Elites don’t experience life and reality in a very different way from the average masses. Not categorically different—just insulated enough to make all the difference. The things that keep us normies awake at night—mortgages, rent, power bills, the cost of commuting, grinding through the same routine day after day just to break even, taking care of children when you are mentally exhausted—are all concepts they could theoretically understand. Abstractly. Academically. In passing.
But why would they?
If something doesn’t hurt you in daily life, why would you ever waste a second thinking about it? Pain is a superb teacher, but they don’t attend its classes. They have other problems. Problems that are very real to them, even if they look absurd from the outside: fitting in, staying relevant, being seen as “on the right side,” being cool within their peer group. What others think of them. What’s trending. What the agent says. What the editor wants. What the next movie, panel, award, or appearance requires.
These are problems we normies struggle to relate to. But for them, they are as persistent and mentally consuming as making rent is for us. Not impossible problems—never existential—but always present, always humming in the background.
Within that world, climate change is cool. Denial is not. And above all else, they want to be cool.
This is not because they are uniquely evil or stupid. It’s because social incentives matter more than material reality—until material reality shows up personally. As long as energy costs are an abstraction, inflation is a statistic, and shortages are something that happens “elsewhere,” narratives remain safe. Fashionable, even.
Reality will reach them eventually. It always does. But it doesn’t arrive like a car crash. It creeps. Slowly. Quietly. Bill by bill. Constraint by constraint. And by the time it’s undeniable, the damage is already done.
So don’t hold your breath.
