The walls of wealth

For many years I used to hear that getting rich was evil. Money didn't make you happy. Wealth was power when all said and done, and power tends to corrupt. This is nothing new of course. Christians get taught this from their youth, a kind of weird double standard in some western countries. On one hand there is all this advertising, and on the other there are moral exhortations to refrain from accumulating the wherewithal.

By the time people reach their thirtysomethings, I reckon they start to see through this questioning of money. By then they may have some kids, a mortgage, a job that isn't quite going that far, and holidays in tents. So they think, hey, I need to get some financial muscle. Time is passing, and I haven't seen the world, or bought a new car. And yet I am working hard.

They start to rationalise along the following lines; firstly, here I am working. I put in 40-60 hours a week and take home X dollars. If I must throw this time away each week, why don't I try and bring home 2X dollars? Which is fair enough logic. Why spend this huge chunk of time, possibly 60-70% of your entire life, doing something that doesn't pay that much?

Secondly, if they are in a nice morally justifiable job like school-teaching, or nursing, or librarianship, or a government administration post, they begin to wonder how they got conned into it. For a few years in their early twenties these jobs were fine. Pay didn't mean much because they were 'doing something for the world,' unlike other blatantly non-moral workers such as salespeople, or entertainers or car mechanics. But now they get jaded over the idea of making the globe a better place. Every schoolteacher in their thirties wonders if they are achieving anything at all in terms of 'changing lives,' like the advertisements promise they will.

Furthermore morally justifiable jobs can swap places with morally unjustifiable ones very easily. Take lawyers for example. Used to be this was regarded as a fine upright profession. But today we get lawyers involved in financial scams and jokes such as, 'how do you tell the difference between a dead lawyer and a dead dog on the road? Answer: there are skid marks in front of the dog.' And in recession ridden countries, suddenly an international salesperson of export products becomes a hero. Contributes to the GNP. The salesman is the hero? Lawyers hate that.

Wealth as an evil therefore, tends to diminish. Because people simply want an easier life. They are sick of floating their debts between their VISA Card and their Mastercard. They are sick of that car that sometimes doesn't start. They really would like to hire a baby sitter more often and have some time out from their screaming kids. An overseas holiday in the tropics appears like a dream to them.

They don't even want money. They would just like to enjoy some of the things that money can buy. Here and now. Before they get too old. At this point in their lives they are faced with three options in reality. Let me outline them.

1. They do something about it. They change jobs, start a second business, whatever, to earn the extra spondulicks.

2. They do nothing about it. Wrong, they dream about it, and may grow bitter about not doing anything about it. And they remain non-wealthy. This is the procrastination option. The default option. By far the majority choice.

3. They learn to deal with the challenge of the lure of wealth, and they get over it. This third option does not preclude them from actually accumulating money. Not at all. But it then becomes a non-event.

It is the third option that particularly interests me. The second option, despite being the majority choice, is a disappointing one. It leads to a lukewarm life. I would rather that people choose either the first or the third, and do something about it. But because the first option is the subject of a vast array of literature aimed at the 5% percent of the population that chooses it, I will leave it alone. It has been more than dealt with elsewhere.

However I know very few people who have actively chosen the third option. I need to clarify this. I have read about, and met, people who are now sick of wealth because they have experienced it. These are rich people turned reformers, who can speak with authority that 'money doesn't bring happiness', because they have been there. But I don't think others listen to them because it is very easy to be cynical of such converts. After all, they have a large bank account already. No, it is the ones who have never had wealth, yet genuinely recognise it's perils, that appeal to me. They may even have the personal drive and abilities to get it together. But they have chosen, actively chosen, not to. Their's is an immensely enviable position.

They live in the position of insecurity over how projects will be completed, whether they will have an income next month, whether their kids can handle the fact they alone can't afford to go on that school trip, and that their car will most certainly be in the garage again sometime in the next fortnight. But they embrace it. It is life on the edge. It is not dull. It is exciting.

They live without the walls of wealth.

What are the walls of wealth? Simply that. Walls protect us from things. And wealth can also. It can protect you from disease for example. You buy your way out of it with the best medical attention. Money can protect you from dumb things like a noisy neighbourhood. If there are too many motorbikes roaring up and down the street, or the renovators are always busy next door, then you can buy another house in a quieter location. Near a better school so your kids will be protected from the risk of a poorly delivered education. Riches protect next months food for your family. It will be waiting freshly in the supermarket for you whenever you want it. Legal tender saves you from a car that doesn't start in the morning. Cash restores your mental health with that getaway holiday. These are the walls of wealth. Who would be foolish enough to choose life without them?

Not many. But at the risk of a religious commercial, an important figure did two thousand years ago. No home, no belongings, didn't know where the next meal would be coming from.

Before we stray into that topic however, let's look at the upside of our third option. And there are quite a few. Among them are the advantages of friendship. Everyone in the world wants friends. But our human nature is so competitive that we want to know we are economically better off than others, a little bit ahead. And if a friend is wealthier than us, do we love him or her more for that? No, no, no. We are jealous of them. Admit it. This situation has a reverse psychology to it though. If you have less than the surrounding populace, but are happy with your lot, then no-one can be jealous of you. They actually accept you more readily because you are not a threat to them. Your income and assets are about the same as theirs or less. I fully believe you can make more friends.

Somebody is bound to point out the flaw to this argument, so let's deal with it now. The flaw is those people who are upwardly mobile, who move from friendship group to friendship group defined by increasing status and wealth with each move. However I don't consider for a second that genuine friendship relationships exist in these meetings of the 'beautiful people', so to me it is a non argument. There may be facade relationships, but no long term commitments as real people. If a friend sees less of you because their finances take off, were they really a friend?

Therefore the walls of wealth may shut people out of your life.

A second upside to not being wealthy is you get experiences that the rich have forgotten. You will be in the middle of risk situations as a way of life. Now the wealthy have also been in these situations unless they inherited their money. To make their pile, they lived and worked through risky situations. Those were the exciting years of their life as they took chances and worked them through to prosperity. Talk with the magnates, and they will chat away about those exhilarating times. But long after they have made it, and are sitting around, they forget those risky exciting encounters. Their walls of wealth protect them from the same experiences. Okay, if they haven't set up their followers or their children properly, then they may experience great anxiety as they see their fortunes dissipate at the hands of others when they are old. But that is another tale.

Let's explore this element of risk or adventure as a way of life. It's a funny thing but human nature relishes the challenge. Once the challenge is over, an emptiness can set in. Why do great football players and actors sometimes end their lives on the bottle? They have no challenges left. Same with wealth. The glory days were the tough times of putting it all together. While there was light at the end of the tunnel, by definition they were stoking the boilers. But now they are out in the open. Cruising. Getting bored.

You see, we don't really get tomorrow to live in, or yesterday. We get today. The challenges of today. If we don't quite know how tomorrow will pan out, (and I am not recommending a non planned existence, please don't assume that), then there is excitement, adrenaline, action. This is the full challenge of the daily lived life, the existential nature of Christianity if you want to put it into religious terms. But if you have wealth surrounding you, you may miss out on that.

Thirdly, and closely related to the above, the walls of wealth may also dull your remembrance of failure. This needs some explanation too. Rich people have mostly failed somewhere. All part of their learning curve. They have picked themselves up and tried again. And got there after one or several tries. So they have experienced failure. But unless they goof up terribly, and this can happen, and is emblazoned on the front pages of the press, their failures diminish in relative terms. True, they may lose the odd million here and there, but it is generally not life threatening stuff.

However when you meet someone who lives without wealth, between Rudyard Kipling's impostors of success and failure, then you know you have really met someone. If you choose, you can criticise their state of life, their apparent non-success. Or you can be impressed by their willingness to persevere against the odds, to accept whatever comes their way. They commit, and are often times let down. Their plans do not always work out. They are talked about behind their backs. They are not famous or influential. Their emotions may be up and down. They look as if they can't get their lives together sometimes. I will even make a unusual, and unqualified, claim. They may be likened to an open wound.

I love those people. I admire them. Honestly. At their end of their days they will be surrounded by richer memories than the beautiful people. And more friends. Actually I don't think I could be one of them. Probably because I am unprepared to live continually out on the edge. Instead I choose safety, and because of this I have opted, consciously or unconsciously, for a lesser stance. A writer some two thousand years ago, and a brother of the one who didn't own any real estate, had a word for people like me. We are accepted alright, but we need to acknowledge our lowly position.

We are not brave enough to live without walls. Even though we know they will be broken down one day.

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