A personal experience shed light on all this for me: The first time I few business class internationally, I was amazed to find a smug, entitled attitude cropping up out of nowhere in my mind. I suddenly became a different person fro the one I've always tried to be: I was found myself believing that I was a more worthy and valuable person than hoi polloi passing me on their way to their seats in coach.
In real life I know exactly how I ended up economically where I did: what came from genes, what came from my parent's teaching and examples, what came from teachers, what came from luck, what came from study and work. But many have not benefited from the kinds of backgrounds that would allow them to resist, or even think about resisting, the kind of entitled attitude that raised its head as I sipped my pre-departure beverage.
There's something innate in us that wants to take all the credit. Indeed, it may be a strong incentive to succeed, with the growing sense of entitlement the internal reward that makes external wealth worth it. Since I now know I'm not "without sin" in this regard, I'm careful about being judgmental of others (with the exception of certain tech bros 😉.)
On the other hand, on the collective level, an overweening sense of entitlement can be contagious and harmful in a society. This is one reason I agree with Elle and others here that it's important for societies to find ways to limit/reduce disparities between rich and poor.
I agree that rich people are not any more naturally predisposed to be “the problem” any more than anyone else. If the problem is our propensity to stomp all over each other’s dignity and rights the second we get a little power over them, rich people just happen to be in a position to act most brazenly on it.
(As the film points out, those who grow up getting stepped on and break into the top tier of society often are among the worst offenders of abuse, because they carry vivid scars from their experience and see keeping others down as a matter of self preservation. When I think of billionaires who insist on accumulating even more wealth, I think of them as having some form of this mental illness).
What I push back on is the notion that this way of defining “status” is natural and inescapable. While I believe that humans will always want to be respected and loved by other members of their community, it hasn’t always been the case that said “status” has to come from wealth or power accumulation. (For now, I’m gonna label such status orientation as “capitalism,” which, implied in its name, grants the highest status to who can accumulate the most capital).
I am optimistic that as more and more people do inner psychological and spiritual work, accumulating more wealth and power than you need (especially if you lord it over others) will be seen as basic and gauche, in the same way that today many younger people seem look down on transparently flashing material possessions (ex. a sports car), as transparent insecure boomer shit. I realize this is a long-term project that won’t be solved by a policy decision, but I’m sincerely optimistic that it’s the next step of human evolution and that we’re well on our way (after all, we’ve more or less managed to stop glorifying and rewarding outright physical violence).
There have been cases in history where the highest “status” is instead conferred to people who display self-sacrifice and put others first, and no I don’t mean just cutting a check with a modest % of your earnings (the earliest incarnation of most major religions, certain indigenous communities, and certain anarchist communities come to mind). Yes, a “pecking order” is inescapable, but we can still refine pecking orders that are better for our happiness and for the planet around us.
Which then makes me think that perhaps rich people ARE the problem in at least one sense—since we’ve been socialized to look up to them as those who set values and trends, they perpetuate the mimetic desire to build up your sense of self-worth through accumulating wealth, one-upmanship, and displays of power over other people. So, while I believe in everyone’s inherent right to dignity and life, mercilessly mocking the very behaviors and games that used to bring rich people respect, making it socially untenable to be liked while hoarding wealth—I think that’s good for the world (not to mention, lots of fun).
This is a very good point: "Yes, a 'pecking order' is inescapable, but we can still refine pecking orders that are better for our happiness and for the planet around us."
The title alone says something about what kind of people we could be, and what kind of behaviors could be incentivized. To your point, I do think younger generations are heading in that direction as they become disgruntled by the effects of their parents!
Triangle of Sadness is one of the best allegories of the 21st century. I also *highly* recommend Ostlund's other films too, especially Force Majeure, which does to gendered & wealth/power-based relationships what Triangle does for how power infects humanity.
I do think this question of power is important, because we've chosen to associate power with financial wealth in this capitalist era, but it need not be so. The question for me is, knowing what we know about our innate desire for power (yes, we all struggle with it it; yes, even giving money away is a form of wielding power), how do we define power in such a way that it can be more virtuous than it currently is now?
"More virtuous power" - what an intriguing question. Consideration of power is something that Marx brought to the table, but it affects our public and private relationships in ways beyond what he pointed out. As a woman who can live, travel and shop quite adequately, I'm wondering what kinds of insights I'll have if I can remember to include power as an important concept in pondering my place in the world.
In response to one of your earlier posts I made the argument that the term "utopian" can mean many things, but something that I see as a core element is the idea that, on some level, better societies can create better people.
That's not to say that human nature is entirely pliable, or that any utopian society would be free of pettiness, anger, jealousy, greed, etc. . . but that context makes a difference and it is possible to cultivate generosity and fellow-feeling (and not only in disasters).
If I didn't believe that I think I would be much more conservative than I am.
"Beacon Island had structure. It had order. It had rank. It ended in tragedy. ‘Ata, on the other hand, was a jagged and vertical hunk of rock, but the society carved out by those boys over fifteen months was completely flat. These conflicting desert-island tales raise difficult questions. Are we doomed to exploitation because of bad humans or because of bad hierarchies? Why does the world seem to be full of so many Cornelisz-style leaders in positions of authority and so few like the boys on ‘Ata? And, if you and your coworkers ended up stranded on a desert island, would you overthrow the boss and work together as equals to solve problems like the Tongan teenagers? Or would there be a bloody struggle for power and dominance like there was on Beacon Island? How would you behave?
This book answers four main questions.
First, do worse people get power?
Second, does power make people worse?
Third, why do we let people control us who clearly have no business being in control?
Fourth, how can we ensure that incorruptible people get into power and wield it justly?"
I came here to mention the story of those castaway boys and the contrast to the different story in The Lord of the Flies. Turns out I was confused about the relationship between those two things, but I agree with the overall point that so much of "human nature" and whether people are selfish or altruistic depends on the context and the structure of each situation. The modern world is filled with a lot of contexts that promote selfishness, and this is only made worse by in-groups and out-groups. But there are many contexts where altruism thrives. Plus, humans never would have made it out of the caves without a base level of cooperation.
Yes, I agree! Whether we are more selfish or altruistic depends on our surroundings. We can engineer better surroundings and increase altruism. Or worsen them and increase selfishness. We've seen both things happen!
Yes, I very much agree with this. Christopher Alexander talks about this in the context of city design in his The Timeless Way of Building. He says:
“There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work, in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself. The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.”
Yes, I think we're on the same page, and I brought that up because I think it prompts further questions. As you say in the ending of the piece, you aren't fully convinced by the bleakness of the movie -- it doesn't convince you that humans are just brutal and foolish, so then the question is, "under what circumstances is it true that money makes people act like this?"
An anarchist would say that living in a society with great imbalances of power and wealth is corrosive, and that in a world in which the super-rich and powerful didn't exist then people would be less conditioned to those expressions of hierarchy.
Or you could say that, for most people, connections to community, and friends and family are what keep them from being nihilistic, so maybe you wonder about the choices in society that make it more difficult to form friendships, and whether that is an important context for the story (https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friendship )
Or, the Brian Klass excerpt would suggest a different question -- is there a structure in place such that people who start out with a low level of empathy and fellow-feeling would be more likely to seek the jobs portrayed in the film? Is there self-selection going on?
I think cultural ideologies come into play here (not sure what word to use besides "ideology".) Religions can help societies rise above basic human instincts, and so can strong ethical norms. Societies do better with some form of what we individualists would call indoctrination. Every set of ethical/cultural norms, beneficial as they might be to a society, ends up being rebelled against and overturned, because they inevitably become overbearing. This probably also happens because human adolescents inevitably rebel and challenge the norms.
The question that concerns me is how can we keep everything from falling apart during transition eras like the one we're in now. The movie sounds like it can provide some beneficial input along these lines. Just getting people to think is half the battle.
"Think about all those starving people in China" really wasn't a bad message, but I wish the New Testament hadn't gone out of style during this century.
I think sometimes about the quote from Lenny Bruce -- it's so deeply moral, on some level, and it feels so far from contemporary discussion of wealth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36vvHUWhK8
"My salary is 20-fold school teachers in states like Oklahoma. They get $3200 a year, which is a disgrace . . . Zsa Zsa Gabor will get $50,000 a week in that town. School teachers' salaries in that state, the top salary, is $6,000 a year. This is really sick, and that's the kind of sick material I wish that Time magazine would have written about. I'm not that much of a moralist, if I were I'd be donating my salary then, to school teachers. I admit that. If we were going to levy a tax and raise school teachers to $750 a week I would approve of it and pay the tax like that because I realise it's an insurance factor. . . . I'm a hustler, as long as they give I'll grab. But I know that someday there's going to be a tribunal. We'll all have to answer, I'm sure of it. I'm just waiting for the day. I'm saving some money to give back. 'I know I was stealing; I didn't mean to take it, they gave it to me.' . . . ."
Well, rather than rely on any one idea, here I would rely on case studies. And I still think the Nordic Countries so far provide the best example of a society without imbalances of power and wealth. This is why I'm very pro social democracy.
I really liked this article. We are naive about what it will take to create a just society. This film reveals our self-serving natures, unmodified by grace. We are altruistic, or can be, but helping someone start their car is probably not on the necessary scale. We need charity, seeing the other as ourselves, and treating the other so, even to the point of giving up our lives if necessary. Many saints have done just that. But it is far from easy.
One of the recent quotes that has been on my mind comes from Shirley Chisholm. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). She understood the problem!
Basically, we can all be decent people until we have to deal with money! Whether rich or poor, we all face the battle of human nature. Great article. I need to see the movie!
A personal experience shed light on all this for me: The first time I few business class internationally, I was amazed to find a smug, entitled attitude cropping up out of nowhere in my mind. I suddenly became a different person fro the one I've always tried to be: I was found myself believing that I was a more worthy and valuable person than hoi polloi passing me on their way to their seats in coach.
In real life I know exactly how I ended up economically where I did: what came from genes, what came from my parent's teaching and examples, what came from teachers, what came from luck, what came from study and work. But many have not benefited from the kinds of backgrounds that would allow them to resist, or even think about resisting, the kind of entitled attitude that raised its head as I sipped my pre-departure beverage.
There's something innate in us that wants to take all the credit. Indeed, it may be a strong incentive to succeed, with the growing sense of entitlement the internal reward that makes external wealth worth it. Since I now know I'm not "without sin" in this regard, I'm careful about being judgmental of others (with the exception of certain tech bros 😉.)
On the other hand, on the collective level, an overweening sense of entitlement can be contagious and harmful in a society. This is one reason I agree with Elle and others here that it's important for societies to find ways to limit/reduce disparities between rich and poor.
I appreciate this introspection, it can be hard for us to recognize that we can easily fall into the same behavior we criticize!
I’ve been thinking about this article all week.
I agree that rich people are not any more naturally predisposed to be “the problem” any more than anyone else. If the problem is our propensity to stomp all over each other’s dignity and rights the second we get a little power over them, rich people just happen to be in a position to act most brazenly on it.
(As the film points out, those who grow up getting stepped on and break into the top tier of society often are among the worst offenders of abuse, because they carry vivid scars from their experience and see keeping others down as a matter of self preservation. When I think of billionaires who insist on accumulating even more wealth, I think of them as having some form of this mental illness).
What I push back on is the notion that this way of defining “status” is natural and inescapable. While I believe that humans will always want to be respected and loved by other members of their community, it hasn’t always been the case that said “status” has to come from wealth or power accumulation. (For now, I’m gonna label such status orientation as “capitalism,” which, implied in its name, grants the highest status to who can accumulate the most capital).
I am optimistic that as more and more people do inner psychological and spiritual work, accumulating more wealth and power than you need (especially if you lord it over others) will be seen as basic and gauche, in the same way that today many younger people seem look down on transparently flashing material possessions (ex. a sports car), as transparent insecure boomer shit. I realize this is a long-term project that won’t be solved by a policy decision, but I’m sincerely optimistic that it’s the next step of human evolution and that we’re well on our way (after all, we’ve more or less managed to stop glorifying and rewarding outright physical violence).
There have been cases in history where the highest “status” is instead conferred to people who display self-sacrifice and put others first, and no I don’t mean just cutting a check with a modest % of your earnings (the earliest incarnation of most major religions, certain indigenous communities, and certain anarchist communities come to mind). Yes, a “pecking order” is inescapable, but we can still refine pecking orders that are better for our happiness and for the planet around us.
Which then makes me think that perhaps rich people ARE the problem in at least one sense—since we’ve been socialized to look up to them as those who set values and trends, they perpetuate the mimetic desire to build up your sense of self-worth through accumulating wealth, one-upmanship, and displays of power over other people. So, while I believe in everyone’s inherent right to dignity and life, mercilessly mocking the very behaviors and games that used to bring rich people respect, making it socially untenable to be liked while hoarding wealth—I think that’s good for the world (not to mention, lots of fun).
This is a very good point: "Yes, a 'pecking order' is inescapable, but we can still refine pecking orders that are better for our happiness and for the planet around us."
I do think that is the goal. And I do think the Nordic countries have done a better job of achieving that than the US has. I loved this article, "The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/business/bezos-yacht-rotterdam.html?searchResultPosition=5
The title alone says something about what kind of people we could be, and what kind of behaviors could be incentivized. To your point, I do think younger generations are heading in that direction as they become disgruntled by the effects of their parents!
The Dutch never cease to amaze me!
A Dutch person once told me that they call their high taxes "sharing".
Triangle of Sadness is one of the best allegories of the 21st century. I also *highly* recommend Ostlund's other films too, especially Force Majeure, which does to gendered & wealth/power-based relationships what Triangle does for how power infects humanity.
I do think this question of power is important, because we've chosen to associate power with financial wealth in this capitalist era, but it need not be so. The question for me is, knowing what we know about our innate desire for power (yes, we all struggle with it it; yes, even giving money away is a form of wielding power), how do we define power in such a way that it can be more virtuous than it currently is now?
"More virtuous power" - what an intriguing question. Consideration of power is something that Marx brought to the table, but it affects our public and private relationships in ways beyond what he pointed out. As a woman who can live, travel and shop quite adequately, I'm wondering what kinds of insights I'll have if I can remember to include power as an important concept in pondering my place in the world.
No. The rich are the problem.
We use the comment section for productive debate, I'm afraid you'll need to back up your position? 🥰
In response to one of your earlier posts I made the argument that the term "utopian" can mean many things, but something that I see as a core element is the idea that, on some level, better societies can create better people.
That's not to say that human nature is entirely pliable, or that any utopian society would be free of pettiness, anger, jealousy, greed, etc. . . but that context makes a difference and it is possible to cultivate generosity and fellow-feeling (and not only in disasters).
If I didn't believe that I think I would be much more conservative than I am.
Something else that this reminds me of is the opening chapter of Brian Klass's book _Corruptible_ which is freely readable on the website: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154103
"Beacon Island had structure. It had order. It had rank. It ended in tragedy. ‘Ata, on the other hand, was a jagged and vertical hunk of rock, but the society carved out by those boys over fifteen months was completely flat. These conflicting desert-island tales raise difficult questions. Are we doomed to exploitation because of bad humans or because of bad hierarchies? Why does the world seem to be full of so many Cornelisz-style leaders in positions of authority and so few like the boys on ‘Ata? And, if you and your coworkers ended up stranded on a desert island, would you overthrow the boss and work together as equals to solve problems like the Tongan teenagers? Or would there be a bloody struggle for power and dominance like there was on Beacon Island? How would you behave?
This book answers four main questions.
First, do worse people get power?
Second, does power make people worse?
Third, why do we let people control us who clearly have no business being in control?
Fourth, how can we ensure that incorruptible people get into power and wield it justly?"
I came here to mention the story of those castaway boys and the contrast to the different story in The Lord of the Flies. Turns out I was confused about the relationship between those two things, but I agree with the overall point that so much of "human nature" and whether people are selfish or altruistic depends on the context and the structure of each situation. The modern world is filled with a lot of contexts that promote selfishness, and this is only made worse by in-groups and out-groups. But there are many contexts where altruism thrives. Plus, humans never would have made it out of the caves without a base level of cooperation.
Yes, I agree! Whether we are more selfish or altruistic depends on our surroundings. We can engineer better surroundings and increase altruism. Or worsen them and increase selfishness. We've seen both things happen!
Yes, I very much agree with this. Christopher Alexander talks about this in the context of city design in his The Timeless Way of Building. He says:
“There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work, in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself. The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.”
Yes, I think we're on the same page, and I brought that up because I think it prompts further questions. As you say in the ending of the piece, you aren't fully convinced by the bleakness of the movie -- it doesn't convince you that humans are just brutal and foolish, so then the question is, "under what circumstances is it true that money makes people act like this?"
An anarchist would say that living in a society with great imbalances of power and wealth is corrosive, and that in a world in which the super-rich and powerful didn't exist then people would be less conditioned to those expressions of hierarchy.
Or you could say that, for most people, connections to community, and friends and family are what keep them from being nihilistic, so maybe you wonder about the choices in society that make it more difficult to form friendships, and whether that is an important context for the story (https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friendship )
Or, the Brian Klass excerpt would suggest a different question -- is there a structure in place such that people who start out with a low level of empathy and fellow-feeling would be more likely to seek the jobs portrayed in the film? Is there self-selection going on?
I think cultural ideologies come into play here (not sure what word to use besides "ideology".) Religions can help societies rise above basic human instincts, and so can strong ethical norms. Societies do better with some form of what we individualists would call indoctrination. Every set of ethical/cultural norms, beneficial as they might be to a society, ends up being rebelled against and overturned, because they inevitably become overbearing. This probably also happens because human adolescents inevitably rebel and challenge the norms.
The question that concerns me is how can we keep everything from falling apart during transition eras like the one we're in now. The movie sounds like it can provide some beneficial input along these lines. Just getting people to think is half the battle.
"Think about all those starving people in China" really wasn't a bad message, but I wish the New Testament hadn't gone out of style during this century.
I think sometimes about the quote from Lenny Bruce -- it's so deeply moral, on some level, and it feels so far from contemporary discussion of wealth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36vvHUWhK8
"My salary is 20-fold school teachers in states like Oklahoma. They get $3200 a year, which is a disgrace . . . Zsa Zsa Gabor will get $50,000 a week in that town. School teachers' salaries in that state, the top salary, is $6,000 a year. This is really sick, and that's the kind of sick material I wish that Time magazine would have written about. I'm not that much of a moralist, if I were I'd be donating my salary then, to school teachers. I admit that. If we were going to levy a tax and raise school teachers to $750 a week I would approve of it and pay the tax like that because I realise it's an insurance factor. . . . I'm a hustler, as long as they give I'll grab. But I know that someday there's going to be a tribunal. We'll all have to answer, I'm sure of it. I'm just waiting for the day. I'm saving some money to give back. 'I know I was stealing; I didn't mean to take it, they gave it to me.' . . . ."
Well, rather than rely on any one idea, here I would rely on case studies. And I still think the Nordic Countries so far provide the best example of a society without imbalances of power and wealth. This is why I'm very pro social democracy.
But Nordics countries are run by Nordics, do you believe Social Democracy can work for the rest of us?
Yes, if we enact it on a state level! I wrote about that in this post: https://www.elysian.press/p/us-state-become-a-utopian-country
And also in this post: https://www.elysian.press/p/states-could-have-universal-healthcare
I really liked this article. We are naive about what it will take to create a just society. This film reveals our self-serving natures, unmodified by grace. We are altruistic, or can be, but helping someone start their car is probably not on the necessary scale. We need charity, seeing the other as ourselves, and treating the other so, even to the point of giving up our lives if necessary. Many saints have done just that. But it is far from easy.
"Grace" is one of my favorite words in this context.
Will watch tonight, then read and respond. Thanks for the recommendation.
One of the recent quotes that has been on my mind comes from Shirley Chisholm. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). She understood the problem!
Basically, we can all be decent people until we have to deal with money! Whether rich or poor, we all face the battle of human nature. Great article. I need to see the movie!
"Whether rich or poor, we all face the battle of human nature!" Perfectly said!