Y'know, folks called me 'arrogant' just 'cause I insisted on being called Ras-G, and for my just assuming the Universe had been created for my soul personal amusement. Now, as it turns out, nothing of the sort, I was simply ecologically ahead of the Darwinian Adaptation Curve for niche-living in a Material World:

"In the first study, they found that materialism increases from middle childhood (8 and 9 years old) to early adolescence (12 and 13 years old) but then declines by the end of high school ... This mirrors patterns in self-esteem, which instead decreases in early adolescence but increases in late adolescence ...

"In a second study, John and Chaplin boosted self-esteem by giving children positive information about peer acceptance. Children were given paper plates with positive descriptors about them ... provided by their peers in a summer camp setting. This seemingly small gesture drastically reduced the high levels of materialism found among 12 to 13 year-olds and the moderate levels of materialism found among 16 to 18 year-olds."
[ materialism in children and adolescents linked to self-esteem ]

So you mean if I'd taken humility, rejection and criticism from puny earthlings more seriously back then, then today I'd have more interest in the bank balance??? Gad, missed opportunities or what, eh? I could have been rich! Instead I looked at Miles Davis's apartment that was so small the cot doubled as the piano-bench and I said, "Man that's cool..."

There's still some parts of this I don't understand, though. I mean, yeah, I can see where the cherry-red Hummer and 80-terrabyte iGot-1 II could be compensating for something, but I wouldn't have thought it so abstract and aethereal as a compromised sense of personal supremecy, and while it is true that Charles Mingus and Sun Ra were both pinching pennies, there's no question that, while he started out with budget boxer gloves in a two-bit flat, Miles was, by the end of the trail, indubitably rich. Although, true 'tis true, that was post 'Sketches' and well before TMWTH, Miles did have some chemical ego-assistance that maybe just maybe was hiding a waning something ...

But enough about Miles, let's talk about me ...

Rick Soderstrom once asked me, "Nice car, how much did you pay for it?" and I said, "Gee, Rick, y'know, I don't really know." That was probably a early-warning trouble sign right there. I wonder if you can get courses that will feed you anti-affirmations?

Actually, I did get better. Today you only have to call me Mister G.

A final irony, normally I would link you to the original research paper so as not to just be parroting on the snippets shared in the mainstream science-blog press, but, dig this, the PDF of their paper costs $10 a pop -- I'll see if I can find a wealthy crushed wallflower who'd slip that out of petty cash and fire a free copy our way ...