Rat Race is one of my favorite screwball comedies (definition of rat race: a way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle for wealth or power). In this blurry action scene they are trying to find their way back to the highway but they get duped by a local’s directions that send them off a cliff. On a subconscious level, this picture represents the neurotic haste we live in the comparison game. While trying to keep up with the Joneses on the highway we end up riding off road—leading to a cliff—in order to get there faster. Meanwhile, the Joneses (representing Mr. Donald Sinclair the Casino owner and his gambling friends in the movie) are sitting back with their popcorn enjoying the entertainment—us in that car.
The new “Joneses in town” that we are trying to keep up with are these industries which, although have been around for several decades, have reached a crescendo so glaring to our peace of mind that I want to call it out on behalf of the masses. In a perfect world we would not be feeding into these multi-million dollar industries but everyone needs their specific leg up in society: we are all flawed to certain degrees and need help in those areas. In fact, I do endorse the help that people genuinely seek out to improve their lives either on a physical, mental or spiritual level. Nonetheless, these departments of life have turned into full-fledged nefarious commercialism, a necessity like shopping at Target—do you see it or do you feel it at least? I do. Like jumping on a bandwagon headed to Oklahoma during the Land Run of 1893 that could change the trajectory of your life, such parallels the FOMO I and so many others have if we do not jump on the bandwagon of one or more of these industries. Below are a few that come to mind that I have expounded on, but I know there are a lot more out there…
THE BUSINESS OF INTELLIGENCIA: College degrees.
I knew things were going downhill when my mom said she took an underwater basket weaving class at Byola in the late 1970s. She ended up majoring in Forestry (she’s a glamper not a camper and she hates spiders, go figure) and minoring in art, but her career ended up being as an incredible house wife. Many have stories similar to hers. The “industry” of college degrees has morphed from going to a 4year college in order to be a doctor, lawyer, economist, and engineer into a slew of, dare I say, worthless degrees. A highschool graduate would be much better off A) taking out a business loan to start his own entrepreneurship or B) attending trade, tech school or community college. Heck, take a year off like the Aussies do and travel, get a feel for your strengths and what you truly want out of life. So much is out there that doesn’t require a degree. I think we all know there has been this unspoken rule amongst Americans that if you don’t send Mikey to college he will never size up to his peers. Meanwhile the vast majority of my peers are still paying off their student loans and are hardly being paid livable wages (that is, relative to this economic climate). I attended Duke University on a full-ride athletic scholarship but if it wasn’t for that I would have done community college somewhere and got some biz skills to facilitate my art career. One year’s worth of tuition to go to Duke in 2005 was about $40k—it’s over $65k today. College is one of the most inflation-driven industries because, well, when it comes to student loans money grows on trees that the fed will use our future generations to keep watering. It’s a scam, just another way to keep people reliant/enslaved to the government. Try holding Mikey back, let him take a different path and his peers will be trying to size up to him someday.
Here is an arresting video (the first part is where he addresses the collage scam) from one of my favorite YouTube personalities.
THE BUSINESS OF ROMANCE: Love matchmakers/online dating
Whenever I get into the subject fo romance I tell people the business of forging romantic relationships is a multi-billion dollar one—and yet the state of singleness is still surpassing that of marriage rates. The reason for that is multifaceted and reserved for another blog—or book rather— but right here I’ll just say it’s phony to be paying to meet your S.O. It works for a handful of people but should not be applied to all. It’s the rare exceptions that are advertised, not the rule. The rule is through organic connections with others in real life—or “IRL” as the millennial slang term is used these days. The majority of we-met-IRL couples who have gotten hitched in the past decade still vastly outweighs the number of those who met online through dating sites and matchmakers. So, don’t fall for the FOMO of finding your match online—unless you are feeling Powerball-lottery lucky and want to go forth with it.
THE BUSINESS OF CREATING BABIES: IVF/egg freezing industry.
If you are a woman past the age of 30 how many times have you heard “You should freeze your eggs—you’re running out of time!” Don’t get me started. I have created a standard go-to reply to throw it back at them and, if you want to glean any ideas for your own, here it is:
“I marvel at modern medicine and new technologies to help the smaller disproportionate number of women who can’t conceive. I believe IVF has churned out some miracle babies that otherwise would not have been born and I say all the power to those women who enter that Brave New World of IVF. However, it’s very expensive and has less than a 20% success rate. Also, it’s an unnatural process, very invasive, too. To me personally it’s dystopian and not my path. Please stop suggesting every single +30years of age woman should by default freeze her eggs.“
Also there are countless stories of women who have donated their eggs (prices fetch $8k-$10k) and have had fertility issues of their own afterward. Also doctors sometimes remove dozens more eggs than they were supposed to. Quick 7th grade biology lesson: A woman’s egg supply is finite—sperm is replaceable everyday. Again, the exceptions are where the positive stories lay. The industry has especially been tainted lately by this recent real-life horror story.
Some great documentaries and interviews to check out on the business of the egg retrieval industry gone amuck:
Surrogacy: a subclass of women
Interview w/Jennifer Lahl on the stark reality of Egg donation
THE BUSINESS OF TERMINATING BABIES: Planned Parenthood.
On the flip side of the business of trying to create life, there lies (no pun) the business of trying to convince expectant mothers to terminate life so they can stave off responsibility, further their singlehood, preserve their careers and/or spare the embarrassment of having a child without a committed partner. 98% of cases are fully consenting adult liaisons. It amazes me that all these women’s magazines don’t talk about the denial and depression women live with after aborting their child—a lot of them reluctant to do so in the first place—the emotion, if anything, sinks in later and it sticks around for a long time. Abortion is a lucrative business: wicked in the way it sways vulnerable pregnant women to end the life of their child and indavertantly covers up rape crimes and emboldens men in general to have a callous view on fatherhood. We went from Hillary Clinton’s “safe and rare” endorsement of it in the 90s to the Shout Your Abortion campaigns in 2022. Putting this act of so-called liberation under the umbrella of “Women’s Rights” is just another euphemism of the third-wave feminist movement. More on this subject in a blog I wrote years ago.
Also, check out Candace Owen breaking down why why she is not pro choice anymore
THE BUSINESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA: The Instagrammable life.
Social engineers at IG and FB get paid 6 figures to get you hooked to their interfaces and the documentary The Social Dilemma covers this. Jared Lenier has done many talks on the carnage wrought by social media and after reading Cal Newport’s “ Digital Minimalism” it confirmed what was going on in my primal mind: we’re all in cyber captivity but we can gain control over it. The captivity I am referring to is that vortex of worthlessness we all get sucked into—another symptom of being compared to all “the Joneses” on these social networks. I often feel lousy on there. None of us feel like enough, doesn’t matter how many followers you have: there will always be this existential crisis of not feeling enough with so little following/engagment and then if you are on the upper echelons of fandom, you run into a new problem (either conciously or subconsciously) of trying to appease all of your following so you don’t lose them! Oh what a conundrum. Don’t get me wrong, SM has helped me bring in customers over the years but my disenchantment over lack of engagements has become more glaring over recent years with the new algorithms. I’m not going to try to beat the algorithm to keep up with everybody—I don’t get as much FOMO on there anymore because I now see the bigger picture. I hope you do, too. I hope you know you’re worth more than what social engineers rig this game to be.. :)
THE BUSINESS OF SELF-HELP GURUS AND PROSPERITY TEACHING: Buy this book or come to my conference and your life will be transformed.
They really hook ya. I believe God put therapists and self-helpers on this earth to help us grow out of our weaknesses but to what extent do they takeover and encourage you to be the conductor of your symphony, ultimately your own little god? That’s why there are a lot of New Age practices within these communities and it’s almost like an eerie new religion springing up. Tony Robbins, Joel Olsteen and Rachel Hollis are a few big wigs who know how to command a crowd—and their wallets.
THE BUSINESS OF VICTIMHOOD: Intersectionality, LGBTQ+ race, gender, wokeness and anything other than a conservative straight white male.
It’s one thing if you injure yourself and get to park closer to the building with your new handicapped pass. It’s a whole other in feigning victimhood for special privileges by claiming a certain class of sexual identity, race or being a woman (Lia Thomas you are not one). This has become a lucrative industry on the social currency scale. Did you know Meaghan Markle didn't start self identifying as black on her driver’s license until her 30s? You see, once this other Black MasterCard started gaining social currency, she jumped on it. As with pulling the race card, there is also pulling the now-you-need-to-treat-me-special sexual identity card. This BS is all rooted in narcissism—and America has been a unique breeding ground for it dating a few generations back. I blame Point #1 (the Business of Intelligencia) as the main culprit for ushering in this progressive ideology. Being a highly-individualistic and ethnocentric society intersecting with the loss of Judeo-Christian ethics, this is how we got such terminology as “living my truth,” “my lived experience,” etc. The umbrella term for all this progressive terminology is “being woke,” (being so tolerant and open minded that your brain falls out). Overcorrecting and tyrannically shutting down other people’s ideas is essentially and oh so ironically what a makes a person woke. This has morphed into people becoming their own little philosopher—Descartes and Rousseu would be rolling in their graves right now. Even the nihilist Nietzschehe would cock his head at the depravity and illogicality of this shameful virtue signaling ushered in by wokeness (perhaps he would turn to religion aferall).