You will be greatly distressed upon hearing this, I know, but as a friend of yours and a project partner to boot, I feel very much obliged to tell you... I was approached by the café owner the other day who commented that we had been occupying a table for an increasingly long time with only a couple of glasses of wine.
Is that a complaint that we are undesirable customers?
Well, the suggestion was that we make each talk short and come more frequently.
So that we would be ordering more per hour?
It's a natural desire for a owner, isn't it?
But we are here to save the world and that single-handedly. It's a motivation much more sublime and worthy than profit making!
I am fully aware that you don't like talking about money, but even you can't deny that it is what allows us to live.
I thought it was food.
Unless you are a versatile farmer, you need money to purchase foodstuff.
To tell you the truth, I have been getting rather scared by the mightiness of it.
Shall we call money 'It,' if you feel more comfortable that way?
Recently, I have come to the conclusion that to live a full life is to seek maximum sensuous stimulus.
How could I have guessed that you would turn into a hedonist?
In what I call sensuous stimulus, I am including acquisition of intellectual insights and knowledge. You must know those 'Aha!' moments that give us great pleasure.
It could be instances of 'What the hell is this?'
Or, 'There is a unifying force behind all these seemingly unrelated phenomena...'
That must be why so many people love mystery/detective novels and conspiracy theories.
I agree. It's a pity, because the folks who restrict their reading to such material are diverting their energy that could be used to learn and understand mysteries in real life as well as true conspiracies.
Come on, we all need diversions!
Think about it. Isn't it rather irresponsible to be intensely interested in Miss Marple's adventures, but not at all in the mysteries of hedge funds, hoping your money will forever enjoy an above-the-average return, and complain about the financial regulators when it doesn't?
We neither have the time or the capacity to understand everything that goes on in this world.
True, but that is not a license for staying ignorant. As I claimed last time, in order to manage a complex world in the way we see fit, we need to be sophisticated enough to face the complexity. To me, the mechanism is the same as with the politicians. If the voters are sophisticated enough, so would be the politicians. If the private investors are vigilant enough, so would be the brokers.
On average and in the long run, you mean...
How else could you change their behavior?
Strikes and protests are certainly attention grabbing, but most likely for a short time and for the addressed issues only.
Getting back to the issue of sensuous stimuli, they do not need to be pleasure deriving.
So you are a masochist?
Not exactly. What we truly value about sensuous stimuli is that they make us forget everything else.
We are constantly in search of an escape from reality, then?
I would say that the feeling of being mesmerized and captivated is the best experience that life has to offer. We all seek it, although many are unconscious about their search. We would be mistaken to think that there is more to life.
I thought it was all about status, fame and money!
It would be awfully nice to have those, but only if they are associated with stimuli of the senses. Besides, we can acquire them even after we are dead, but not sensuous experiences.
Shall I ring up Hugh and ask him to organize a party in your honor?
Remember the stories of kings and queens, emperors and empresses, sultans and their wives, who were always on the look for something that would get them out of their boredom? The most famous example may be the preamble to 'One Thousand and One Nights.'
Their wealth and power would make life enjoyable only if they lead to interest-piquing ideas, objects and physical activities...
Wealth and power are useful in the sense that they enable you to meet celebrity people, see celebrity objects, and engage in very expensive activities, like going to the moon for fun. Such opportunities by themselves are excellent gossip fodder, but there is no guarantee that they would be anything meaningful. By the way, I was at the Palace of Versailles a while ago.
Cursing about all the bloody tourists who marred your view, right?
At first, I thought how nice it would be to turn into Louis XIV and have the entire place to myself. Then, I realized that I would quickly get used to it---having at my disposal the huge palace, gardens and hunting grounds. Looking outside the window from that vast residence, I would be clicking my tongue for want of something that I did not know before and turns out to be amusing.
I'm glad that you are of a budget-type. You could experience being a Louis XIV without building another palace for yourself.
I also realized that I need what we decided to call 'It' in order to obtain stimuli on a regular basis.
Getting to and entering natural parks, attending concerts, exhibitions, film shows and lectures, purchasing books, supplies, equipment, gear and instruments, taking lessons and courses, having a drink at a café, dining at a restaurant---all these activities require money.
My argument further implies that the poor people should not be deprived of such opportunities just because they happen not to have enough funds. They, too, should be allowed to indulge in what life can offer, through subsidies.
I can already hear objections to that. Some will say that the poor do not deserve it, because it is their laziness and/or lack of planning that led them to poverty.
I would like to emphasize here once again that it is human nature to downplay the roles of chance and luck in our lives and worldly events. Some are simply unlucky to be poor, and their children even more so. A humane society is to shoulder the burden of misfortune that is beyond anybody's control.
The poor may have bigger reasons to momentarily put the reality aside...
The trick is not to forget the reality altogether.
You said that life's joy is in moments that make us oblivious of everything but what is in front of us!
Yes, but we will be unhappy if we have a poor grasp of the reality.
You mean a misconception, such as your money manager cannot make mistakes.
Or, justice prevails.
Or, good work will be recognized as such against any odds.
It is tragicomic to go from one society to another and see what is common wisdom in one is not so in the other, and due to lack of such wisdom people suffer throughout their lives. It depends on the culture how much people attribute certain outcomes to chance and luck. So are the expectations that men and women have about each other. Even how much people take advertisements as impartial facts is culture dependent.
In sum, it is best to look at the reality straight in its face...
And seek as many opportunities as possible to turn your eyes away from it.
Isn't that the reason why some of us are addicted to traveling? We manage to forget about big issues in our lives by swapping them with the problem of how to get from Point Here to Point There when we have little idea about the local transportation system.
I wouldn't say 'the reason,' but one of the reasons for sure. But what's wrong with that? It poses an intellectual challenge in an unfamiliar milieu, and yet, we usually manage to accomplish our tasks.
It gives us a great sense of achievement, plus some funny stories to share later.
The best part is that we can laugh about ourselves in the end, which may not be true with respect to life.
... Comrade, the next round is on me... What would you like?
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