I rarely think I have answers to questions asked on social media unless that question is some variation of “Are Nazis bad?” and then it is straightforward for me to respond, “Yes.”
But there was one question last summer that I read online that I could answer instantly, and that was why the U.S. media cared more about the five people who died in a submersible on an expedition to the Titanic wreck at the bottom of the Atlantic than the nearly 500 Pakistani, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian immigrants who died in a small fishing trawler that sunk near Greece in the Mediterranean.
Both tragedies happened days apart, but only one grabbed headlines.
The answer is that no one fantasizes about being an immigrant fleeing crushing poverty and war. No one pictures themselves as a refugee. But every single regular person in America daydreams about being a billionaire.
In pop culture, billionaires are depicted as brilliant heroes who can design cybernetic suits of armor or wear bat costumes to fight street crime far away from their fancy manors. Billionaires build empires in real life. They are pioneers who push us forward and prophets who can see the future.
To be a billionaire is to never worry about hospital bills. Many billionaires invest in research that promises eternal youth to billionaires. Billionaires can eat anything they want, anytime, in any quantity. Olympic-sized pools of caviar, if please you. They can wax poetic about climate change before boarding a brand-new private jet.
In America, at least, billionaires are supposed to be the best of us, the winners of the game we’re all born into. They are the übermenschs of 21st-century capitalism, the ideal human being, perfect and free. Billionaires are not supposed to make bad decisions or die in embarrassing ways; they’re wealthier than you or I, so they’re supposed to be brighter. And yet, one of their kind thought crawling into a homemade carbon fiber and titanium tube bolted closed from the outside and dumped into the ocean was a good idea.
Why? Was the billionaire bored? If a billionaire can get bored, what hope do we have?
There are almost 800 billionaires in America alone, and they’re held up as living divinities, modern-day pharaohs. The new timeline of human evolution starts with a hunched-over primate and ends with a billionaire boarding a private rocketship.
Maybe that’s a bad idea too. Rocketships.
Every year, dozens of billionaires and wealthy industrialists, and financial barons gather in the middle of nowhere to slap each other’s backs and talk about any challenges on the horizon that might separate them from their collective fortunes.
During one of these talks, a very influential and self-satisfied venture capital billionaire told his peers that they needed to train their children in martial arts because the world is becoming violent and unpredictable. This anecdote was snuck out of the closed panel like it was the papal conclave.
The idea that this billionaire’s children would exist in a world where they’d have to bloody their knuckles to survive instead of directing paid muscle to do that work for them suggests a significant break with reality.
I was shocked that any billionaire would indulge in a fantasy whereby his offspring stalk the wastelands like solitary samurai when it’s obvious that during any post-apocalypse, these children would more likely resemble King Joffery, the spoiled, sadistic boy king from the hit fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones.’
This venture capitalist had other thoughts on violence, too, including a potential charity MMA fight between two of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the history of the world. These adult men had spent weeks trash-talking each other like testosterone-drunk teen weasels.
The billionaire cheered his fellow billionaires on.
Even billionaires crave attention and validation. If I were a billionaire, I’d like to think I’d quietly disappear into a castle on the beach and spend my days hosting elaborate costume parties. But what if a billion dollars isn’t enough? Or ten billion? What if the human heart is a hole? A deep, pitch-black, unfillable hole.
Once upon a time, a crypto tycoon was worth over $20 billion and is now broke and under house arrest, but only after his parents were able to help post his $250 million bail. He is accused of fraud, basically stealing his customer’s money.
A recent lawsuit filed against this investor and his cronies alleged that the once billionaire had planned, with his brother, to buy the Pacific island nation of Nauru, which has a population of 13,000, and then build a vast bunker there for family and friends, where they could ride out armageddon.
This plan is not unique to billionaires. For years, they’ve been busy sinking their money into elaborate underground facilities that would protect their inner circle from floods, fires, plagues, and angry, hungry mobs, the way the Ark saved Noah’s family from God’s wrath.
The island was never purchased, and no complex bomb shelter was constructed. But it could have happened, and the people who wanted it to happen had, for a moment, the means to build a hermetically-sealed bunker filled with luxuries. Wine cellars? Tennis courts? Sex dolls? I’m assuming repopulating the earth is part of this doomsday fantasy but what do I know? I don’t understand the billionaire's brain.
I have never even met a billionaire. And I’m not embarrassed to admit I’d be nervous if I ever did. A billionaire can snap their fingers and summon a helicopter, and I have to check my bank account before ordering an Uber.
It reminds me of that overused Fitzgerald quote about the rich being different from you and me. I think that’s true, and not just dramatic wit. They are different.
If I shook hands with a billionaire, could we communicate on anything other than a superficial level? We’re two humans, after all. If you prick me, do I not bleed, etcetera? Do we have the same emotional intelligence? Inner-lives? We were both babies, right?
Does money change you, or does it just make you more of who you are on the inside? Is my imagination lesser because I’m not rich? Are the dreams of billionaires brighter? Louder? More spectacular?
I don’t know if I can empathize with someone who can think, “I’ll just build a fortress inside a mountain for my loved ones and a few former Navy SEALS and their families, and we’ll just play card games and eat zucchini from an underground farm as the Earth chokes, and millions die.”
No. That’s not how my imagination works.
I can’t picture closing a door and retreating into a concrete and steel palace. But I can imagine future graverobbers using crowbars to pry open rusted blast doors and finding nothing but skeletons hanging from nooses.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of John DeVore's work on Medium. And order his book, Theater Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway here.