My main observation is that for individuals born into extreme wealth, it is almost impossible to grasp anything about material or social reality. In Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes rich people as “clumsy” — instinctively “retreating into their money” to avoid ever facing the outcomes of their actions. This is certainly true for second gens. To inherit a condition of unjustifiable wealth means to never experience cause and effect. All external pressures are alleviated by capital: there are no consequences to missing a deadline, to not finishing a project, to dropping out or giving up. It is terrifically difficult to fail, in any normal sense.
In a kind of a zen way, those born ultra-rich live perpetually in the moment. Since they understand very little about causality, they do not understand how events happen or things get made. They can be filled with mystical wonderment at the spontaneous generation of material reality. They can also be blind to social realities that sit outside their lived knowledge, which is terrifyingly narrow.
That the unjustifiably wealthy are unfit for rule is self-evident; I would sooner wish our political and corporate leaders were chosen by random ballot than I would be led by a second gen entrepreneurial visionary.
I am describing a metaphorical wall that circumscribes obscene wealth, cutting the rich off from their own humanity. It is load-bearing, integral to their psyches and thus immovable. It is erected upon a foundation of paranoia, distrust and fear. The ultra-rich suspect that everyone wants only one thing from them…
I am forced to admit that, over the years, I have also been hosted within several gated communities belonging to the ultra-rich: located at the centres of cities like LA and Dubai, and flung far beyond the fringes of places like Marfa or Palm Springs. The desert settlement has always interested me the most – more than the leafy private streets of London or the humid compounds of Southeast Asia.
Within desert gated communities, the first thing you notice is the silence. It is an almost physical presence, almost funereal. Privacy and distance are everywhere respected. Hidden amongst the palm groves, squat, blind houses withdraw into their deep and cool interiors (clad with the marble of mausolea). From beyond the perimeter walls, such oases resemble date orchards or coconut plantations. From within, great oceans of cambered asphalt divide up discrete residences; the streets are so wide that even mature trees cannot cast shadows across them.
At sunrise, half the world is frigid and half of it is on fire; these unmediated extremes lack any gradation, like the surface of Mercury. By afternoon, the heat waves roll in from distant salt seas or dunes. As they break across the canopy, the air disperses into an oppressive oven-hot downward draft. Gates within the outer wall are indicated by a little cluster of cameras, metalwork and a glass box containing a life-size toy policeman.
We are living through a period of societal collapse. This isn’t a factual statement, but an emotional one. It feels like we are approaching the end of a specific social contract. Modernity is a project founded on patriarchal domination, on linear time, infinite extraction and unstoppable accumulation. In its five centuries, it has evolved into such an unnatural paradigm that it now only survives through extreme and perpetual violence; perpetrated indifferently against both humans and non-humans alike.
The dividends of modernity were social, civic and material. It brought prosperity (for some), but this was purchased at the expense of many peoples’ whole lives, and, of course, our collective futures. It proffered ‘universal’ rights, backed by the legislative and juridical instruments required to temper the worst of humanity’s instincts. But if modernity’s ‘rights’ are indeed universal, there is no need to think they are bound up in the modern project. The end of this paradigm does not mean ideas like inclusivity, equity or justice will evaporate. What it does mean is the end of the assumption that the advancement of such rights is irreversible. We increasingly understand that even the most basic freedoms are highly contested, contingent on social relations.
https://www.macguffinmagazine.com/stories/macguffin-plutocrat-archipelagos