I HATE RICH PEOPLE.

I’m sorry. This is is a stupid statement, I know. It’s immoral, wrong, ignorant, unthoughtful, un-intelligent, inconsiderate, unkind, un-original- all the things I try not be. But still, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t drink (excessively) or gamble,  I don’t hate my neighbour, I kind of like my parents, I don’t throw rubbish on the pavement, I don’t worship graven images, I mind my own business, if someone asks me for help in English or MS Word (the two things I’m really good at) I try to help them, I give fresh fruit to my children as snacks, I’m not racist, I generally try to behave like an ordinary decent person, so I might as well indulge in this vice. Hating rich people.

This is what I learned after burying myself up to my ears in student loans: people are not “homogenous”. Before I attended Dalhousie, I though this word referred to milk, now I know better. It means there are no “Africans”, no “womenandchildren”, no “Iranians”- every single individual has their own worth and needs and problems, and if you start talking about people as if they are groups of sheep, then you’re heading for trouble.

Well, these sweet enlightened professors might have saved their breath, because when it comes to rich people, I’m homogenizing like crazy. I hate them all. Especially rich Iranians. Those- I can’t stand.

My father, in his former life, worked as a textile factory inspector, and what he saw in factories gave him a lasting, deep-rooted, never-dying hatred of factory-owners and their clans which extends to rich people in general; in our family, rich is another word for dumb, immoral, depraved, corrupt- you get the picture.

Not that we associate with rich people regularly, oh no. However, this morning, I had the pleasure of going to an office for an errand which by chance, brought me into close contact with a group of rich Iranians (ever heard of the Provincial Nominee Programme? I say no more), and once again, I thought pedar, how right you are. I just can’t stand being in the same room with these people.

I don’t know which is more off-putting and sick-making: the sheer arrogance, the undisguised racism, the pretentious manners, the totally unfunny jokes, the sense of entitlement, the blatant sexism… The men all think they are a combination of Don Juan in charm,  The Onion in wit and Noam Chomsky in their keen ability to conduct socio-economic analysis. The women consider themselves the rivals of Marilyn Monroe, however, their plunging decolletages and over-dyed orange-yellow hair, their hysteric too-loud  laughs, terrible make-up, over-plucked eyebrows and bad nose-jobs make them stick out like sore thumbs.

I haven’t had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with any Canadian rich people- but I’d like to know, are rich people internationally so insufferable? Or is this yet another Iranian malaise?

Tags: Iranian society, life, people, random