Zuck and Jeff

I think the thing that most strongly indicates that we are living within very disturbed systems globally is that the worst among us rise to the positions of greatest power. Trump, Bush the Lesser, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Modi, Vladimir Putin -- these are execrable men, men who you would not trust to dog sit for you while take a weekend out of town. Yet it is them and men like them who so often run the show, in country after country.

And what about the non-political actors with great power? The common denominator between Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg is their unceasing appetite to own things and property. You’ve probably heard that JB recently bought a super-yacht that contains within it an additional yacht whose primary purpose is to serve as a landing pad for the private helicopter shuttling people between land and the mother yacht. Most of us would rather play dominoes on a card table and drink a cold beer with friends than fuck around with that kind of elaborate crap. But not Jeff. He needs a yacht that doubles as a gigantic fucking Pez dispenser.

While good old Zuck, he’s doing his best to try to buy Hawaii. Normal people like to visit islands or maybe rent or own a house on an island where they can enjoy exploring the unique terrain. Not weird rich guys. For some reason they need to own fucking islands. Now, Zuck has his work cut out for him on the island of Kuaui because Hawaii has something known as kuleana land, ancestral land meant to remain under the ownership of native Hawaiians. Nonetheless, the FB founder recently pulled off the purchase of an additional 600 acres of tropical rainforest on the island from a local “nonprofit” (?!), to add to the 800 acres he already had. A reason he gave for the purchase was to, “enhance privacy.” Needless to say, Mark is not a popular fellow in Hawaii. As of May 1, 2021, a change.org petition seeking to “vote him off of the island” had garnered one million signatures.

It is, after all, a simple dynamic: the behaviors that you reward in a culture are the behaviors that are pursued. The subtext to so many shows, movies, articles, commercials and other media in the West is that everybody basically just wants to be filthy rich. “Just admit it,” they say. “Don’t BS. You know you want a bunch of mansions and expensive shit you’ll never use. Right?!” What a joke. I don’t know anybody like that. It’s a fabrication. But the pressure to make you think you want all kinds of fancy shit is omnipresent.

The people I know, more than anything, desire the following in their lives: physical health, good family and friends, free time, a livable planet for future generations, music, kindness, pets, good food, meaning, time in nature, connection. Basic shit. Uncomplicated. But it doesn’t fit the narrative of an “economy” predicated upon endlessly consuming shit and it doesn’t fit the narrative of a country that was founded by people who were versions of Zuck and Jeff – men totally drunk with their desire to always accumulate more shit. Thing is, those pioneers and founding fathers weren’t healthy people then and folks like Zuck and Jeff aren’t healthy people now. Rather than being given power, money and influence, folks like Zuck and Jeff should be lampooned and, yes, voted off of the island.