THE IT'S ALL ABOUT ME PARTY (AND SCREW EVERYBODY ELSE)

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By: Mr. E.G. O'Miner, President and Chief Spokesman; Chairman of the Board of Directors, O'Miner Property Acquisition & Development Co., Inc., a Delaware Corporation Specializing in Real Estate Hedges; Profilee, Fortune Magazine's Gold 100 (March 2007); Author, "It's Mine : Stop Apologizing for Your Money" N.Y. Times Bestseller for 24 consecutive weeks; Married subject to prenuptial contract.

No one ever got anywhere in this country helping others. Rather, our ancestors achieved success by focusing on themselves. There is no shame in being selfish when being selfish buys you a house. There is no shame in being selfish when you get the job and the bonus. Just think of it this way: If you stopped to help the other guy, you might not have gotten the job or the bonus. Where would you be then? I assure you, you wouldn't like it.

Yet somehow it has become fashionable in the United States to deprecate wealth. Even really rich people learn that it is rude to mention incomes, portfolios and real estate holdings in public. They even open themselves up to ridicule when they refuse to give money to charitable foundations. Put simply, successful Americans feel increasing pressure to express shame for their success, even though they have realized the American dream.

This is outrageous. We believe it is time to stop feeling guilty for our money and our success. As successful Americans with substantial property holdings and minimal financial worry, we refuse to be modest any longer. We refuse to flagellate ourselves for achieving precisely what everyone sets out to achieve in this country. Rather, we want the world to know what it takes to be successful. We want to step out and say: "It's All About Me." And we're going to be honest, too. We're also going to say from the top of our lungs: "Screw Everybody Else."

I started the It's All About Me Party (And Screw Everybody Else) because I got sick and tired of all the public recriminations about wealth. I started the party because I want to be honest about success. Look, you can't become a millionaire by giving money to others. Being a millionaire requires a decidedly self-centered mental outlook. You need to think about yourself if you want to possess money and property. You can't put together favorable business deals, meaningful commercial contacts or cash large checks unless you adopt a relatively egotistical approach to life. I say to you: It's OK. Don't give yourself "permission." Don't apologize. Rather, say: "It's all about me and I don't give a good two shits what anyone else thinks of me."

Let the moralists complain and call you selfish. You'll be the one laughing in a Bentley while they're talking to themselves in a used Honda.

Let me explain what I mean by "It's All About Me." Being selfish is a lifestyle. It is a commitment, too. When you say "It's All About Me," you take an oath to live for yourself and yourself alone. You tell everyone else to fuck off because if they're not making money for you, they're not worth being around. True, it takes courage to live for yourself; everyone from day one has told you that it's wrong to eat the whole cake without sharing. But you can do it. Be strong. If you really want to be a millionaire, you need to think unconventionally. Don't apologize. Don't share. Take it all for yourself. And be happy doing it.

When it's all about you, you use the word "mine" a lot. Don't be afraid to think about "my house," "my money," "my wife," "my beach home," "my portfolio," "my cars," "my coin collection" and "my inheritance." This stuff belongs to you. You worked hard for it. Why should you give it away? Stop punishing yourself for caring about "mine." Sure, your parents and teachers always scolded you for shouting "mine mine mine" when you refused to let some brat share your toys. But they didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Rebel against convention. Stop the guilt. Go ahead and scream "MINE MINE MINE MINE" without a shred of shame. After all, who's the one with the mansion?

You can do this. You can finally make yourself the center of your world. No matter how much you have been brainwashed to care about others, you must dare to see through the lies. If you crave success, you must penetrate the deception. Make yourself the star of the show. Put your needs first, not your paraplegic uncle's. Pleasure yourself, not your spouse. Keep your money in a high-yield account; forget about the charity fund. Screw your brother; he can make it on his own. The minute you start worrying about other people is the minute you veer off the path to success. When it's all about you, you enrich yourself and you even feel good about it. Don't be weak. Don't be conflicted. When it's all about you, there is no conflict: It's just you, my man.

We stand for freedom. We stand for liberty from guilt, self-doubt, pity and compassion. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you only think about yourself all the time. Although we also believe in telling people to "screw off," we do not think that it is a bad thing. After all, putting yourself first means screwing everyone else. It's all part of the ball game. The trick is shedding all those compassionate impulses you learned since birth. If you really want to make a name for yourself, you need the courage to tell everyone else: "Screw you and your problems; it's all about me."

Our opponents say that we live unvirtuous lives. They say we are cruel, unforgiving, heartless and superficial. They can call us all the bad names they want. We're the ones with the big jobs, the big houses and the big cars. We're the ones who get the hot chicks and go on the ritzy vacations. We feel no shame for serving ourselves, because selfish people make the world turn. We don't think "selfish" is a bad word because selfishness creates jobs for all the people who live to share. Put simply, when we say "It's All About Me," we drive the economy. So in a weird way, we share a lot more by refusing to share than we would if we lived to share. And not just that: Virtue doesn't buy villas or hire hot whores; selfishness does.

Be a man. Do yourself a favor and drop the guilt, will you? Join the It's All About Me Party (And Screw Everybody Else). Liberate yourself from bloodsuckers and annoying relatives. Make money without shame. Spend it on yourself, not greedy dependent children, beggars and wives. Because when you permit yourself to be a selfish, greedy, arrogant rapacious pig, you drive this Nation to prosperity. Plus you get a really nice house and a bulging stock portfolio. And that, my friend, is the surest chick magnet on earth.

So shut the fuck up with this "sharing" business. Because when you share, you cheat yourself. And there's no "share" in the phrase "It's All About Me."

Be different. Be selfish. Be strong. Be yourself.

SHAME OR GUILT : WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

AN ESSAY

I tried to answer this question during a conversation I had with one of my best friends. We often talk about philosophy and power, and we both agreed that "shame" and "guilt" are "kindred spirits." They are both strongly negative words. No one likes to feel guilty or shameful. They both imply that you have done "wrong." But are they really the same? That's the question.

Both "shame" and "guilt" flow from an acknowledgment of power. We only feel shameful or guilty when we recognize that we have failed to conform to a standard that we probably did not make. Someone else made the standard, someone we recognize as "superior" to us. In this sense, both guilt and shame emanate from below; the person who makes the rules that induce guilt or shame at most feels "disappointed" that his "subject" broke a rule. Shame and guilt, then, are for those who occupy an inferior power position. This is why Nietzsche called shame and guilt Sklavenmoral--Slaves' Morality. The rule-maker (or "master") does not feel them. Rather, he causes others to feel them because they do not adhere to his standards. They solidify his grasp over them.

But this does not mean that a single "superior person" causes others to feel guilt or shame. While a "superior person" may have originally laid down external standards, in most cases today external standards proceed from institutions. After all, power is deeply entrenched. It emanates from manifold places. It operates in virtually every conceivable manner, whether subtle or overt. Power radiates in families, in schools, in laws, in social settings and in professional relationships. It exists in commerce and in property. Most relationships involve a party with advantages and a party without them. That disparity provides an opportunity for dominance by one party over the other. And this is the setting in which guilt and shame flourish.

Guilt is more extrinsic that shame. Although both guilt and shame flow from an acknowledgment of power, the power that induces guilt is predominantly external. When we feel guilty, we feel bad because we know we have transgressed against some common rule or understanding. Our negative emotion springs from our awareness that we have violated an external expectation. This includes everything from the criminal law (an external authority about which we are conscious) to our parents (an external authority whose commands we respect). A person feels guilty when he steals or when he knowingly fails to attend a dinner he promised his parents he would attend. In both cases, the person knew he was obligated to do something by some external authority, yet he failed to adhere to the obligation. That conscious failure creates guilt.

With guilt, then, the inquiry is external. We feel guilty only when we acknowledge that some external authority holds power over us. When we break its rules, we feel guilt to the extent that we deviate from the "expected standard." Guilt requires an acquiescence to "superior" people or ideas. It necessarily makes the subject "inferior" to the standard he violates. And unlike shame, it can be objectively measured: The "superior" party can declare a subject "guilty" because the subject verifiably deviated from an external standard. This is why the law uses the term "guilt" rather than "shame." Guilt is a conclusion as well as an emotion. You just need to see whether a person met the standard.

Not so with shame. Although shame might feel similar to guilt, it flows from an entirely different conceptual source. Shame has internal origins. A person feels ashamed when he fails to meet a standard that he expects from himself, not a standard some external authority set for him. An external authority might encourage a person to expect certain behavior from himself. But in the final analysis, only an individual can decide whether to adhere to certain principles or beliefs. In this sense, shame intertwines with honor. An honorable person swears to himself that he will not act in a certain way to achieve certain results. He expects certain behavior from himself. He commits himself to certain principles and beliefs. When he fails to act in the way he expects, he feels shame, not guilt. He failed to meet his own standard, not an external one.

Consider a man who commits himself to respecting others and telling the truth. He makes these commitments because he personally believes that respect and truth are honorable principles. If one day he lies and disrespects a competitor to win a job, he deviates from his own standard. If he truly has honor, he would feel ashamed for breaking his own commitments to good principles. He might also be guilty of violating some external standard against perjury or untruthfulness, but that has nothing to do with his own internal transgression. And that internal violation creates shame. In short, shame is ethical (internal), while guilt is legal (external).

But shame still requires an "inferior" mental outlook. Although an honorable person decides for himself whether to believe in certain principles, in many cases he does not decide freely. The decision whether to believe certain things often depends on social circumstance and expectation. An external rulemaker has as great an interest in creating strong internal shame in his subjects as he does in crushing them under external guilt. A rulemaker wants his subjects to decide to believe in principles that could induce individual shame. All this inures to his benefit. For example, a person learns to believe that "it is good to respect private property." He also learns that it is "illegal to steal." If he steals something, he suffers both shame and guilt: On the one hand, he failed to meet his own internal standard about respecting private property; on the other, he knowingly violated the external command not to steal others' property.

Both emotions are negative. They flow from different sources. But in the end, they both serve to reinforce the "superior rulemaker's" control over his subjects. Guilty and shameful people are easier to manage than willful ones.

Shame seems purer than guilt. It is more individual than guilt because it depends on the individual's own moral ordering. But if a person's own moral ordering is not voluntary--and if individual moral ordering merely substitutes for external rulemaking--then the net effect of shame is no different than guilt: They both reinforce dominant values by inducing negative emotions in those bold enough to "transgress."

QUICK WORD ON VACATIONS : EUROPE V. AMERICA

AN ESSAY

I have many European friends. We communicate all the time on a forum. During the summer, they always write about this and that journey they plan to take. They call them "summer holidays." They talk about traveling far and wide. They talk about taking four weeks off--with pay--to wander around Eastern Europe or France. Some even talk about going to China or India. In short, they talk about vacations with true relish. When they get home, they talk about how refreshed they are. They even say they do not mind going back to work after so much enjoyable time on vacation. They don't feel guilty about forcing their bosses to find replacements while they're gone, nor do they check email or phone messages while sprawled on Brazilian beaches. Put simply, Europeans know how to relax.

I can't resist contrasting these idyllic reports with horror stories about vacation time in the United States. This morning, for instance, I read about a friend who plans to take several weeks to travel through Germany and Bulgaria. He will receive pay during his trip; his boss actually encouraged him "because it's important for you to relax" and "see the world."

In response, I described the typical working American's vacation plans:

If only Americans understood the value of real vacation time. Over here, people hem and haw about taking 5 days off, compromise and wind up taking a "monumental excursion" to a water park in some god-forsaken suburb.

What's the difference, then? For starters, there's the obvious temporal difference. Europeans just get a lot more paid vacation time than Americans. Americans are lucky to get a week off with pay per year (including sick days), while most Europeans--even entry-level twentysomethings--get five paid weeks minimum. But the real difference is about power. Europeans get so much vacation time because they have relatively more power over their work lives than Americans. Over here, people feel obsequiously honored to have jobs. Like good fawns, they are prepared to sacrifice everything to keep them. It is a hopelessly servile approach; it puts full power in the employer's hands. Employers take full advantage; they dole out one week's vacation, no more. All the while, they cultivate a belief that "taking time off is bad," causing workers to feel guilty about leaving the office.

In Europe, by contrast, employers do not dominate workers as much as they do in the United States. Additionally, workers in Europe keep both government and private industry honest through spirited political engagement. When governments in Europe deliberate measures that award more power to employers, workers revolt. When Congress does the same thing in America, workers meekly stay at home and watch Monday Night Football. Given such political apathy, it's no wonder American workers have virtually nothing by comparison to their European counterparts.

Europeans do not seem guilty about taking time off, either. I think this reflects another important difference between Europeans and Americans: The mental relationship to work. In America, workers tend to revere their jobs. They want to impress their bosses, advance and succeed. To do so, they want to make the best showing they possibly can. That means doing work at all times, even on weekends and holidays. This is the attitude that resists vacations: After all, how can you impress your boss in Toledo, Ohio if you are tanning on a beach in Brazil? You're not making the company any money tanning. Americans debate with themselves about taking any time off at all. They worry about making the wrong impression. They feel guilty about foisting their job duties on some poor sot who's stuck in the office. To assuage their guilt, they simply decide not to enjoy themselves when they ultimately go on vacation. They bring laptops and BlackBerries with them to theme parks, casinos and spas. They stay in touch with work when they are supposed to be relaxing. They even try to show their loyalty by agreeing to take off fewer days than the number to which they are entitled. They travel locally, not over long distances, "just in case they need to come back in an emergency."

In short, Americans don't escape their mental relationship to work, even when they are supposed to be on vacation. It's about work, not life. And people wonder why they are unhappy.

But Europeans forget work when they go on vacation. They don't take guilt-ridden 4-day "long weekends;" they take month-long sojourns. If someone has to pick up the slack at the office, so what? That guy will get his time off sooner or later, too. They do not bring office email accounts with them. They do not return work phone calls while drinking or dancing with friends in a Warsaw discotheque. More importantly, they actually have time to unwind, "switch from work mode," reflect and experience the world. At the same time, they are not worried about their bills, nor do they worry about the boss' wrath. Their bosses actually encourage them. This is the European approach to vacations. It is about life, not work.

Americans criticize Europeans for precisely that reason: They don't care about working enough. But what has America's dedication to work really won? Americans are generally more unhappy than their European counterparts. They face more anxiety and stress because they do not have a safety net. They face more workplace guilt and obligation. True, Americans keep more of their income than Europeans. If they're lucky, they can even own more property than Europeans. But what Europeans pay in higher tax they receive in a more compassionate existence. Their high taxes finance their month-long vacations and free medical care. And in some sense, their high taxes provide them more happiness. An existence with less guilt and less obligation is a happier existence.

But America won't change its mind about vacations any time soon. Employers hold far too much power here. It is not just economic power; it is psychological power. It is deeply entrenched, too. Until Americans stop feeling guilty about abandoning their poor-paying posts for more than two days at a time, employers will continue to hold their psychological edge. That pyschological edge maintains political apathy; and political apathy keeps employers strong.

In an abstract sense, vacation time is just a proxy for the much more significant difference between Europe and America: Who really holds the power? If you feel guilty about failing to serve your economic master even though you are entitled to take time off, are you really in control of your life?

Employers in America do not just control time. They control emotions, too. That is power.

DELINQUENCY : A POWERFUL WORD

AN ESSAY

Power interests me because it pervades our lives. In many cases, we do not even perceive oppressive power relationships because they are everywhere. We accustom ourselves to them. We subject ourselves to them, even unconsciously. Most conspicuously, we live under certain public powers. There is overt public power, as when government cracks down on protests or visibly executes a condemned man. There is also subtle public power, as when tax collectors privately pursue individuals who do not have money to pay their tax bill. Government holds its power over us by threatening legal compulsion: Either we obey rules or it inflicts pain on our bodies and property. This is how public power operates.

But all exercises in public power pale in comparison to the ingenious methods designed to serve private power. As pervasive as government power may be, it still knows boundaries. Despite some glaring exceptions throughout our history, government must always act according to some legal authority that derives from a written, public source. Furthermore, government agents must abide by certain constitutional restrictions when impacting citizens’ bodies, liberty and property. These constitutional restrictions incidentally enforce “governmental decency” on State actors. In short, there are certain things that government simply cannot do. Not so with private actors.

Private power is far more pervasive than public power. The law cannot be everywhere all the time. In fact, the Constitution expressly and impliedly keeps government out of certain spaces and decisions. See, e.g., U.S. Const., Amendments III (no soldiers in private homes), IV (no unreasonable searches or seizures), V (no compelled self-incrimination or land seizures without just compensation), IX (unenumerated rights), XIV ("Due Process liberty," including freedom from "arbitrary government action"). The Constitution also prohibits government from directly regulating men’s minds, thoughts, opinions, beliefs or conscience. See, e.g., U.S. Const. Amendment I. But private power knows no such restrictions. It can freely enter men’s homes, appeal to their conscience and affect their decisions, no matter how intimate. While private power does not always carry legal force, it can deploy the law when it must. It is no exaggeration to say that the law serves private power, not the other way around.

What is private power? Power itself is a nebulous concept. Generally, it refers to one man’s or group’s authority over another man or another group. This, in turn, does not necessarily mean legal authority. It is much broader than that. Power includes the power to impinge on a person’s conscience, to make him feel guilty, to make him change his behavior or to make him feel obligated in any sense. In essence, power subjects: It impresses the object with a sense of “smallness” compared to the person who applies the power. It enforces obedience, as the employer cows the employee. Power is multifaceted. It appears in every context. But there is one prominent commonality in all this variety: Power always involves inequality. Without inequality in advantage, wealth, money or even sexual appeal, power could not break its objects into submission. When it comes to power, there are strong parties and weak parties. The weak party needs something the strong party has. As such, he must modify his behavior to adhere to the strong party’s requirements.

Yet power operates in far subtler ways than naked oppression. After all, if power is too oppressive, its subjects revolt, just as a dog will abandon its master if he is too heavy-handed. Power does not just dominate in a petty or brutish way; it also pervades lives. Consider the employee who awakes every morning knowing that he must appear at his job. Power pervades his life; he needs the paycheck to feed himself and his family. He does not question how he gets it; he surrenders to power and follows its commands. It is unconscious. He does not revolt against it; it is not petty. Power might inspire resentment, but not enough to make him question its basic authority. Resentment or not, power pervades his life and channels his decisions. Or consider the debtor who struggles to pay back his creditor. He lives his economic life knowing that he must fork over a good amount of his earnings to a stronger party who can hurt him if he does not. Power overshadows the debtor’s life as it did the employee’s. It constrains his thoughts and actions. It makes decisions for him. It impacts his freedom. It weakens his will. It subjects him to a “more powerful” decisionmaker. Why? Because he needed something he did not have before. To get it, he surrenders to private power. He pays as much with his soul as he does with his money.

Debt interests me for the same reason that power does. After all, debt relationships express power. Debt is incident to power. If power expresses a relationship between strong and weak parties that includes subtle mental controls, debt is a perfect example. Creditors are strong; they have something the debtor needs. Debtors, by contrast, are weak. They surrender both their souls and their money to get what the creditor has. Even if the debtor takes something worth comparatively little, the creditor relishes his power over the debtor by demanding far more in return. For example, creditors might loan $25,000 to a debtor. In return, the debtor must pay back $37,500 in two years. If he does not, the creditors have a legal right to seize anything the debtor owns to make good the debt. If the debtor succeeds in paying back the creditor, he gets nothing; he merely eludes the pain the creditor might have inflicted had he defaulted. And he actually enriches the creditor in the process. For creditors, it is a win-win situation: If they do not make a profit on the debtor, they can take what they want from him. If they do make a profit, well, who can argue with success? Yet the debtor lives under pressure. He either must enrich the creditor or lose everything. In this sense, we see classic inequality at work: Debtors and creditors face unequal burdens and owe unequal obligations to each other. And only the debtor lives in fear of legal compulsion. The creditor is the one with the real power—the power to force another to give him something or suffer for failing to deliver.

How does power describe its subjects? Language expresses power in an extremely subtle way, for only the powerful have the authority to choose prevailing words. They have the authority to label their subjects with concepts and epithets. They have the authority to channel both meaning and morality against those who defy them. On this point, consider the word creditors use to describe debtors who neglect their obligations: Delinquents. Creditors use the word in a very matter-of-fact way. They send a letter: “The balance due on this account is now delinquent.” The debtor feels morally bad about this result. He feels scolded. And he knows that the creditor now has power to do even more harm. Power functions best when it constrains its subjects’ minds with guilt, shame and obligation. Power uses the word “delinquent” to evoke these negative moral feelings in the “bad” debtor.

But why exactly “delinquent?” What does “delinquency” have to do with repaying money used for some forgotten commercial purchase? After all, etymologically speaking, “delinquency” delivers a strong moral rebuke. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.), “delinquency” stems from the Latin word “delinquentia,” meaning “to leave undone or to commit a fault.” True, the concept involves “leaving something off” or “omitting to do something.” But it also includes a strong moral element. It does not just mean neglect; it means neglect that makes the person morally blameworthy. The definitions bear out this interpretation. “Delinquency,” according to Webster, means not just “1. failure or neglect to do what the law or duty requires,” but also “3. a fault or misdeed.” More to the point, “delinquency” broadly refers to “thorough badness” or even “outlawry,” as we hear in terms such as “perpetual delinquent” or “juvenile delinquent.” Referring to this definition, Webster says that “delinquency” can also mean “behavior…that is antisocial or in violation of the law.” Id. at Definition 4.

In this grammatical light, we see that a “delinquent” is unsalvageable. When we label someone a “delinquent,” we condemn in strong moral terms. A “delinquent” is not just someone who forgets to pay something once in a while. He is a brigand, an outlaw, an irretrievable criminal. He is not just a person who forgets to send in a check for $45.12 every month; he is by nature “antisocial,” commits “faults or misdeeds” and invariably acts “in violation of the law.”

Power consciously controls language in these circumstances. It consciously chooses the word “delinquency” to apply to debt because it wants debtors to feel bad about neglecting their obligations to their superiors. But does failing to pay a bill really render the debtor an “outlaw?” Isn’t this going a bit too far? We all neglect things from time to time. Life submerges us with picayune tasks every day. It is understandable that we might pass one over now and then. From power’s perspective, it is all right to pass over some tasks, but not tasks in which power has an interest, such as a loan payment. You are not an outlaw if you forget to pick up your daughter at school one day, but you are an outlaw if you miss your car payment. Power wants debtors to feel bad about neglecting particular obligations, not all obligations. Specifically, power appeals to the debtor’s conscience when it stands to gain from the debtor. Thus, power cares only for itself; it uses morality and language to enforce obligations that provide benefit. In the abstract, it does not care about “obligation.” It cares only about obligations from which it can derive personal enrichment.

I do not like this at all. We all have a right to use language to express ourselves. No one has authority to selectively alter a word’s meaning to assert his own material dominance over another person. Yet this is precisely what private power does with the word “delinquency;” and no one really seems to notice. Private power has hijacked this word in order to crush its subjects into moral dejection. Why? Because it knows that morally guilty and shameful people are more likely to be obedient and to hand over what it wants. Although morality has very little to do with private commercial dealing, private power injects morality into commercial dealing because it provides additional assurance that it will make a profit. In a strange way, too, it uses morality to remind its subjects who is boss. After all, bosses don’t feel guilt or shame; they are the ones who inflict those feelings on their underlings. Guilt and shame—along with all moral feelings—flow downward. People feel guilty and shameful when they fail to adhere to a standard imposed from above. There is nothing "above" power; power is “the above.” Only those under power can feel guilt and shame. And they are effective weapons to compel allegiance.

Private power is “above” us everywhere. When we actually feel morally bad when we receive “delinquency” letters, we know we’re subjects. Unlike public power, private power does not just impact our bodies and property. It also impacts our deepest moral feelings. That is real, abiding power. That is the kind of power against which revolt is impossible. By comparison, public power and the law are clumsy, imperfect weapons. Private power, on the other hand, is so pervasive and so subtle that is virtually invisible. It influences minds and emotions, not just pocketbooks. And private power prefers it that way: Private. Why attract attention when you don’t need to?