- Do you know why modern life is so dull?
- Do you think it is dull?
- I take a somewhat lively interest in trying to understand. Otherwise, yes. Deadly dull. The modern human being has the choice between only two characters, sleepwalker or psychopath, zombie or vampire being the dead versions of the same lack of sympathy in their passive or aggressive variants. What passes for sympathy among the living is actually attachment to property, fear of its loss or relief at holding on. Zombies and Vampires, being dead, don't want to build up acquisition of property in things or power over people, only want to perpetuate their hold on the precarious property of their dead self by acquiring possession over living bodies. The sleepwalkers and psychopaths, being technically speaking living, do actually create lasting arrangements of lack of sympathy and attachment to property.
- Which are?
- Monopolies, if you are going to believe the billionaire creator of an email based money transfer company and early investor in social media*. Free markets create competition, competition reduces profits. Only monopolies are really profitable. Monopolies are profitable because they invent something new, or because they destroy competition through buying up competitors or bribing the government to grant subsides or protection. The companies that don't do something unique or don't have the power to stop other companies from doing the same are zombies and vampires. They are dead, preyed on or preying on each other. The living, the sleepwalkers and psychopaths, are those companies that have successfully established monopolies, in their active or passive phases: sleepwalking monopolies complacent about their hold on market position, or vampire monopolies going full speed ahead buying up competition and bribing the government.
- Not very sympathetic behavior, but I wouldn't call it psychopathic.
- Psychopaths establish a kind of monopoly in their lives, in both aspects of monopoly: belief in the uniqueness of their "product", that is, themselves, and an active attempt to control the marketplace of human character so that it continues to reflect their own little world of perception, the idea of their own uniqueness.
Further Reading:
Enclosure
The Care And Feeding Of Vampires And Zombies
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* Peter Thiel: Competition Is For Losers
