THE ILLUSION OF SUCCESS (AND SCAMMING THROUGH LIFE)

Growing up, many of our parents worked damn hard to make ends meet, to literally put food on the table, and ensure we had a good education, a better life than they had and gave us a future path where it was up to us as how to use it and which road to take and to be mindful of dangerous pitchforks in that life’s journey.

I was reminded of this journey- and it’s an ongoing one- reading about a very protracted legal case involving a group of relatively young, but mature enough to know, businessmen- one-time partners in one of those get-rich-quick schemes to start up one of those shee shee clubs for the pretentious la la crowd- now busy suing each other.

It’s like the M1NT saga and THOSE con men for Beginners.

Do I feel sorry for them? Not for them and not for anyone- and there are millions of them- leading a life of entitlement and weighed down with this weighty problem of not being content making a nice cosy couple of millions, but hell-bent on raking in hundreds of millions.

Greed Is Good didn’t die with Gordon Gekko and excess didn’t disappear with The Wolf Of Wall Street.

It’s here- bigger, worse and more despicable than ever, and has ruined an entire generation. Why?

The generation I mention have had it too good and too easy- a generation where many are ungrateful, heartless, useless, jealous, overrated cruds of the world who will age being miserable due, in main, to trying to keep up with the Jones’s PLUS the Chans, the Wongs, the Mallyas and wooed, blindsided and won over by the fake, fake, fake, fake life of reality television, the two-bit losers these shows glorify for their 15 minutes of fame, and all that artificiality around them.

Perhaps it’s mainly Hong Kong and the major cities of China and Asia as it’s certainly not prevalent in Scandinavia or other parts of Europe, but chasing after the Mighty Dollar, talking in billions, and wanting to be Jay-Z with a Beyonce by your side has become life’s game plan for many- too many- and the company they keep who seem to have been spawned in the same vapid, soulless money pit of groveling inconsequences.

Well, Jay-Z and Beyonce have problems, baby, and nothing and few are what they appear to be and one can so easily be swimming with sharks and going down with the Titanic.

Over the past few years, I have met ambitious young guys in the “financial world” with great plans, but ending up jobless and sponging off their delusional girlfriend.

There was the coked out “mining genius” making a mockery of his long- suffering German girlfriend who finally cut the cord.

The “entrepreneurs” with a new project every month that always goes nowhere whereas earlier this week I met a failed businessman I had known a decade ago who led women into believing that he was dripping in millions.

He was and is a sad character and how he secures his half-arsed relationships- once with a slew of nubile gold diggers from Eastern Europe- and, these days, with equally fraudulent peroxide blondes one sees cast on shows like The Ugly Housewives Of Half-Baked Alaska.

He still talked- and talked and talked with no letting up about his properties all around the world, his “office”- a virtual one and called a briefcase- his latest gig as CEO of “a listed company in China” and rattled off a number of names- Dr Dre, Apple, Alan Sugar, David Beckham- and, hearing all this crap along with him supposedly owning a $174m ranch in Nevada, you’d think this bloke makes Simon Cowell look like he’d need a loan.

But like so many guys like this who need to live a day-to-day existence of bollocks and having to constantly look over their shoulder to ensure the truth never catches up with the Great Untruth, this is the life he- and only he- has created for himself.

Perhaps he likes it this way? It’s just not for me, but, to each their own and if he can wake up in this Walter Mitty world he has created for himself and can face the morning with a smile, fine.

“Created” is the prerogative word- and this is where the younger businessman coming up the ranks believes that it is also the lifestyle for them, and why there are so many today wishing to fast track their lives, make millions as easily and as quickly as possible with absolutely no qualms about conning people or working on the edge of the wrong side of the law.

It’s no longer about being creative or looking up to Dylan or Lennon or appreciating Rimbaud or Roald Dahl or Lenny Bruce.

Today, it’s about believing in the google god and absorbing everything by being a slave to technology and parroting Chauncey Gardner-type soundbites without any understanding of what it all means- and with no one listening.

This is the problem and, in many ways, why music has such few storytellers, why the music industry is stalked by so many wankers and the reason why love and peace and Imagine and Hope and all that other good stuff have lost their meaning and worth.

Yes, Love doesn’t live here anymore because it’s been replaced by the constant din of talking in millions and billions when we should all know that talk is cheap and shows up basic human frailties and insecurities.

It’s because of all those lost souls wanting to be the new Donald Trump- we still can’t get rid of the old one- or even that broken down Richard Branson clinging on to being the Virgin King.

It’s to do with believing everything one reads and a know-it-all closed mindset that refuses one to see just how stupid parroting words sound and, yes, living a very false illusion- and delusion- of life where many have let go of what truly matters.

Instead, they have embraced ponzi schemes and Instagram lives thinking that leaving behind those fake Facebook profiles and updates or whatever the fuck one concocts on Facebook is progress.

It’s a long way from Tipperary, you impotent numbnuts.