Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at Mother Jones magazine, wrote a fascinating article about rich people, and had it published in The Atlantic Magazine.
The magazine encumbered the story with the following headline:
“Research Proves It: There’s No Such Thing as Noblesse Oblige”.
Obviously, The Atlantic editors wanted to discourage people from reading Mr. Mechanic’s article unless the reader felt comfortable with terms like “noblesse oblige”. Speaking for myself, I spent two years at the university and never once came across the term “noblesse oblige”. It sounds like French. Or maybe Latin. One of those foreign languages. (Not Russian; I can tell when I see a Russian word, because, you know, they use a different alphabet.)
Sticking a term like “noblesse oblige” into the headline of an article is a clever way of threatening the potential reader: “Don’t even try to read this article unless you think you’re really smart.”
For a person like me, when you tell me not to do something, you’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I am forced — forced — to take up the challenge. I may not know what a gauntlet is, but I can sure as shootin’ tell when it’s been thrown down.
Turns out, Mr. Mechanic didn’t use too many foreign words in his actual article, and all the words over two syllables were pretty familiar to me. Like, “entitlement”. Everybody is using that word, nowadays. Yes, he does use the term “noblesse oblige” — but he explains what it means.
That is, people who view themselves as superior in education, occupation, and assets are inclined to protect their group’s status at the expense of groups they deem less deserving: “These findings should call into question any beliefs in noblesse oblige — elevated rank does not appear to obligate wealthy individuals to do good for the benefit of society.”
Well, speaking for myself, I’ve never been troubled with any belief in “noblesse oblige”. It’s pretty obvious that the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor… and if you’re a poor person and you need help, you’re much more likely to get it from another poor person than from a rich person.
That doesn’t make sense, but as my dear old dad loves to say, “Who ever said the world makes sense?”
What Mr. Mechanic documents in his article is some ‘scientific research’ proving that an excess of wealth does not make you into a nicer person. Quite the opposite. Scientists have pretty well proved that having more money than the people around you, makes you into an asshole. (Mr. Mechanic didn’t use that exact word, but if he had, he probably could have made his point more succinctly.)
I am always amazed by scientists doing complicated experiments to prove what everybody already knows. But what the scientists may have pointed out — something that’s not exactly intuitive — is that rich people are not to blame for being pricks. They can’t help it. The very condition of being (or becoming) rich will make anyone into a prick. It’s, like, human nature. If Mother Teresa had become rich, no one would have wanted her around.
How do you prove this, scientifically? You ask innocent people to play Monopoly, but you fix the game to give one of the players an obvious advantage. The lucky player starts with twice the money, at the beginning… gets two rolls of the dice instead of one… and gets twice the money when they pass “GO”…
Then you document the results in a scientific journal. Mission accomplished.
From Mr. Mechanic’s article, reporting on the Monopoly experiments conducted by psychology professor Paul Piff:
The most interesting part of the experiment, Piff said, came after, when players were asked to talk about what they had done to affect the game’s outcome. The obvious answer was that the fix was in and the rich player got lucky. But the rich players were almost twice as likely as the poor ones to talk about game strategy — how they’d earned their win. And so it goes in the world. Some of us are born better off than others, “but that’s not how people experience relative privilege or relative disadvantage,” Piff said. “What people do is attune to the things they’ve done: ‘I’ve worked hard. I worked hard in school.’ You start plucking out those things.”
Successful people tend to feel deserving of their lot. As a corollary, they tend to view less-fortunate people as having earned their lack of success.
“So you’re more likely to make sense of inequality,” Piff explained, “to justify it, make inequality seem equitable.”
When you get rich, you’re psychologically driven to convince yourself that you deserve to have more money than ordinary people. And once you fully understand what a deserving person you are, you obviously deserve to be even richer. Which makes you into an dirtbag.
If professor Piff has uncovered an immutable law of human behavior… that you can’t help but become a jerk when you get rich… Lord, please keep me poor. I would rather be compassionate than wealthy.
But how professor Piff was able to talk people into playing Monopoly, I have no idea. That has got to be the stupidest game ever invented. I have nothing but respect for people who excel at playing chess, or poker, or tennis, or even the stock market. But Monopoly? Even if the game isn’t fixed, the person who rolls first has an obvious advantage, and plus, there’s no skill whatsoever involved. It’s completely a game of luck.
Were you the first person to land on Park Place? Did you have enough money to buy it? Well, if so, you can become a prick and screw every other player that comes along. In fact, you’re expected to be a prick. You expect yourself to be a prick.
It’s exactly like real life. Where’s the fun in that?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.