Dressed in red velvet, she trampled under her reckless feet the stray flowers fallen from other heads, and held out a salver to the two friends, with careless hands. The white arms stood out in bold relief against the velvet. Proud of her beauty; proud (who knows?) of her corruption, she stood like a queen of pleasure, like an incarnation of enjoyment; the enjoyment that comes of squandering the accumulations of three generations; that scoffs at its progenitors, and makes merry over a corpse; that will dissolve pearls and wreck thrones, turn old men into boys, and make young men prematurely old; enjoyment only possible to giants weary of their power, tormented by reflection, or for whom strife has become a plaything.
– Honore De Balzac, The Magic Skin
I don’t get out all that much these days, but last evening I had a really engaging and illuminating dinner conversation. In attendance was a 47-year old commercial real estate investor and fellow Boulder resident who I’ve become friends with, a 32-year old professional poker player looking to move here, and 28-year old tech startup founder. Although I hadn’t met the younger attendees before, it became immediately apparent that everyone in attendance was highly intelligent and very engaged with the world around them.
We discussed religion, philosophy, crypto assets, the importance of nature to humans, travel and more. That said, the reason I’m writing this post is due to some of the generational observations I came upon. It confirmed the overall thesis I discussed in detail within last month’s post, The Generational Wheels Are Turning.
Here are a couple of passages from that piece to refresh your memory:
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The most significant challenge of our times relates to the ongoing theft of society’s wealth across the board by a very small group of people known as “oligarchs,” the “super rich,” the “overclass,” etc. Whatever you want to call them, this group is hellbent on using political cronyism in faux democracies across the global to aggregate all the world’s wealth and power, while concurrently implementing an Orwellian surveillance state spy-grid in order to protect their fiefdoms once the plebs finally become restless. This much we know.