Money, an important character in The Great Gatsby
The author of this TedTalk is Assistant Professor of Psychological and Social Behavior at the University of California. He is a part of the new generation of scientists. In his TedTalk the key argument is that as a person’s level of wealth increases their feelings of compassion and empathy for others goes down and their feel of entitlement goes up. He proved this by having strangers play a rigged monopoly game, the richer person decided by coin toss. Wealthier individuals moralize greed as being good. I feel like Daisy portrayed greed when she didn’t wait for Gatsby because he was poor. She felt like she was entitled to a rich man. Even though in the “Does money make you mean?” Ted Talk they found that the wealthy’s empathy went down for poor people, I feel like Daisy’s empathy went down for everybody. She didn’t care when she killed Myrtle and she also let Gatsby take all the blame for her wrong act! One of the first few things Nick said was " Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember the advantages you've had..." this to me connects with the beginning of this Ted Talk the rich players knew they had an advantage. Even though Nick says this and shows it through his personality, most people don't think this way. It was shown in The Great Gatsby and in Paul Piff's experiment. He found that richer players even started smacking their pieces around the board rather obnoxiously and over celebrating their wins. There was a bowl of pretzels on the table and wealthier players snacked more often and talked about how bad the other was losing. There is a counter argument though, there always is. In this experiment it is how self- interest isn't always a bad thing, it is actually pretty favored in many american dream concepts. We all struggle with competitiveness and when to put our own interest over others. I think Gatsby had a strong self- interest he objectified and wanted Daisy to make himself happy. He didn't really care about other people involved: Tom and her baby, He put his interest way before there's.
Reflection
I agree with the author. I feel like his thoughts were valid because whenever people are homeless we always think its because they didn't apply themselves enough. One key American concept is " Everyone has the chance to make it equally if we work hard enough and apply ourselves." We never think about the advantages we had before judging, like Mr. Nick Carraway suggested.