On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 09:30:07PM +0530, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote: > > > On Thu, Feb 5, 2026, at 12:18 PM, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote: > > > > > - Access to wealth, opportunities, networks and bodily > > modifications far beyond what anyone at a lower socio-economic > > stratum can access. So much so that you're not really comparable > > any more. > > - Inability to perceive other people as even being of the same > > species, but only as exploitable resources. > > While on this topic, this article is interesting. > > https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/billionaire-consequence-free-reality/686588/ > > Udhay
and Cindy G wrote: > New York Magazine just published, 'What Does Extreme Wealth Do To > The Brain?' > https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-does-extreme-wealth-do-to-the-brain.html Both articles are interesting, especially that they describe two disjoint groups of "the rich". There seems to be a dependence - the richer one gets, the less one is willing to engage in discussion about oneself. I wonder why - is it because they know who they are but do not want to disclose in public, or is it because of something else, for example some kind of narcistic nonsense, like "god does not need to introspect". In my previous email (the enigmatic one, I hope I may be excused a bit, because sometimes I get really asleep) I tried to say that using people as disposable resources is present in our whole culture, on various levels of human interaction. I sometimes hear about unlucky marriages, for example, when one side is being thrown away when he or she becomes "useless", actually in my public/government TV there is a weekly program dedicated to such stories, mostly very unlucky people for whom the last hope to get out of the trap is getting their story to the audience and count on goodwill of the watchers - things like bona fide advice from a lawyer, or a doctor. This way of treating people just happens, often (in my opinion) between peers who are more or less equal initially but become more and more unequal because of infidelity. It should not be promoted but this is evolved behaviour, and as such it is not going away very soon. So, there is nothing specific to the rich. Article sent by Cindy G mentions that money is enabler and magnifier of already existing personality traits. I like this opinion, I subscribe to it. Article sent by Udhay was interesting, too. Albeit I noticed something that looked like a kneejerk reaction: in one place, the author mentioned that the guests' combined wealth was as big as city budget, yet still thousand times smaller than wealth of their host, at that time. Ok but this is just a number, kneejerking deprives you of broader look. Study chess, Sun Tzu and try to be a bit more optimistic - it does not matter how many figures our opponent has compared to you, it only matters if you can checkmate in next move or not :-). Interestingly, nobody knew why they had been invited by their host. Quite possibly he did not have any particular idea either, he probably was fishing for something interesting. Perhaps this is how he got into funding "10,000-year clock" [1]. Now one thing that did not come to my mind before is this. Evolution seems to come certain way, favour certain way - species whose members can interact, cowork, sometimes sacrifice their life for greater/common good are more successful and have more chance of survival. Billionaires way of secluding themselves, forcing their whims on the rest of humanity, goes against gradient of evolution. If they aim at becoming non-human, then this is going to be something from the past, i.e. evolutionary artifact, living fossil. They can call it transhuman, if they will, or anything else. My own idea of superhuman, something from the evolutionary future, is somebody more akin to Buddha or Jesus Christ, rather than augmented chimpanzee with orbital laser gun. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] ** -- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
