Nearly all humans aspire to be rich and famous yet if you look at people that have riches and fame they are all almost universally demented. Exhibit 1 Brittany Spears This chick was the hottest thing that ever happened to music. She then falls for some loser that had just dumped his pregnant girlfriend and marries him. She has a couple of kids, does all kinds of drugs in front of her kids, gets a divorce, show her nasty pussy to the whole world, gets nasty plastic surgery on her lips, bombs her comeback debut at the VMA awards, and loses her children. Exhibit 2 Brad Pitt This guy can get nearly any girl on the planet. Yet he falls for plain jane Jenifer Aniston. He then downgrades from plain jane and falls for a total psycho, Exhibit 3. Exhibit 3 Angelina Jolie This girl has fake lips, fake tits, married some psycho guy prior to Brad Pitt, carried around the blood of her former husband around her neck, won't even talk to her father despite her father crying on national television trying to reach out to his daughter. Yet the 'sexist guy in the world' Brad Pitt thinks this girl is perfect for her. Exhibit 4 David Beckham Superstar athlete in the world's most popular sport. Has everything going for him except his wife. Victoria Beckham is so nasty with her fake tits and all that he had to bang the smoking hot babysitter of his kids. Just drop the surgically enhanced posh man and go for the all natural babysitter. Exhibit 5 Russell Simmons Black Billionaire and Mr. Spirituality. The guy has his own meditation room, reads books on spirituality, and names his mansion samadhi, a sanskrit term for enlightenment. The guy's an aspiring monk. Yet his wife is a totally materialistic whore hell bent on wasting all his money on stupid shit. More to come, add your own.
I have been doing a cursory study of this and am coming to the same conclusion. Rich and famous compensated sometimes disproportionately for their talents, these "geniuses" seem to have a character flaw of some sort, a social disorder or distorted or lack of common sense that sometimes defies what we think as money = brains.
its generally not rich but famous people who suffer the dementia mentioned. the burning desire to achieve fame is the result of other issues in the person's life. unfortunately, without this issue induced burning desire it's impossible to reach the level of fame that makes one world famous. there are exceptions, but overall i believe my idea makes sense. surf
your examples suffer from heuristic bias. more specifically, the law of small numbers. for every exhibit of dementia you bring up, there are at least ten famous people who are normal. you only remember the people who are demented. it doesn't help the media blows it way out of proportion. the percentages probably correspond to the general population.
The same is true for traders. Many traders were able to reach the point where they were very successful. Maybe they expected to find happiness once they "arrived." Sadly, it's true that money (along with fame, I assume) can't buy happiness. Once they fail to find happiness, things can get ugly. Just my two cents.
I couldn't agree with you more. I would love to very rich, but I do not aspire to be famous. I do not want to have my life become an open book. I think the government classifies rich as 200K a year.