Make America Greed Again: My Misadventure in North Carolina

I have a cousin in the U.S. that I have not seen for 15 years, so I went to meet her in North Carolina where she would attend a conference. The conference was in fact an annual meeting for a big online shopping website. She arranged the trip for me, but at the last minute, she could not come due to work emergency and I was sent alone to experience this four-days meeting, which turned out to be both deplorable and revelatory.

I took the bus from New York to North Carolina with other participants of the meeting. During the bus ride, each shared their success story thanks to this company. I was intrigued hearing how they were able to make a fortune with their online business, even though I was bothered by the way the host introduced each member by gluing their names immediately with how much that person earned each month, as if making the income as important as names in clarifying their identity. At one point, I put on my headphone, tired of their stories that all used the same narrative of a typical success story.

The second day, when the company leaders came onto the stage, I was immediately repelled by their vibe. It was the usual empowerment talk that aimed to shoot your adrenaline rather than engaging the thinking, strongly evocative of Trump. Under their pumped-up speech, I sensed that they either didn´t believe what they said, or they lied to themselves so much that it made it easier to lie to others. The claim of their altruism is a frail wrap of their devouring avarice. Even though they incited a lot of emotions in the stadium, I felt allergic to this kind of general emotion that lacks nuances and spontaneity -- a manipulated sort of emotion.

Things turned less subtle when the speaker yelled at the crowd ¨Do you want to make more money?¨, to which the entire crowd shouted back frenetically ¨Yes!¨. The whole stadium shuddered. My first thought was that I am in a cult of Money.

I turned to my side, talked to a woman from Guatemala whom I met briefly on the bus. She was also dragged to the meeting -- by her husband. I told her how I felt and that I was not against money, I was not even against the way this company makes its money, but that I was deeply bothered by the idolisation of their Money god. I was afraid that she might be offended, but I felt a sense of camaraderie when she replied ¨Yo siento igual. No te preocupes. Eres muy lindo¨.

I left the stadium, stifled by the air of greed in there. I walked around the corridor, wanted to find someone whom I could talk to. I was looking for a pair of eyes in which I could see a light, the kind of light that all my friends have, that reflects a sense of integrity and curiosity. And yet among 23,000 attendees, so far I (almost) only came cross the eyes jaded by selfish wants, or some innocent gazes but which were hardened by a promise of their lucrative future.

But I am glad that I came, because when the surrounding is murky, I am called to toughen the flimsy light within. I have to stand on my firm ground when everyone sweet-talks me with a possessed sense of tenacity that is definitely not altruism. But I have also come to see in a fuller scope how much I have also let money run the course of my life and that if I want to distinguish myself from these people, I have to be more aware of money´s grip, as well as to make conscious buying choice, so that I would not contribute to some people´s Greed. It seems that I have been a very lucky boy, surrounded only by people un-grasped by the fist of Greed (or at least with each other we keep our greed in check), which made me naively overlook the number of people in this country, and in this world who are still at the obvious mercy of the Devil (if the Devil exists, then in my opinion, Greed would be his favourite incarnation)

Complementing this reading with my frequent experience in Mexico dealing with conman, or my observation that my objectives of ambition are calibrated differently in France, America and China or my