{"id":853,"date":"2017-01-01T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=853"},"modified":"2017-01-01T11:43:11","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T16:43:11","slug":"trump-and-a-meditation-on-buying-stuff-to-make-yourself-feel-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=853","title":{"rendered":"Trump… and a meditation on buying stuff to make yourself feel better."},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us know \u2014 or suspect \u2014 that we don\u2019t always buy things because we need them, but because we think we\u2019ll feel better\/more complete. Advertisements and reviews can hint that you\u2019ll be better looking\/cooler\/more manly\/more well-liked (or whatever<\/em>) if you just had this watch, or that jacket, or the new car, blender, book (OMG the promise of books…).<\/p>\n

Then we buy it, and often experience buyer\u2019s remorse, or just a vague sense that it \u00a0just wasn\u2019t right.<\/em> In any case, the promised perfect future isn\u2019t here.<\/p>\n

Most people either run out of cash to keep trying again or go deep into debt to keep buying more\/ better quality\/faster\/bigger\/more expensive things. Some people with more money actually buy stuff and then give it away soon after to make room so they can buy the latest stuff.<\/p>\n

Some recognize the futility and try to find other paths to personal fulfillment, or try things like volunteering\u00a0instead of purchasing.<\/p>\n

These are really hard paths, not least because our whole society is set up to keep us hoping the next gadget or guru will be The One.<\/p>\n

Even volunteering to help people can lead to the same disappointment; \u201coh, look, there are still homeless people, I\u2019ve failed again.\u201d (I\u2019m not trying to discourage volunteering, by the way. \ud83d\ude42 I just suggest that you meditate a little on why you\u2019re doing it. Being really clear on your motivations will probably keep you focused for longer and prevent burnout. Heck, it might even keep you from being badly used.)<\/p>\n

But now imagine that you are so rich that you not only have marketing people manipulating you to think \u201cthis is\u00a0it!<\/em>\u201d
\nyou also have hangers-on manipulating you to keep spending money because their<\/em> chance for wealth depends on you thinking that.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not particularly self-aware, it\u2019s not even likely that you\u2019ll recognize what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly easy to see this pattern in Trump. If he can just build the best<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0resort, the biggest tower, the fanciest golf course…\u00a0he\u2019ll get the adulation and satisfaction he craves.<\/p>\n

Picture Trump in 2015: his 70th<\/sup> birthday is looming. He may not have many years left. He has his name on towers, golf courses, luxury resorts.\u00a0It\u2019s all a bit flat.<\/p>\n

He sets his sights on a new project; running for president. It\u2019s absurd, over-the-top… it\u2019s classic Trump. Ahh, now the hangers-on are really excited. This next vanity project is one that they can not only make serious money on, but\u00a0maybe even get serious power, which is the ultimate prize at this level…<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see Trump as a buffoon; it\u2019s less easy to remember that nearly all of us have similar base urges; we just have more obvious limits. If you make $30,000 or $100,000 a year, you\u2019re pretty likely to run into your limits fairly soon. If you make $10,000,000 a year, your\u00a0limits are probably less obvious.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that understanding that we have something in common with this guy means letting him off the hook. We absolutely\u00a0have to fight him; and\u00a0even more importantly, we have to fight the manipulators who helped him get to the point of being elected as\u00a0the President of the United States, but we should at least be aware of\u00a0our similarities, even if… or maybe particularly if… looking in this mirror makes us uncomfortable. I suspect that it\u2019s hard to fight efficiently and effectively if we are in denial about our own weaknesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of us know \u2014 or suspect \u2014 that we don\u2019t always buy things because we need them, but because we think we\u2019ll feel better\/more complete. Advertisements and reviews can hint that you\u2019ll be better looking\/cooler\/more manly\/more well-liked (or whatever) if you just had this watch, or that jacket, or the new car, blender, book … Continue reading “Trump… and a meditation on buying stuff to make yourself feel better.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,46],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophizing","category-social-commentary","tag-impulse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-dL","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":0},"title":"Tri-turbofan Radio remote control RC blimp\/saucer","author":"Jorah","date":"February 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dammit, someone should buy me one of these babies. Just because. (waaaaaah!) Tri-turbofan Radio remote control RC blimp\/saucer: \"The best features of the Twin-Turbofan design augmented in the Tri-Turbofan System! The Tri-Turbofan is the natural progression of the R\/C Indoor Radio Controlled Airship product line. This is high performance Indoor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=15","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":1},"title":"The Inevitable Sales Pitch","author":"Jorah","date":"April 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Yup, after failure as a freelance web designer, I've gotta prove to myself that I can make at least a buck or two with all these hard won skills (cough, cough). So... buy something from me, and I'll get a pittance. I'll try to at least make the offers interesting!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":291,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=291","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":2},"title":"Just Leave It There","author":"Jorah","date":"November 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A guy I follow on Fitocracy wrote a blog post called \"Leave It There.\" I read the post about three weeks ago. Given that I read stuff all day long\u2014lots of stuff\u2014you might think that I'd have forgotten about this single blog post. I haven't. In fact, I would guess\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1028,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1028","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":3},"title":"Knitter’s Inventory","author":"Jorah","date":"July 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been thinking this morning about my \"knitting journey.\" This fall I'll hit my 4-year mark from when I started to learn to knit. I have 54 finished projects in my list on Rav, or about one F.O. per month. More than I expected, really. But I've never been interested\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":759,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=759","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":4},"title":"Why don’t we teach our kids critical thinking skills?","author":"Jorah","date":"August 16, 2015","format":"aside","excerpt":"I was reading this thread on Quora, and one of the comments included the observation that we teach American schoolchildren scientific facts (if even this), but rarely teach the scientific method, which would better enable them to figure things out for themselves. I have thought about this off and on,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophizing"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":141,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=141","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":5},"title":"Reloading… reloaded","author":"Jorah","date":"April 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"FINALLY, after 22 months without doing any reloading, then weeks of ordering bench parts, buying lumber, uncrating presses, organizing tools, ordering components... I acutally sat down and made some rounds today. I finished making some .30-06, around 130 of them, and am working my way through my first batch of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}