Materialism - AKA Thug Motivation

The next time you hear Lil Wayne spit the lyric "I'm a young money millionaire" I suggest you really think about what that represents. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it these days primarily because Wayne and I are both 26. The difference is that Wayne was signed as a rapper at age 11. He is now an executive at Cash Money records. He walks around with a ring on his index finger that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $128,000. That's one piece of jewelry, I won't get into the chains, bracelets and other accoutrements. In the words of rapper Young Jeezy this is the very definition of "Thug Motivation."

The rap industry takes constant flack for its materialism. People who don't enjoy the genre or seek to discredit it or both frequently point to the fact that all rap carries the same image. The argument goes something like this "All rap is the same. All rappers talk about is how much money they have, how many women they sleep with, and how many drugs they devour." A foolish counter-argument would claim that this is not the case.

The truth is that most rap, especially any that receives mainstream attention spends the bulk of its time preaching the good life. Like anything else though, this needs some context. How many people do you know personally that can claim to have earned millions of dollars before they could drink legally? OK, scratch that, how many of your friends can afford to and actually do wear half a million dollars worth of jewelery at all times? I'm assuming the list is starting to dwindle at this point, but I'll go one more. From that now short (read non-existent for most) list of friends separate those that have all of that money and came from absolutely nothing? Exactly. Now ask yourself a question, if all of the above applied to you specifically and your job was to make music, what would you write about?

The next series of questions gets a little bit more to the heart of the issue. When you see all that money flying around, smoke in the air, and expensive imports every other screen shot, what is your reaction? Most people are desensitized to it, in that they're so used to seeing the obligatory Ferrari's and Lamborghini's that they stop thinking about what they signify. The same goes for the women. You see models on screen and most guys think of the unattainable. But think for just a second, there is a reason that you see what you do in music videos and that purpose is dual-fold. Yes, these rappers are indeed flaunting their way of life but the fact that they can means that this life EXISTS in the first place. This is how they actually live (that's right, they wake up and there are beautiful women around, and money, and sweet clothes, and dope cars, it's not just for the shoot) but more importantly, this is your wake-up call go grab your own happiness. Now that may sound simple enough, but dig in deeper.

If you could you would get rid of me
What you gon' do when a nigga' gotta go hard?
But I won't let you get to me
You should already figure I'mma go hard
If you were as real as me you would never let another nigga step in your yard
Making money ain't shit to me
This is in my veins and it gets to my heart
So I am, I will I've gots to go
You got another way to live? You've got to go hard
I am getting it in until the end I've gotta go, go, go, go hard

I flow sick\Nigga how sick?\Sea sick
Got your hand out? \ Don't look at me bitch.
You lookin' at who made me rich.
You lookin' at who made me rich.

The above is the full hook and a portion of the first verse of DJ Khaled's song Go Hard featuring Kanye West and T-Pain. If you're willing to sift through the profanity, and cut to the core message in these lyrics the message is as clear as it is inspiring. The hook from T-Pain is all about doing what it takes to earn, and how important it is that nobody can stop him from doing so. This rings especially clear because T-Pain has the money to prove it, it's not like he can't show you that he's willing to do what it takes. Look at what he has and in him see what it is that you lack, because he's already at the summit and this is the knowledge that he brings back. Kanye's verse is more personal and floored me the first time I listened to it. In the face of those looking for handouts instead of going after their dreams for themselves West puts it all on the table with his words: "You lookin' at who made me rich." And the fact that the line is repeated is not an accident. Nobody else can claim his success for themself, nor can anyone else deny his success in and of itself. I believe that words are powerful and the above is just a solitary example.

There is a two-fold reason why I don't condemn, and in fact support the rap industry on several fronts. The first is that maybe using any means available to get people off their couches and out trying to make something of themselves isn't the worst thing in the world. The second is that as the saying goes, the realer you spit, the less air-time you'll receive. If you want rap to be about substance go out and start spending some money on Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Reflection Eternal and Black Star albums or at least find out who those artists are. This is not a secret. Dave Chappelle went on record with this statement in his Block Party film. Jay-Z even dropped a taste of the truth on the Black Album: "If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be / lyrically, Talib Kweli / Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I did five mil/ I ain't been rhymin' like Common since." If you want music with substance, give people a reason to make it. If backpack rappers made more money then the world would probably be a different place, and I probably wouldn't have much to write about.

Do I believe that money, women, and drugs are all there is to life? No, but neither do rappers. Let's get it.

Who Wouldn't Work for AIG?

This simply cannot be ignored. CNN just ran a special this evening and at current is prominently displaying on their website a story pertaining to the paying of bonuses to executives at AIG. This, despite the absurdly large sum of bailout funds (which total upwards of $170 billion dollars if you want to try wrapping your head around that figure,) that the company received due to the economic fiasco that continues to plague the global market. Our New York CNN correspondent tries to shed some understanding on why it is that billions of dollars were spent to keep the doors open for this prolific insurer, and why due to contractual obligations AIG is "forced" to pay out their bonuses for fear of legal repercussions. There is no smoke and there are no mirrors to reflect the absurdity of the prior statement, it is in fact as ridiculous as it sounds.

Edward Liddy is the current government appointed CEO of AIG and has been in said position since September; which is to say that he essentially took the helm of the Titanic as it drifted lifelessly from the iceberg. Liddy is both shrewd and experienced, he sits on the board of 3M and Kroger and previously worked as CEO of Allstate for 6 years; one typically does not stumble upon positions like these due to random chance or shockingly convenient circumstance. Liddy expressed very specific concerns over the forced cuts that were pressed from the U.S. Treasury related to this additional money primarily because of what it will do for retention. After expressing some concern around the legal aspect of the owed bonuses, Liddy worries on record that the ability to collect and retain the best and the brightest for AIG if these bonuses are not paid decreases with these cuts and worse yet fear of their continuation may hinder the company in the future. Surely if these guys don't receive their money they'll be handing in their resignations post-haste, especially with jobs abounding all over the country at the moment particularly in finance.

As far as the legal climate goes with respect to this, I will not claim that there are not people out there ready and willing to sue for money they believe they are owed especially in this country and in the respective tax bracket that we are focused on. I do however consider it somewhat unlikely that such expensive and time-consuming legal expenditures would be fruitful. Building a successful legal case around bonus money coming from AIG would be one hell of a story, and I would almost like to see a case of this nature exposed to observe the public's reaction, as well as the judicial one. Needless to say, that I believe this to be the strongest portion of Liddy's argument for bonus payment, and in that respect I submit that it is about as intimidating as the threat of alien invasion or nuclear winter. The results would be almost as devastating as the odds that would play out to cause the event to transpire in the first place.

I will not claim to be in the midst of acquiring my MBA and preparing to enter the corporate insurance, securities, and international finance infrastructure, nor am I a veteran of the industry looking for a place to expand my career, but I will say this. Going from a relatively small sample size of under a 1000 people, most people that work for AIG in any field other than direct agent sales is making upwards of $40,000 a year while other reports would place the mean salary up above $60,000 a year. Both sources are calculating these numbers based on figures that were reported through March of 2009. I don't for one second believe that these figures are shocking to anyone who is looking to fill one of these positions. Also, provided you are intelligent enough to have established a portfolio that would open you up for consideration for an executive position which is entitled to a bonus as Herculean in strength as the ones that are affected by the measure that the Treasury is taking issue with, you have no intentions of crossing AIG off your desired list. Why? The government is so intent on this company not folding that they were willing to dump untold amounts of money into the companies counterparties to prevent them from experiencing any losses (which is interesting, I mean how does a government that does not disclose financial figures on wars, bailouts, or anything else it decides it does not want to give out qualify as being "for the people?"). In a time of financial woe and economic upheaval Edward Liddy is fighting for his executives bonuses' and the government is making sure that none of the companies business partners feel any pain. Who doesn't want to work at a place where you can lose $61 billion dollars in a single quarter and your CEO's chief concern in March is how much bonus money you're going to take home?

What person would take stock of this situation given what is taking place all around them and pass on AIG due to trepdiation that they might try to back out of a contractually negotiated bonus? Exactly. What are your alternatives? Sure there are other insurance companies out there that are competitive in terms of what they can offer, but just call it a hunch that none of them are capable of offering what AIG can. I'm sure the folks at AIG that are taking home their extra thousands of dollars aren't regretting their career path as they stroll to the ATM this Sunday.

Come to think of it perhaps Liddy is right. Perhaps people attracted to AIG after this public Treasury interference will not be the best and the brightest. But I see a different world like Dwayne Wayne, and I think that you would have to be far from bright to shy away from the money, prestige, and additional money that working for AIG represents. At the end of the day, I'm not Jim Cramer, and will not advocate that you go out and troll the closest person you can find that is employed by AIG. But I do request that people keep their eyes open. Hopefully, both you and I will go to sleep feeling comfortable that we own 80% of AIG, and that they will still be able to attract intelligent enough personnel to continue ruining the international market and destabilizing the collective future one day at a time.

With a Capital T

Here we are in a new year. As we plod along forward with the hopes of improvement and progress, I can't help but think about the things that might help propel such well-intentioned hope. You hear a lot on the news these days from the more environmentally conscious among us about the depleted state of the earths' resources. I would like to submit, and possibly devote some time this year, to the idea that the most fleeting resource in the world these days is the Truth. I remember being asked in a philosophy class at Syracuse University, most likely by Professor Laurence Thomas whom I admire greatly, about the nature of truth and whether it exists in the absolute. Capital T truth if you will. I, ever the optimist, hastily replied that it does in fact exist, and that I believed in it. At the time, frightening as it is now to consider, I could not conceive of a world which rejected this belief absolutely. Five years from that time, I look around and wonder what allowed me to believe that a world where the truth is pervasive and absolute could ever exist.

As things are currently, I would venture that the vast majority of the people in the world give you a straightforward and honest opinion of what they are thinking less than half the time that they speak to you. This percentage rises in direct proportion to how intoxicated that person is in a ratio that I am not mathematically astute enough to accurately devine.

It would seem, that one of the strongest tools that one would ever be able to develop is one that is mentally constructed allowing for the deciphering and filtering of complete garbage from those small pieces of reality and veritas that we may encounter on a daily basis. To be honest though, such a tool would need to be honed not only to weed out faint and obscure bits of truth, but also be capable of manipulation in such a way that it could be turned on and off at will. This property would be paramount, for without it, you would be forced to endure a never-ending stream of truth which I don't think anyone would be able to survive for any enduring length of time.

It seems to me that the people who have the strongest grasp on the reality of the way things are in this world are those who are the least willing to accept it as it is. The people that I've met who were the most intent on escaping from this reality via whatever method is most readily available were typically those who had retired their rose-colored glasses and started seeing what was around them for close to what it was. To my chagrin, the glasses seem a necessary protective measure for most. The world that we live in is one that is overwhelming in the depth of its depravity, and in a large sense it is unsurprising that the people who are most in touch with that fact are the most resentful and least accepting of it.

The thing that is most intriguing about this, is that the weightiness of the horror that is this current system of things drives most into such terminal recoil that it is unlikely to ever change. When faced with such an overwhelming representation of what is accepted by the common people, it is only natural to wonder how you could possibly be the only other person that is having these thoughts. After all for most people sanity is a concept most commonly confirmed in the opinions and belief systems of others. But then much to your astonishment and upon further relfection you realize that the atrocities taking place all around us are commonly ignored or at the least overlooked. Even the most recently encountered stranger is willing to engage you in a conversation about the weather, and if times are hard enough some small-talk about the state of the economy or rising gas prices. Try and engage that same person in a conversation about the insane number of people that are dying on a daily basis from starvation, genocide, and disease in pick your favorite country and the best you could probably hope for is a blank stare. Most would not be able to point to Darfur if they were given a map of Sudan. How about child mortality rates in India? Perhaps you're more easily distraught by the continuing war in Gaza? The most I usually hope for when discussing this with people is "Yeah man, things are pretty effed these days."

If you read enough about what is happening to people in places outside of this country eventually, if you have anything that even resembles a heart or soul, you begin to wonder about the shortcomings of our Great Society. We spend most of our days in pursuit of careers that most often perpetuate the wealth of someone who has come before us, in an attempt to maintain our ability to provide for ourselves the conventions of life that we have come to take for granted. We are pacified by various methods of entertainment which are made readily available to us as a distraction from the things that most warrant our attention. We knowingly ignore the plight of millions around the world who are less fortunate, and the band plays on. I personally am guilty of this, and I find myself in very hefty company. I have helped in woefully small ways to improve the world that I live in, but I am hopeful that this like anything in this world can change.

It is important to note that the absence of truth in this world clearly stems from the absence of truth in normal human dealings. You cannot go to most stores and buy products at a fair market value. You turn on the news and are greeted by a clearly spun piece of "objective" journalism. Expectations are rapidbly becoming lower for any given level of relationship in any social network. The world that we see is one made manifest by our own misgivings. It is the highest level of self-delusion to believe that what we see all around us is not somehow related to qualities that we at best tolerate and at worst manifest ourselves. But do we want to see what's out there for what it is? Does anyone really want to see just how far the rabbit hole goes? I venture safely to say that the majority of us do not, and those that do, have volunteered themselves to a truly gruesome fate. I don't know if we will ever be able to openly share thoughts with one another without fear, but if that day comes, I hope you are all dressed in layers, for what we will be forced to accept seems shockingly frigid.

Dilligence

So here I am, empty blank space, a keyboard, a playlist chocked up full of Margot and the Nuclear So and So's, and a bottle of chilled sake. The next hour holds a fair amount of promise for some creativity I would like to think. I will say though, that the majority of my thoughts recently have all been pretty heavy. I can't pinpoint where everything went South. I've been on a huge Hunter S. Thompson kick recently, and anyone who has read the man would not only understand why but also understand the reason that my thoughts have been drifting towards the weightier matters of the world, and the general workings of this incredible societal machine that America seems completely bent on botching at every conceivable turn.

The more I trace things back the more it would seem that things stopped getting accomplished in this country before I was born. The 60's are an amazing period of time in our country's history. Ironically enough, I feel as though I spent absolutely no time learning anything of significance about the period during my tenure at any of the various institutions of learning that I have attended up to this point in my life and that troubles me, because so much was accomplished by a sector of the population that nobody wanted to acknowledge. This is remarkable for several reasons; the primary one being that during the 60's it was essentially proven that the heart of a democracy was still somehow embedded in this culture in a way that we have yet to see made manifest since. Perhaps one of the most prolific comments of Dr. Thompson's prose came from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as he chased the fading image of the American Dream:

"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Where did that go? That inconceivable energy that allowed people to completely defy conventionality and reject what they knew in their hearts to be wrong. Perhaps a better question is where did the testicular fortitude to muster such epic courage manifest itself in the first place? Who can say for sure? I am not for one second going to sit here and say that every dope smoking, plain-clothes, commune dwelling, hippie of the 60's was a soul-crusader for the forces of good, but more of them were than anybody really acknowledges. Behind the veil of what is now a legendary usage of drugs and sexual overindulgence we have such free-wheeling and dangerous ideas as civic equality and proper rights of suffrage and that is topped off by one of the most unified anti-war movements of modern time. Some of the most brilliant writing ever committed to page, and some of the most inspirational words ever committed to song were penned. Some of the most brutal beatings and shootings took place on this soil since the Civil War, not because of the numbers of people that suffered but primarily the methods and reasons for the outbreaks of violence. What an incredible period of history.

This is my parents' generation. This was only one lifetime ago. If I could still talk to my grandfather, he would be able to tell me of a time in Georgia, where I myself have lived, where people of my skin tone would be forced to drink from a different water fountain, purchase a different quality of grocery, and generally submit to a lesser way of life for absolutely no reason. It was not until a bunch of people who were labeled lunatics with crazy clothes started clogging up city streets, waving banners, and generally causing an amazing amount of ruckus that anything changed. And these were supposed to be the crazy ones. Ridiculous.

Yikes! What the hell has my generation accomplished to compete with this? I sat in a room with my collegiate peers all of whom I greatly respect and with whom I have shed blood, broken bread, and imbibed good port on a cold night in Syracuse, NY during the 2004 race for the President of the United States. At this point, the economy was already on the decline, we were fighting a war that we had already declared victory on in May and yet in which we were somehow still mysteriously spending a reported $12 billion dollars a month (none of which was regulated and accounted for by mandate of our White House and the United States Department of Justice). Yet the majority of these men who I knew to be intelligent human beings whom I would have most likely given my life had the need presented itself, argued against my proposals that A.) The war in Iraq needed to end and was largely unnecessary. B.) George W. Bush is a shameful excuse for a human being and should be counted lucky to not be tarred, feathered and driven from the land in the most expedient nature possible, let alone be in contention for a second term in the most powerful branch of government that our country has to offer.

I sit here four years later saying not saying "I told you so" but literally in a state of disbelief and borderline chronic disappointment. Who the hell cares about being right in a situation like this? I never wanted to see people suffer the way they are now and for what? What have we accomplished? Who can sit in their homes with the way things are in this country and with the shame has been brought upon whatever nation in which you reside in the majority of this decade and say that they are honestly proud of their citizenship and what it represents with the current state of affairs.

It may seem odd that I'm thinking these thoughts after the results of the most recent election. A black man was appointed the position of the President of the United States, and for that piece of progress I cannot claim to be unmoved. However my dismay primarily stems from the lack of vision of the generation to which I belong. The stagnation of motivation may have taken place long ago at the end of the sixties but there is no excuse for it, just as there was no excuse for the wrongdoing that excited those protesters to stand up, act, and believe in something that was far greater than what any of the members of that movement were on an individual level. John Mayer has been singing that "One day our generation/is going to rule the population/So we keep on waiting/Waiting on the world to change." I think he got it wrong. The people that have made a difference in this world never waited for the world to change. They couldn't wait. They were inspired to do something about the things they knew were wrong. My distress comes from looking around and seeing a people that seems broken and bereft of the spirit to act similarly. In the wake of one of the most destructive presidencies in the history of this country that has left this nation in shambles there is no uproar, there is no backlash, there are few demonstrations, there are no inquiries.

We are complacent, we are subdued, we are decidedly un-American. Why is that? I feel as though it has become time to re-acquaint myself with the decline of the American Dream. I want to understand this misplaced sense of my inexplicably serene generation that for some reason is sitting idly by in the midst of countless acts of outrageous absurdity.

So this got me thinking...

So I was scanning the pages of one of my older YRB magazines, (if you don't check this magazine out frequently, your loss) and I came across an interview with Terry Kennedy and Rick Thorne in which they basically describe what it's like to be a professional athlete in an extreme sport. To the inexperienced Terry Kennedy is a sponsored pro skateboarder, primarily known for stout street technique and Rick Thorne is a talented stunt BMX'er (the guy wall rode a moving semi-truck I'm sure you can find that somewhere on youtube). What got me thinking and the primary thing that drove me to write, was that both of these guys spent the entire interview talking about how they hoped that their stories were inspirational enough to move other people's lives forward. The words that stuck with me the most though, were those of Terry Kennedy and I'll share them with you and explain why.

These guys don't make ridiculous amounts of money but I don't suspect that their bank accounts are hurting either. What's most important, is that these guys both found something that they genuinely enjoy doing and they did it, until it became profitable. That in and of itself may not sound very unique, but for a second think about how many people really conduct their lives in that fashion without compromise. I certainly don't, at least not now, and I doubt very seriously that the majority of people in this world get up every morning thinking about how awesome and privleged they feel about going to work. This is not the first time I've thought about this, and there are certainly other stories that could inspire similar trains of thought. But I think what hammered it home for me were two things Terry Kennedy said.

The first statement that got the wheels turning was,"For me, man, skateboarding is just a blessing honestly. If I wasn't getting paid for it, if I wasn't pro, I'd still be doing it. Hands down, I'm not just saying that to be saying it." Now it would be easy to dismiss this as untrue posturing, but I genuinely believe him. Why? Because I guarantee that the kind of determination that's necessary to make a living as a guy who rides a skateboard (think about that again for just a minute, he skates and people pay him, clothe him and feed him to do it) is written all over that statement. This was a guy who went out and did something with no guarantees that he would ever be successful doing it coming from limited resources, and while there are guys out there waking up every morning dreading where they're about to spend the next 8 hours this guy gets to do what he loves. It's idealistic to think that this would work 100% of the time, but it sure worked for him. I find that fascinating.

The next time they get to Terry in the interview he gives us these words when asked about being shot at earlier on in his life, "I'm grateful to have gone through that 'cause now people can look at me at the end of the day and say, you have no right not to be driven. You have no right not to do the right thing, 'cause look at this kid ... That's why you gotta go through stuff, I appreciate it" and then he continues by saying "I like going through stuff more than I [like] accomplishing it. At the end of the day, how much more powerful is that?" That statement is going to stick with me for a while. I like his version better than "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger." The man is absolutely right. If I take a good hard look at myself, what have I been through that is so shattering that I can't pursue my dreams? I'm still here right? I have a feeling if more people looked at life this way this world would be a vastly different place.

I know that a lot of what I have written above is one giant optimism explosion, but I really think that maybe a lot of us would be better off with the ability to move forward with all we have constantly. At the very least thinking about it and writing about it takes me one step closer to putting it in action. I have no idea if I ever will develop the mindset that Terry has, but I know that I can since from all that I can surmise I have no excuse not to do so. Hmmm....