The tragedy of insatiable greed
It only reminds of one MIT Sloan School MBA graduate from Pakistan who graduated in 2003, and who rushed to work on Wall Street with one of the banks in New York City. Because he couldn’t believe how his life could suddenly change, he began to compete with the big old Joneses (CEOs) on Wall […]
It only reminds of one MIT Sloan School MBA graduate from Pakistan who graduated in 2003, and who rushed to work on Wall Street with one of the banks in New York City.
Because he couldn’t believe how his life could suddenly change, he began to compete with the big old Joneses (CEOs) on Wall Street. Within three years he owned a multi-million dollar home in Upstate New York.
Having taught him Macro-International Economics at MIT Sloan, always wanting to impress me since leaving MIT — and along with many others – Ahmed had to use his wedding as his biggest thing to showcase his sudden impressive wealth to all.
Ahmed flew me from Boston to New York City in first class and paid for my hotel of choice in New York City with limos kept for me the entire two days of this unbelievably expensive wedding.
Ahmed’s car lot had some of the most expensive British and Italian extra-luxury cars money could buy. Wedding gifts he showered on most of us were equally unbelievably expensive.
Because all these were accumulated using credit cards, by June 2008 when the US witnessed an historic financial meltdown, he not only lost everything, Ahmed also lost his beautiful wife who, having married him for his presumed wealth, having suddenly lost it all, wasted no time in applying for divorce. Of CNN course became her only way to escape the unbelievable financial calamity her husband brought to her and the young family.
And Ahmed was never happy how his sudden wealthy had suddenly disappeared. Unlike the Joneses who armed themselves with some financial bulletproofs, he did not steal enough or was not there enough to have some money hidden away from bankruptcy hangmen.
What happened to Ahmed happens to many young people here in Nigeria who have become victims of deception by the older crook bankers who make these youngster bankers falsely believe that it’s real. Having been subjected to this believable deceptive pretence, young bankers in Nigeria chase the Joneses in Nigeria who had to work 6am to 8pm daily from Monday to Friday simply to keep chasing the deceptive lifestyles of the Joneses.
But how did these young bankers arrive at believing that they can spend other people’s money? This is the very root of their youthful exuberant.
I’m an old school and I’m proud of this experience based reality. I’m that is why I’ve always refused to become a victim of looking up to the Joneses of this world and their fake lifestyles.
Or how can one be pursuing something that has never made one happy and will never make one happy, afterall looking up to the Joneses requires one to want to dress like the Joneses, smell like the Joneses, wear designers’ this and designers’ that just to look like the Joneses? And for that reason also one must have to carry the latest iPhones, apple laptops, in addition to wanting overseas vacations, etc.
That’s why to meet these lifestyles, the young bankers should have to be cutting corners with customers’ accounts and the girls will be in virtual prostitution trying to befriend big boys with big bank accounts — whether they are the Evans or the human ritualists of this world. Joining the Joneses in their dirty lives can also include joining their secret cults and human rituals, etc.
This is the tragedy of wanting to be like the Joneses and of being insatiably greedy for material possessions that will hardly give one the kind of real happiness, safety and self fulfilment that everyone should be aspiring to while on earth after all we will all die one day.
Odilim Enwegbara, Lagos