I am reminded of a moment in a grocery store checkout line a year or so after high school. I had many acquaintances in high school, but didn't join any cliques, so everyone that was in a clique assigned me to the Stoners, because they themselves wouldn't associate with anyone outside of their cliques, so anyone that did was part of the clique they associated with. But, I just knew some good people and would converse with them. I didn't consider them off limits whether they were jocks, nerds, or stoners.

I wasn't the only one in my graduating class that didn't clique up, but I may have been the most clueless about it. After I had been exposed to corruption of the local government of the village on the island, I left town, moving to Juneau, the capitol of Alaska and 5x larger, with different cops, different schools, and I hoped, different cliques. Because I was an arrogant kid that thought what I knew was everything to know, and I was brutally honest, I could always find work because I worked hard, but I could never keep a job because everyone I worked for always did things the wrong way (according to me, who knew everything). I did a lot of entry level work, at any task in every field I got hired in.

When I was hired on as labor to demolish Dreamland, a local watering hole of great misrepute, I was filthy, wearing torn and dirty clothes, grabbing a bite at the local market after work, and a guy wearing a very expensive suit followed me in line. It was one of my classmates, one of the social bully clique. Not a jock, not a nerd, just one of the kids that grouped together to bully outcasts. They'd not ostracized me, however, as I somehow had not agreed to wear their target on my back.

Looking at him in his shoes that were worth more than everything I owned, I realized why he'd been in that clique. It was a clique of rich kids, whose parents had money. That money created different opportunities in their lives, commonalities in outlook and motivation, and political alliances/enemies. He wore that suit because it was his badge of membership in the clique he was in, the financial management industry.

He couldn't wear jeans and a t-shirt. He'd literally get fired, lose all his friends, place to live, and bimbo GF. He had to conform, regardless of what he thought of his betters, his bosses that made that magical money, and how they made it, regardless of what he wanted to do, he had to do what they wanted to do, to be their acolyte, minion, and toadie. Doing entry level labor in the construction field leaves you short money, scrambling for rentals you can afford, and etc., so I couldn't help but envy him the money he could just throw at every problem.

But money was all he had. He couldn't choose where to live, what to wear, or what to do on the weekend. I was vastly more free than he was. I was not bitter when I walked away from that chance meeting. Had I known then what I know now about big money bullies, things might have gone differently, but I had never heard of Bilderberg then, didn't know how they operated as a clique of bullies.

Money isn't freedom to do what you want. It's a chain that binds you to it's source.

Thanks!