RSS feedI had my hair done today (a wonderful vibrant blue if you’re
interested), and at one point during the 5 odd hours it took to do, a
mother and her 18 year old daughter had their hair done. The daughter
had beautiful long natural almost white thin straight hair that was just dying (sic) to be coloured a bright glitter blue, but I resisted.
I’d describe the mother as one of those upper middle class virtual upper
classers. You know the ones, they try to come across all
sophisticated, but their middle class attitude, and lack of dress sense,
regardless of which labels they happen to be wearing flaunting, clearly give them away.
On the way out of the salon, customers are offered a chocolate from a big glass fish
bowl, which at this point was probably three layers deep with
individually wrapped chocolates. So the mother grabs the only Lindt on
the top layer, it being the most expensive of all the chocolates in the
bowl. She then motions towards her daughter and says “would you like a
chocolate?”, and before hearing a reply, had already dug down two layers
and retrieved what was probably the only other Lindt in the bowl.
So does she think she’s more deserving than anyone who comes to get
their hair done after her? Or is it that she just happens to like Lindt
and thinks that most other people don’t? I’ll go out on a limb here, and
suggest perhaps that it’s just plain greed, and completely typical of the Christmas season.
To be fair, she’s probably married to some middle class businessman,
who’s had greed drilled into him from the day after completing his arts
degree, and their daily grind consists of greeding their way onto
Sydney’s north shore, greeding their way up the class hierarchy, and
promoting good greed culture in their 1.4 children.
Most likely however, it is just the greed that is built into us all from
the day we’re born. We talk about the prisoner’s
dilemna, and the iterated prisoner’s dilemna, where greedy
strategies do poorly against altruistic strategies, but what about the
last Lindt in the bowl dilemna?
At first I thought this was like the last slice of cake on the plate
dilemna, but it’s not, because there’s a social aspect to slices on
plates. Countless pairs of eyes, pretending to be engrossed in conversation, are secretly watching the plate to see who takes the last piece. With Lindts in bowls, there’s no chance or strategy involved, you can just take the last good chocolate and nobody will know, and the only thing you have to consider are your own principles.
But then again, maybe I’m just jealous?