The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically:<p>I am an &quot;official&quot; millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence&#x2F;success curve, appear to be <i>so much more</i> closet-nihilist than everyone else around.<p>What I mean by that is that, while of course we don&#x27;t <i>really</i> want to see the world burn, we are secretly hoping, in the dark, when no one is watching, for things to always go tits up a bit. Like there is a subconscious fascination to the aesthetics of Nero playing the lire while Rome burns. And upon deep self-reflection that&#x27;s always a bit unsettling.<p>I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s related to the generational trend, or maybe it&#x27;s just selection bias over the people around me, but I think it&#x27;s mostly the former rather than the second. Probably stems from the fact that we saw our beloved parents struggle in old age with health and finance, while we live in a more priviliged regime (remember that I mentioned this applies mostly to financially successfully peoples) where money seems more immaterial.<p>So I guess the author might be onto something about this whole financial nihilism thing.