(original title: Occupy Wall Street: What do you do when the odds are stacked against you?) Wall St shouldn’t be screwing people over. But they are. That needs to change. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Hopefully it will. My personal perspective for my own life? Don’t be a sucker. I’m not counting on anybody else to save my ass. I am not counting on the goodwill of others. I expect the world to try and fuck me over. And I plan to insulate myself against it in every way imaginable.

I find the idea of paying for a university education absolutely terrifying, for a HDB flat perhaps even more so. Being a conventional wage-slave strikes me as archaic, uninspired, wasteful. If it would be necessary for a period of time, so be it- but save like crazy. The goal would be to work towards building sustainable streams of residual income that don’t require your endless presence and input. Then you’re reasonably free to do as you please, within reasonable limits.

I know a guy who’s 28 and spends all of his salary towards funding his PS3, building his DVD collection, his iPhone and now he just got himself a digital camera. I highly doubt he has even a thousand dollars in the bank, and inflation is going to happily eat away at that. He’s fat as fuck and I could easily see Mr. Diabetes and Ms. Heart Disease paying him a visit within the next couple of decades.

In contrast, I know a girl who’s 21, living on her own with zero parental support, paying like $500 of rent every month- and she’s still accumulating substantial savings, teaching, giving tuition and spending marvelously little, despite having to pay for everything that the rest of us take for granted when we have families that support us. Do you think you need to look at the state of our economy to figure out who’s going to be able to fend for themselves better a few years down the road?

This reminds me a little about the provocatively-dressed-girl dilemma. The patriarchy says that girls who dress like “sluts” are practically asking to get raped. That’s fucked up. But here’s the deal- it’s also TRUE. If you were a girl, and you were going to walk down an street at night where many women have been raped before by screwed up men, would you walk there alone, dressed provocatively? By principle, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. But practically, would you actually do it? No right, you’d cover up, and hopefully bring a friend, and a can of Mace too if you could. YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO. But what are you going to do?

The point is, we can spend a long time talking about what the world is like, and how it ought to be. Hopefully, we can make a difference, too. I most certainly intend to.

But the MOST important question is- what are you going to do? How are you going to keep afloat? Who do you count on?

Some people REALLY need help. But there are also a lot of people who, with a little discipline, ingenuity and hard work- could totally help themselves. Should they have to work so hard? Perhaps not. But wouldn’t it be amazing if they did?

Again, not at all saying that the present circumstances are justified. We’re all fucked- so what are we going to do about it? I’m still mixed about “join a protest”- I suppose it has its place. But I imagine the first step is- get yourself on sustainable ground– put your own mask on first– then you can go help others.

Again, just to emphasize- I have ZERO sympathy for Wall Street and I think the protests are perhaps an inevitable emergent phenomenon of system failure. They were going to happen. But what are you going to do?