Marsden Hartley
Dogtown, Gloucester
(1934-36)

"Some days, this responsibility's easier to fulfill than on others."

I encountered a Pre-Prosperous person yesterday. She was explaining how she’d delivered what I instantly recognized to be a CheapShot to a potential benefactor. Why would anyone ever consider committing such a crime? That answer must be above my pay grade, though I can imagine a nearly infinite number of justifications my Pre-Prosperous friend might offer if asked. She would doubtless consider her gift a fair trade, repayment for a previously committed trespass or, more likely, a prepayment for a yet-to-be-committed but threatened-in-her-mind wrong. She always seems to be striving to keep an invisible scale balanced. She’s the auditor, the accountant, and eternal bookkeeper seeking only fairness, but exclusively from her perspective. She seemed to have been outclassed but was unaware of the imbalance, except, of course, to sense an imbalance favoring her. It didn’t. Everywhere she goes, she seems to encounter the same damned situation. People don’t seem to respect her. They often disappoint. Go figure! Isn’t this precisely the behavior we’ve come to expect from the Pre-Prosperous?

Many forms of Pre-Prosperity exist, though I dare say that they might be classifiable along the lines of the seven deadly sins, with many ancillary less deadly categories for the less seriously afflicted. Pre-Prosperity does seem to be an affliction, an ongoing largely internal interaction between the Pre-Prosperous and their self, and in the most extreme cases, between their selves, because they exhibit symptoms of being inhabited by more than a single internal disagreement, multiple personalities-like. They tend to put on airs, as if fearing public discovery of some deeply held secret. They seem to be beside themselves, incongruent. Their speech patterns come across as chaotic, often bordering on incoherent, as if they omit a clear, context-setting preface. They tend to jump right into the middle of a topic unprepared, fueled by their abiding sense of superiority which, of course, stems from their deep conviction that they’re very likely inferior to everybody, especially those at whom they seem to always look down their nose. They live in fear that they won’t be heard. They rarely are.

One struggles to maintain a free and open society when the majority insists upon being Pre-Prosperous. It couldn’t be any fault of those not born to prosperity to find themselves in Pre-Prosperity, but how one chooses to cope with this difficulty seems to make all the difference when it comes to whether or not they ever succeed at exiting Pre- and achieving Prosperity. One might manage to accumulate great wealth without succeeding in leaving Pre-Prosperity. Those who insist upon carrying grudges rarely succeed, regardless of the wealth accumulated. One might move away from their humble beginnings without necessarily ever leaving any retained humiliation behind, and that retained humiliation can serve as an absolute barrier to entry into actual Prosperity. A sense of enoughness renders unnecessary any CheapShots that would otherwise seem essential if only to maintain that internal sense of balance. Prosperity isn’t dependent upon balancing internal scales. It couldn’t care less about such imbalances, for they don’t seem to register for anyone not actively auditing, accounting, and compulsively compensating, the necessary elements of most Pre-Prosperous’ CheapShots.

Even does not exist in any practical sense, only in the impractical, because it’s just not practical to be continually balancing some imaginary internal balance sheet. For what purpose must this effort be accomplished? Balancing those accounts cannot possibly be the purpose of Prosperity, to maintain constant awareness of just how one compares to anybody else. One necessary precondition for an egalitarian society must be to transcend this insipid need to place people into a personal hierarchy. Even in an egalitarian society, it’s relatively easy to spot the Nazis, for they persist even after being offered better than begrudging accountancy. They might try to fit in to polite society, but at any odd cocktail party you might notice their facade drooping to display their inner swastika. The tell often accompanies some CheapShot, often little more than an inflection of an inner superiority, a sure and certain sign of an inner Pre-Prosperity regardless of the surroundings’ evident Prosperity. Some people seem to never completely grow up.

Those who feel victimized by CheapShots inflicted by the Pre-Prosperous, welcome to a fairly non-exclusive club. We would all prefer to be highly thought of and be well-treated by our fellows, but not all have such goodwill to share embedded within them. They might still be struggling to get past some grievous trespass committed against them in their past. Be certain that they felt fully justified when inflicting their CheapShot, and that they’d convinced themself that you had thoroughly earned their intended insult. Understand that the tranquility that so often accompanies Prosperity has yet to visit them, and might not ever find its way inside. Rather than seek vengeance or respond by trying to rebalance those newly acknowledged scales, let the insult slide off your essentially impenetrable inner reptile’s scales. Prosperity brings a subtle invulnerability that renders most CheapShots impotent. The Pre-Prosperous who deal such blows might never come to know how silly their heartfelt insults ultimately seem. Their fate seems to be to continuously fail to fully balance those eternally unbalanced scales, while ours seems to be to feel vulnerable to their CheapShots. Some days, this responsibility’s easier to fulfill than on others.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz