That thought occurred to me again yesterday:
When ya got nuthin', ya got nuthin' to lose ~ Bob Dylan
When you've got everything, you've got nothing to want ~ Jeff Beazley
Wanting seems central to the mind of the human animal, so I asked the question: If you have more money than you can ever hope to spend on the acquisitions available in the material world, is there anything else that extreme wealth can buy? A sense of superiority and the approbation of lackeys? It's a bit frail and fragile, isn't it? Which brings us back to the Buddhist attitude to ego.
I suppose you could always aspire to make the world a better place, but even that -- notwithstanding the fact that making the world a better place is probably still bowing the knee to ego -- would be forever under threat from the human condition and the forces of nature. So how about the ability to pay skilled assassins to kill people who dislike you? Mmm, nice one...
