by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
The rich aren't like you or me. In fact, in these days of diminished expectations (for everybody else), they aren't even like themselves. Well, not according to psychologist F. Leighton Trogloditic.
Apparently, the super-wealthy aren't arrogant rapacious narcissistic strivers; no, they have egos that look like Swiss cheese in the desert. Who knew? Public protests against the one per cent of money earners, editorial demands that the growth in income inequality be reversed, politicians who claim that they will make changes to the tax code to help the middle class (even though they rarely do - this is about impressions, not reality) - these are the predator drones that attack the well-being desert fortress (with or without cheese) of the uber-wealthy, decimating their self-image.
"Oh, my clients put up a brave front," Trogloditic stated, "playing the back nine at their exclusive clubs or renting an entire chichi restaurant in order to impress a dinner date, seemingly oblivious to the challenges to their mind-boggling wealth. But, I knew that they were really empty and fearful inside. And, in time, they came to know it, too."
Over the last decade, the problem has been getting worse. In the past, the stinking filthy rich could interact with members of the middle class - shopkeepers, limo drivers, drug mules - giving them people they could feel superior to without the icky feeling that comes from feeling superior to the truly wretchedly poor. However, as the middle class has disappeared, the obscenely wealthy have increasingly found themselves isolated, with only the curdled (posing the classic three tuffet problem) company of each other and, of course, their money to comfort them.
The shrinking middle class - not just a problem of the shrinking middle class any more.
Trogloditic proposed a course of therapy for such patients that involved virtual reality scenarios in which they lived on the street. His thinking was that if they were exposed to the reality of the life of people at the other end of the income scale, it would make them appreciate what they had more.
Virtual Reality - not just for gamers and drug-enhanced landscapers intent on taking over the world.
At first, his ridiculously over the top wealthy patients balked at using the VR equipment. To overcome their resistance, he asked Christian Dior to design the harness suits, pricing them at $10,000 and up. They were sold out within minutes of going on the market.
Capitalism - not just for capitalists any more.
As with the famous dictum that "Wall Street finds its own uses for technology," Trogloditic's clients didn't use the VR as he thought they might. One heiress went around the simulated city street setting all of the other homeless people on fire. A well known banker sold them insurance policies in return for recyclable bottles and broken shopping carts. The President of a major pharmaceutical company spent most of his time in the virtual environment peeing on anybody who got close to him.
"It was Philippe's dream come true," Trogloditic chuckled. Then, catching himself, he sternly added, "However, I would like to make it clear that urinating in public is a definite sign of insecurity and a lack of self-respect."
A definite sign of lack of respect for somebody, in any case.
Trogloditic's patients have also been known to circumvent their therapy in ways that only those with more money than common sense would allow could. In an article in the Journal of Culinary Psychometry B, he wrote about patient YYZ, who paid a programmer to have a 12 course meal delivered to the street corner to which he had been assigned in the virtual world.
"That was not…in the spirit of the simulation," Trogloditic wrote. "Still, when YYZ started to feel full and gave away chateaubriand with truffles to other homeless people, everybody agreed that getting it fresh was better than getting it out of a dumpster. This taught YYZ a valuable lesson."
Trogloditic did not explain in the article what this valuable lesson actually was. When I insisted that he elaborate, he said he was late for a mani-pedi and hung up.
Before that rather unnecessarily dramatic moment, I asked the psychiatrist if curing super super rich people of this affliction so that they could more efficiently take resources away from the rest of us was really a good thing. He pished me. He tushed me. He replied: "Not to worry. This kind of therapy takes 25…sometimes 30 years to be effective!"
Most of the billionaires I contacted in hopes of getting an interview refused to speak to me on the grounds that they might be quoted in my article. They may be arrogant and rapacious and etc., but they're clearly not stupid.