The Midas Paradox: Why Billionaires Choose Banality Over Brilliance

### 🧠 Socrates Café Chiang Mai

The Midas Paradox: Why Billionaires Choose Banality Over Brilliance
📅 Friday, August 23rd | 🕛 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM
📍 Hideaway Café, Chiang Mai
💸 Minimum spend: 250 THB on food/drinks

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> "When unlimited resources meet unlimited vapidity – what went wrong?"

Jeff Bezos reportedly spent hundreds of millions on his wedding—a luxury affair featuring Usher and a guest list of Instagram influencers, reality TV stars, and tech tycoons. For the cost of a small nation's GDP, one of the richest men alive could have curated a cultural event for the ages—commissioning new operas or architectural wonders, gathering Nobel laureates or global thinkers, or funding bold, cross-cultural experiments in beauty, art, and science.
Instead, we got what looked like an expensive nightclub with better catering.
But this isn't just about bad taste. It’s about what political philosopher Hannah Arendt called “thoughtlessness”—the intellectual vacancy that occurs when people stop critically examining their choices. And it’s a philosophical riddle worth exploring: Why do those with the most freedom and access often make the most banal decisions?

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### 🔍 Discussion Topics:

#### 🌀 The Banality of Infinite Choice

How does unlimited access to everything paradoxically lead to choosing nothing of substance?
We’ll explore:

• Arendt’s “thoughtlessness”, originally used to analyze the dangers of unthinking behavior in bureaucratic and authoritarian systems.
• Theodor Adorno’s “pseudo-culture”, where mass culture simulates intellectual depth but lacks authenticity.
• Whether billionaire entertainment culture—driven by optics and algorithms—has become the simulation of taste, not taste itself.

#### 🧬 The Corruption of Human Potential

Friedrich Nietzsche envisioned the Übermensch (“Overman”) as a self-creating, self-transcending individual who rejects conformity and invents new values. In contrast, he described the Last Man—a figure of comfort, safety, and intellectual laziness.
The ultra-wealthy today arguably have the material conditions for becoming Übermenschen—radically free to reshape human life and culture—yet many seem to embody the Last Man: risk-averse, image-obsessed, and comfortably detached from cultural innovation.
We’ll ask:

• Has wealth become a cage of conformity?
• Are we seeing a global trend toward plutocratic mediocrity, where money replaces vision?

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### 🧠 Modern Questions We’ll Explore:

• Is there something about extreme wealth that actively corrupts curiosity and imagination?
• How does constant public attention (what might be called the billionaire panopticon) discourage authentic decision-making?
• Could the Bezos wedding have been a modern Medici moment—and what would that have looked like?
• Are we witnessing the death of aristocratic culture and the rise of performative plutocracy?

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### ✨ What to Expect:

• Lively Socratic dialogue (not a lecture)
• Exploration of classical ideas applied to modern realities
• Specific examples from recent events and billionaire culture
• Welcoming, reflective space for sharing ideas—no philosophy background needed

Whether you're a fan of Adorno, a critic of capitalism, or simply curious why so many people with infinite choices choose the most boring ones—this discussion is for you.
🟢 All perspectives welcome
🟢 No dogma, just dialogue
🟢 Coffee, community, and critical thinking

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💬 RSVP to reserve your seat. Limited space available.
📩 Message the host if you have questions or want to bring a friend.