Sour Grapes

An anonymous commenter left the remark "sour grapes" on my post yesterday. I thought it was ironic because I was thinking about that very subject myself just the other day. I thought it would make a good blog post, so here it is.

The term "sour grapes" comes from one of Aesop's fables. Once upon a time, a fox was going through the woods when he saw some grapes hanging overhead. They looked very tasty, so he tried to get them. He would run and jump, but he could not reach them. He tried to climb the tree, but he was not adept at climbing. Defeated, the fox looks at the grapes and says, "They are sour anyway." Then, he went on his way.

The point of the story is that it illustrates how people pretend not to want what they do not have or cannot have. There is some truth to it. But what happens when it is something that you can have? And what if these things are simply unreal?

There is one thing I can say unequivocally. Being rich is better than being poor. Having money is better than not having money. Granted, money creates new problems such as fake friends and envy from peers. But these pale in comparison to some poor mother in Africa who has lost her newborn because she could not afford to travel to see a doctor. The fact is that I am very lucky to be born in the USA, and I never forget this. On every measure relative to the rest of the world, Americans are rich. This is why I champion the free market because it is freedom that creates this prosperity and spreads it around the world.

But there is a downside to money, but this is within the mind of the rich person. Some people deal with it well while others do not. People with sudden wealth have a bad habit of blowing it almost as quickly as they acquired it. Then, there are those without money who aspire to be like those rich fools and dig a pit of debt for themselves. Do I envy these people? Nope. You can call this "sour grapes" and say "shit on the haters." But I don't care to be like these debtors.

These things are what are known as "vanities." This would be the fox who actually got the grapes only to find that they are neither sour nor sweet but fake. In our times, these would be the real people that I have witnessed buy houses they could not afford and end up much worse off. The reason I don't fall into disasters like this is a direct result of my modest living. Is this sour grapes on my part? Well, I could have financed a home myself on my good credit considering that bad credit was no longer a barrier to owning a home. In that respect, it was not sour grapes because the grapes were mine anytime I wanted them.

You are never going to hear me say that dating a supermodel isn't worth it. Supermodels are hot, and if you can avail yourself, please do so. For me to knock on supermodels would be sour grapes indeed. I know they are out of my league, but they are still quite delicious. I can also add the Porsche and the Ferrari to the mix. I can't afford those, but they are also quite sweet.

What would it take to get these sweet things? Basically, you need money. So, how do you get money? Well you can work hard and save for it like I do. But the people that buy these things and get fabulously rich don't work. They might put in some long days, but their rewards are completely out of proportion to the labor. I have to laugh when some slick rock star talks about how the band and he were "hard at work" in the studio. Well, I am hard at work at what I do, but you don't see me with millions.

These folks get rich because of luck. The irony is that because people are famous they are not necessarily rich. Some earn a lot and get screwed out of it. Other people are just in the public eye, but they have yet to get a pay day. This would be bloggers popular enough to give up their day jobs, but they still earn at the median income.

I know that I can make a lot of money. This is because I know how the big money gets made. You simply get rid of all moral scruples and work in financial services. Nerds might make decent money as programmers and engineers. Others become doctors and dentists. Still others wait tables and roll the dice for a career in showbiz. But the easy and quick way is to fuck all those other people out of their money. If you doubt this, how many times have you heard of rock stars surprised that they are broke while their manager is making out like a bandit?

The reason I am not rich is very simple. I have moral standards. I never begrudge doctors and entertainers their wealth because they do not deceive anyone to get what they have. I feel sorry for them when they get screwed out of their earnings by duplicitous people without a conscience. These are the people who were getting rich off of the housing bubble, and they even knew it was going to end badly. But fees get collected on the way up and on the way down. If you are someone who believes it is immoral to allow a sucker to keep his money, you want to get yourself into the financial services sector. And don't worry. Uncle Sam will bail you out if things go against you. Slime looks out for its own.

When I was a kid, I used to look at these hot shot players as something I aspired to be. I wanted to be Gordon Gekko. I thought that guy was awesome. But as I got older and wiser, I realized that being like that has a moral cost. This is Slime World. I know it very well, but I don't live there. I don't envy those people. The fact that the people in Slime World dream of getting out should tell you something.

People who live in Slime World believe that others envy them. They don't. Other people simply hate them for being slime. The other is that they believe they have earned their privileged status, and that others are somehow inferior to them. This inferiority is what we in the normal world call "morality." To live in Slime World requires a certain degree of self-delusion and ignorance. For someone like me who knows better, it requires a pure sense of nihilistic evil. I am not able to be this evil. My intelligence divorced from moral constraint would make me wealthy. This is my "weakness." I can't pull this off.

At the end of the day, I want to feel good about how I earn a living. If this means making an average income and living modestly, I am quite fine with that. I have a good life. If I doubt this, I think of Africa or North Korea. I would love to make more, and I will never turn down a raise. But I made the decision a decade ago that whatever I did, it would be in this real and honest world of the blue collar man. Of all the things I write about here, the blue collar theme is the least popular. This is because most of the people who read my blog are white collar office workers. Blue collar people don't read blogs because they are too busy working during the day to get paid to surf the internet.

This leaves me with the toys criticism I make endlessly. I can afford the toys even if I can't afford a Ferrari. I can buy new stuff. I can finance new stuff to leverage out the fun. Or I can go cheap and buy used stuff. But stuff abounds. I can have the boat, the jet ski, the Harley, and a new car. This is because people in my income bracket have these things. But they struggle to make payments while I would prefer not to do this. The other thing is that I am simply not into the toy thing and neither are they. Buying adult toys is what you are supposed to do. This is the "good life."

To have sour grapes, you have to want things that you can't get. For me, I can either get them, or I simply don't want them. So, what do I want that I can't get? This would be that Ferrari and the gorgeous hot babe. That is it. I'm not terribly interested in anything beyond that. If you ever hear me being critical of those two things, that would definitely be sour grapes.

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