I think the change is that today’s ultra-rich don’t act the same way the rich of the past did.

The “robber-barons” of the early 20th century were phenomenally rich and powerful, and they built schools, libraries, parks, and other public goods with a small fraction of their wealth because they understood that they had at least some tiny obligation to give back to the society that provided the conditions under which they could get so wealthy.

Today’s rich are actively preaching against the concept of empathy, and resisting any notion that they owe anyone anything. They are convinced that even a single dollar of their fortunes going to anything other than their own personal aggrandizement is a deeply offensive idea. And they are so willing to resist doing anything positive for the world that they spend enormous amounts of money to create propaganda networks to convince others that they don’t owe anyone a single cent of their fortunes. They buy ad campaigns to convince people that taxing them is bad, spending in some cases more money than the taxes would cost them… all because they firmly believe no one but themselves should see even the tiniest benefit from their money.

I firmly believe that after a certain amount of money there is no longer “joy” in having money and they all have to find something else to get their fix so to speak.

It just so happens that hurting people (or more accurately, having the power to make people hurt themselves and put themselves through humiliation to please you) is the only thing that they enjoy after they’ve won the money part of life.

Even small businesses do this, owner gets the car they’ve always wanted and then just decides to make everyone that works for them as miserable as possible, even if it costs them more money to do that, because the high from that is WAY better than the money they could otherwise make.

To be fair, Villinois would be a decent band name.

My brother the Germans didn’t take In Christ sustainable casualties eithe

Never had my hearing tested but I can say anecdotally that many times I have been at work listening to music from my computer and had people walk up to me to talk to, which leads to me saying “let me pause my music” and them to respond “what music?” I often have the volume on everything that has controllable volume as low as I can possibly set it.

I very often hear things no one else does, to the point people think I’m insane because I’m absolutely hearing it but no one else can so they don’t believe me.

Any noise that I don’t know is an immediate problem for me. If I don’t know what it is and I can hear it, I absolutely have to stop what I’m doing and find out. I can’t convince myself to stop this because it’s actually led me to detecting leaky pipes in my house twice now, right as they broke.

Also the sound of cotton balls rubbing together. Horrendous. And coil whine of electronics, that’s awful too. As is just the sound of electricity in general, like fluorescent lights make an awful noise. I’m gonna stop here before this becomes a novel.

It depends on how you define weird, but this phenomenon has a name (if that gives you a clue as to how common or uncommon it might be): Alexinomia

I also not only struggle with not feeling weird when I hear my name, but I also just avoid using other people’s names to the point that people get upset with me when I am trying to tell them about things involving multiple people because I will simply never name any of them. It makes listening to me rather confusing for others, and I’m not even entirely aware I’m doing it. And I die a little bit inside whenever I’m in a situation that requires me to address someone by name.

Might be worth looking into Alexinomia for some more information if this is bothering you.

I think it’s just an unfortunate part of human nature to enjoy looking down on others. Don’t get me a wrong, a lot of people can get over that, but some people don’t. It’s an easy shortcut to feeling better about oneself that a lot of people fall in to.

When I was younger, I pointed out a friend of mine had trouble making eye contact. It was a shitty thing of me to do because I’ve spent my entire life getting shit on because I avoid eye contact like the plague. I felt immediately bad about doing it and apologized later. I had to really inspect why it was I felt like that was an acceptable thing to do, because it certainly was not.

I find it helpful to point out to people that they inherently understand that it feels bad to have people make fun of you or belittle you, and they need to put themselves in the other persons shoes. Sometimes it’s just that, someone did not even think to make the connection that being treated that way doesn’t feel good, so you shouldn’t do that to other people.

The big light is my mortal enemy.

This includes the sun; the biggest light.