Lifestyle

Why do people dislike Jeff Bezos?

The most telling moment came immediately after Bezos went to space.

He had taken 90-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner along for the ride. Back on earth, Shatner was describing to a journalist how he felt after having seen space — an experience that deeply moved him. Bezos didn’t listen, bored by Shatner’s profound feelings, and asked for a champagne bottle. And then he just blasted champagne around like an asshole…

William Shatner was deeply and profoundly affected by the experience of going into outer space and seeing the earth from afar. It changed his perspective on life, on death, on the universe and the world we all share. He later wrote about it beautifully, and I will quote Shatner’s words in full below:

“We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there.

I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared.

I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold… all I saw was death.

I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. … My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

And I felt that, deeply. Shatner has since written and spoken about the experience many times, and has done so with such great eloquence that I felt compelled to share it here.

And Jeff Bezos just… wanted to shoot champagne like a dickhead, cheering and yelling for himself, honoring his own glory, his own success, his wealth and power that propelled him into space. He comes across so soulless, so devoid of humanity in that moment. It shocked me.

I’ve never seen a greater contrast between two men in my life. That one minute clip of Bezos and Shatner tells you everything you need to know about Bezos — he’s a rich dickhead, high on his own awesomeness, self-important and blessed with all the emotional depth of a twelve year-old boy on Adderall playing Call of Duty… any man of substance who has gazed upon the earth from space is profoundly affected by the experience. And to Bezos, it has all the impact of going to the supermarket and buying a loaf of bread.

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