Last weekend, i spent some time with 2 very distinct and pretty different groups of people. thinking about that night, i noticed such a stark contrast not only in terms of the conversations that we had, but more so in my response to the conversations and my feelings during and after the encounters.
set 1, i like to call the new young crew. here were young'uns who seemingly wanted to make a difference, but wer also obviously skeptical. they were quite an eclectic mix, including those that worked for ngos, private companies with social focuses (or is it foci), those passionate about building up african leaders and entreprenuers, etc. talking to these guys and gals really re-juvenated me and i could feel a bit of my youthful hope come back again. only a bit tho...
pan over to group 2. later the same day, i spent the rest of the night with the group known simply as dear friends. these guys i've known for a few years now and some i feel like i've known for most of my life. some of them can still remember wild dreams of making a difference, but had since been hit by reality bugs. much of our dialogue revolved around money and more money and cars and houses and more bling. it was about how much you made and how much your boss makes and what you need to do in order to get to where you matter (of course, "matter" purely defined by your salary and bonuses). i hope my sheer excitement (and sarcasm, hopefully) shines through my words.
frankly, i dont think those kinds of convos have ever interested me. but im not gonna lie, i like having money and certainly believe that it's necessary. but to make a whole night of discussion out of money (or at least most of it) got quite a bit depressing as well. are we really so defined by how much we make and what we can do to earn more? why the obsession with earning more or looking to emulate those that do? are we defined by our economic class? does our social status depend on it? admittedly, the answer to some of these questions is "yes", whether i choose to accept it or not. but does it have to remain like that?
now im being a bit too harsh on group #2; afterall i did enjoy talking to them. both groups in fact had something in common. i think ultimately, we all want to make a name for ourselves and want to make a difference, either in the lives of our families, those immediately around us, or in our community, locale, country, world. how we do that, i guess, is where the 2 groups might differ (tho not necesarily so).
i would like to think that i enjoy discussing ways of impacting the world around me, practically, than how i'm gonna get rich. i think i would rather make others around me wealthy and well off (the right way, of course) than exploit from them for my own good. don't get me wrong tho, i also need to live comfortably and need a career that caters to my home, vehicle, and vacationing desires. but am i really that old fashioned or naive to think that i can find or make a career that does not see as mutually exclusive the 2 goals of helping people and making money at the same time? (that might look and feel like a question, but i have a pretty good answer to it!) am i crazy to enjoy discussions about what i did to make that money that im making, regardless of what it is, than simply talking about the money.
i think i lot of people misread me and my mba (thats right, the degree that keeps me warm at night!). a lot of my post-mba discussions now for some reason start and end with exclamations of how this degree should just launch me salary-wise and how i need to start looking to buy and enjoy certain pleasures in life now that i hold the almighty capitalist degree. while i definitely expect to earn more money because of the mba, i dont think its a license to start having discussions about money for money sake. hmm, for some reason, that just doesnt seem very interesting to me. maybe im a bit odd?
side note: comedian steve harvey writes, in his book, that men are driven by "who they are, what they do and how much they make". until they accomplish these things, they are unlikely to feel they've fulfilled their destiny as men. dunno what i think about that, but it reminds me of one word. and that word is: bullshit!
post-post: happy superbowl sunday!
9 comments:
My god, son, I can't believe that I have to be the one to tell you this.... sit down, you might feel a little feint.
Do you really want to know why people "become disillusioned?" Media and television. Come now. The more overall time you spend in front of the tube, the more you are convinced that you need to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like - the idiot box is founded on making people feel less worthy so that they will go out and buy things to make themselves more worthy.
My bigger issue here is the amount that whatever-it-is (because I could be wrong about the media, maybe it's just peer pressure) has eroded their personal sense of self so far that they cannot see themselves being defined by anything else. That comes through dramatically in your post.
Money is good and important. what i can tell you about group one, they were of different ages, some older than you. but it seems like they have realised that passion should come first before money.
reading bout group 2, i felt immensely sad...I hope i dont ever become that.
what makes u look forward to another day?
I would have thought that an mba, would help explore the vast opportunities out there, and make use of the now developed entrepreneurial mind to see how passion, sustainability and profitability converge. An mba is also to help streamline your interests, change careers and not only to increase one's pay.
sarai: i think the love of $$ much predated tv and media and even w/o those the issue would remain, but i get what you mean.
$po: wise words, esp coming from a non-mba-er! how do you know so much about an mba??
Ah, but you forget - before there was mainstream media, there was no such thing as consumerism or capitalism - people only bought what they needed and nothing else. Without needs, they were satisified with less. The average non-aristocrat that is. The industrial revolution is what changed us from a need-driven to a want-driven society.
sarai, I beg to differ with your version of history! modern media did not create greed and consumerism. We see this throughout the history of civilisations and emperors and even our own great and great great great grand parents and uncles. media may have taken advantage and "perfected" the general sentiment, but it certainly did not create it. greed was around long before media/consumerism and will be around much longer.
Ha ha - I meant specifically that you did not have consumers as an entity before the Industrial Revolution because there was no mass production of goods for sale to satisfy the wants of a population. In order for the population to be convinced that they "needed" such items, advertising and mainstream meadia were created. Prior to that there was no "consumerism" because consumers did not exist. In the days of yore, most people were slaves and did not earn money. Before the Roman Empire, money wasn't even used.
i refuse to give in! ha. i contend that even before the ind revolution and mass production you still had quite a bit of consumerism. money is simply currency as we know it today. before this type of currency, there were others in terms of trade (sugar, silk, cows, whatever). people were just as greedy wanting to find out how their neighbor got so "wealthy" and what they can do to get to that level. i don't even know how we started this debate anymore!
Ha ha - me neither! But it's still a fun topic - we should continue in person over popcorn and beer.
I looove this post. Stuff like this is why you still get a full thumbs up at my annual friend review. (Tho I worry about the fact that you are reading Steve Harvey's books) I couldn't think of anything more depressing than talking about money when you could be talking about how to realising dreams. I think people lose idealism because living the dreams becomes tough, as all novel pursuits become, and you start to surround urself with disillusioned people, who convince you that dreaming is for children. People who make it big in life are never the disillusioned or the highly educated - its the big dreamers (think Richard Brandson, Hugh Hefner,Warren Buffet) who change the world and somewhere in chasing dreams they always seem to make the most money.
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