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The Power of (No) Money
I've been cutting my own hair ever since—and hey, it does't look that bad. It’s April, and nearly everyone is strapped for cash—at least those of us with too much pride to beg our parents for some extra spending money. We all started cutting our own hair, around the same time we switched to no-name brands of soda, buying hair products from the dollar store, pocketing silverware from the cafeteria, and doing impromptu loads of laundry in the sink. Plato's Republic discusses money a potential or frozen desire. In this sense money supersedes the idea of power in terms of the pleasure-pain principle. Given the idea that money allows one to fulfill one's desires, the lack of money is equivalent to the lack of power to avoid aversions. Thus, power and money (in terms of Plato, Hobbes and Freud) would seem to be intrinsically combined. And for many of us, this is the first times in our lives that the limitations of money manifest in day-to-day life. Sure, we've felt it before, the frustrations of not being able to afford a car, or even the extravagantly priced liberal arts school on the east coast—but never has it been so constant and exasperatingly real. The latte you see the businessman in the expensive suit sipping as he hurries through the financial district with the briefcase suddenly strikes you as bourgeois, the nice cars barreling down cramped streets are flashy and obnoxious. (No wonder university is the time when most students find themselves identifying with Karl Marx.) This frustration of desires moves students to extreme measures of making some quick cash. I will be engaging in a cognitive psych experiment for $10 an hour on Monday. Friends of mine have considered busking on street corners with open guitar cases, crooning Bob Dylan to uncomfortable spectators. Another suggests "life-modelin"” (nude modeling for art classes) in drafty studios as a potential career path. Nevertheless, there's a certain kind of noveltyand an extreme dose of narcissism in the challenge of fulfilling desires without the immediate and obvious aid of the power of money. In the university student's psyche, the issue of the lack of money as the cause of a lack of power to fulfill appetites and avoid aversions becomes sublimated in the immediate cultural context. That is to say, my idea of a great day out now consists of ordering nothing but water as I sit and write in a coffee shop for hours, while the jaded employees shoot me dirty looks. But hey, I'm a university student compensating for my lack of monetary power to overcome the pleasure-pain principle. It might be a stereotype, but in these last few weeks before finals, it's a little bit too true for comfort. PREVIOUS ENTRIES The Second-Term, First-Year Crisis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
