Order of Things, Donny!

And no matter how much LIP SERVICE the rich pay to the idea of helping the less fortunate -- no matter how much spare change they donate to Save The Whales or the End Homelessness Initiative -- they will put much, much more cash on the nail to keep their kids on that upward path.  You really think it was his flawless grades and cheerleading talents that got a guy like George W. Bush into Yale, and then the Harvard School of Business?

Nope, I'm guessing it was a big-ass donation from his old man to the colleges in question.  Probably a series of them.

The thing that astounds me about this is that this kind of manipulative shit is still TOTALLY LEGAL.  See, it's human nature to think that if you're rich or famous, you just DESERVE MORE.  And your kids must also DESERVE MORE.  Because they're your kids, and your whole family just DESERVES MORE.

And sprouting from this same diseased root is the SCANDAL OF THE WEEK, wherein a whole bunch of wealthy parents got busted for paying money so their kids could get into competitive schools like the University of Southern California.  Not the legal way, by making hefty donations, but ILLEGALLY, by falsifying SAT scores and having phony photos made up so the kids appear to be members of champion sports teams.  As a rule these are sports their kids have never even tried out for.  

Why would they even consider this?  Because...gosh..because ORDER HAS TO BE MAINTAINED.  My kids have to achieve like mad, and if they don't, they have to SEEM to achieve.  They have to MAKE ME PROUD, no matter how difficult that is because I'm at the top of my profession.  No matter how easy I have made their lives up until now, they need to look as if they are STILL DEFYING THE GODS AND CLIMBING EVEN HIGHER THAN I DID.

Even if there are no rungs left on that ladder.

Apart from the pending criminal charges, I rather wonder what happens when these kids get into the colleges they chose and then WASH OUT because they can't keep up in class, or have to come up with an answer when someone encourages them to get on the track team (because they got into school using phony track experience) or gymnastics (when in truth they can't walk on a flat surface without wiping out, let alone do a dozen back handsprings).  

Whatever then?

In the family's view, CHAOS INTRUDES.

In my view, ORDER IS RESTORED.