“I don’t think it would be American Express,” one diner said. “I feel like that would be braggy, like I’m trying to prove I’m a big shot.”
.. “An Amex says you’re rich, but this says you’re interesting.”
.. Chase was succeeding by, essentially, copying the American Express playbook and chasing the same up-and-coming elites who had traditionally joined Amex’s ranks.
.. Could it be that American Express, the card that had defined ostentatious luxury and capitalist striving since the 1980s, was on the brink of becoming passé? What kinds of hoops would Amex need to jump through to attract these new hoodie-wearing moguls and young tycoons?
Was it possible .. millennials would never be convinced that income inequality was something they should aspire to?
.. For more than 30 years American Express has reaped enormous profits by telling its customers that they are successful, elite, the cream of the moneyed crop
.. people paid American Express up to $7,500 for the privilege of carrying cards that are very similar to the ones Visa and MasterCard give away free.
.. Last year, for instance, the number of American Express cards in use declined by almost 18 percent
the company’s relationships with Costco and JetBlue .. summarily ended when those firms found alternative credit card partners.
.. Chase and Citibank, have started beating Amex at its own game, often by hiring the same executives who built Amex.
.. “They can book travel for you, they have concierges to recommend the best restaurants. If you leave your reading glasses inside a hotel room in Budapest, Amex will get them mailed back to you. No one else does that.”
.. Millennials, however, don’t really need travel agents or concierges: They have Priceline and Yelp.
.. American Express, for decades, has essentially sold snob appeal
The Chase Sapphire Reserve .. is all about emphasizing what cardholders can do, rather than what they can buy.
.. This is a card for accumulating experiences.”
.. now gives cardholders an annual $200 credit with Uber.
.. more than a third of its new cardholders last year were millennials
.. many people who work at American Express aren’t all that millennially minded themselves. If you visit Amex’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, you’ll find squared-jawed men in bespoke suits and fashion model-glamorous women, but not a lot of young people in the uppermost ranks.
Richard Rohr: Mystical Experience
Now don’t let the word “mystic” scare you. It simply means one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience. All spiritual traditions at their mature levels agree that such a movement is possible, desirable, and even available to everyone.
.. You quite simply don’t have the power to obey the law or follow any ideal—such as loving others, forgiving enemies, nonviolence, or humble use of power—except in and through union with God. Nor do doctrines like the Trinity, the Real Presence, salvation, or the mystery of Incarnation have any meaning that actually changes your life. They are merely books on shelves.
.. However, until we have personally lost our own foundation and then experienced God upholding us so that we come out even more alive on the other side, the theological affirmation of the paschal mystery is little understood and not essentially transformative.
Pope Francis, the Prince of the Personal
Francis’ great gift, by contrast, is learning through intimacy, not just to study poverty, but to live among the poor and feel it as a personal experience from the inside. “I see the church as a field hospital after battle,” Pope Francis told the interviewer Father Antonio Spadaro. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. … Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. … And you have to start from the ground up.”
.. These days some religious people believe they need to cut themselves off from the corruptions of a decadent modern culture. But Francis argues that you need to throw yourself in the world’s diverse living cultures to see God in his full glory and you need faith to see people in their full depth. He is fond of quoting Dostoyevsky’s line from “The Brothers Karamazov,” “Whoever does not believe in God will not believe in the people of God. … Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists, who have severed themselves from their own land.”