I think here we're dealing with a situation where people with better education or connections, or more ambition, naturally gravitate to the sectors where their peers are, and that is finance and the associated "professions." One reason is of course the money - that's where it is, so that's where you go if you want to be going up socially, but it's also just a gregarious, self-reproducing thing by elites and self-perceived upper classes, with the few ambitious and wannabees from elsewhere who manage to squeeze in.
And once you're in, you function in accordance with the codes and rules of the system.
I'm not even sure a lot of the bankers feel that wealthy, because the liability side of the balance has grown accordingly - you have to have a nice house/appartment, a fancy car, put your kids to the right schools, dress well enough, do the nice holidays, etc... as we know, a lot of people in the US and UK have usstained that lifestyle through increasing amounts of debt. I'm not sure they have a right to complain, but I'm not quite sure they are even really happy about their lifestyle - and they certainly don't feel free about many of the choices they make.
Money is a powerful tool. If you don't have it, you certainly miss it, but having it certainyl does not mean you use it well - and it does not seem to protect everybody from financial stress or even ruin. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
i blame the d.f. hippies telling us all in the 60's to 'live for the moment'.
and their parents for allowing the atomic threat to hang in the air and make people feel that there wouldn't be any tomorrow...
oh yes and their parents generation for allowing ww2, so making people think they need the bomb, to keep the peace...
I'm not quite sure they are even really happy about their lifestyle
the mornings after the nights before...
it's tough, inheriting generations of paranoia- talk about a family constellation... The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
This is the key. In the US, many start out in Business Schools. As a former graduate, who has since undergone a conversion, told me: "You know they teach you to be a Republican in Business School." They are taught to "externalize" every factor that they can if it will give them a competitive advantage, because the other guy certainly will. This encourages them to ignore all of that annoying lower division "humanities" stuff they had to take, at least in their business decisions. The purpose of the humanities is to enable one to appreciate the Opera, Theater and Concert Hall, attendance at which and service on the boards of which are such marks of rank and distinction.
Back in the late '70s or early '80s Psychology Today published an article on attitudes in the executive suite. Executives were asked to what extent they owed their positions to good fortune or luck. No one admitted that luck played any role, it was all based on merit!
If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
