August 25, 2007

In sharp contrast

To contrast with our anxious “over the flutter of their cash” Silicon Valley millionaires, here’s someone they could learn much from Zell Kravinsky, who reminds me of Dorothy Day, and far from being barking mad, as is regularly inferred about him, makes pitch perfect sense and has taken the measure of the world very accurately.  And since he’s a Renaissance scholar one hopes he can see the value in buying books and supporting artists.

I’ve often wondered if the acquisition of wealth is just humans collecting comfort, continuous comfort, an insulating quilt of comfort to the point that it merely highlights how uncomfortable they in fact are. That inside a monstrous house, and a massive car and a private jet and an endless swimming pool rings little but the eventual echo of loneliness. People even refer to themselves sometimes as “comfortable”. It’s an odd, blank description.

 I think it was Tennessee Williams who said something like we’re all hurrying towards something, what’s going to happen when we actually get there. Well, it would seem that Mr. Kravinsky found out and he could not look at the blatent injustice that stared back at him.

He’s interviewed on The World Service program The Interview here