wealth

money

"There is no wealth but life." - John Ruskin

The Miser and the Angel of Death

A miser had accumulated, by effort, trade and lending, three hundred thousand dinars.

The tightwad had lands and buildings, and all kinds of wealth.

The penny-pincher then decided that he would spend a year in enjoyment,
living comfortably, and then decide as to what his future should be.

But, almost as soon as he had stopped amassing money,
the Angel of Death appeared before him, to take his life away.

The miser tried, by every argument which he could muster,
to dissuade the Angel, who seemed, however, adamant.

Then the man said: 'Grant me but three more days,
and I will give you one third of my possessions.'

The Angel refused, and pulled again at the miser's life, tuggging to take it away.

Then the moneygrubber said: 'If you will only allow me two more days on earth,
I will give you two hundred thousand dinars from my store.'

But the Angel would not listen to him.

And the Angel even refused to give the man a solitary extra day
for all his three hundred thousand pieces.

Then the miser said: 'Please, then, give me just time enough to write one little thing down.'

This time the Angel allowed him this single concession. The tightwad wrote, with his own blood:

'Man, make use of your life. I could buy not one hour for three hundred thousand dinars. Make sure that you realize the value of your time.' - Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur

"When wealth is separate from accumulation but refers to a richness of relationships, each person's wealth makes everyone wealthier." - Charles Eisenstein

correlates of happiness

"If you look at the correlates of happiness
across the human population, you learn a few important things.

First of all, wealth is a poor predictor of happiness.

Wealth is not a useless predictor, but it is quite limited.

The first $40,000 or so buys you almost all of the happiness you can get from wealth.

The difference between earning nothing and earning $20,000 is enormous -
that's the difference between having shelter and food and being homeless and hungry.

Economists have shown that after basic needs are met,
there is not much 'marginal utility' to increased wealth.

In other words, the difference between a guy who makes $15,000 and a guy who makes $40,000 is much bigger than the difference between the guy who makes $100,000 and the guy who makes $1,000,000.

Psychologists, philosophers, and religious leaders are a little too quick to say that money can not buy happiness, and that really betrays a failure to understand what it is like to live on the streets with an empty stomach.

Money makes a big difference to people who have none.

On the other hand, once basic needs are met,
further wealth does not create further happiness.

So the relationship between money
and happiness is complicated, and definitely not linear.

If it were linear,
then billionaires would be a thousand times happier than millionaires,
who would be a hundred times happier than professors.

That clearly isn't the case.

On the other hand,
social relationships are a powerful predictor of happiness
- much more so than money is.

Happy people have extensive social networks
and good relationships with the people in those networks.

What is interesting to me is that while money is weakly and complexly correlated with happiness, and social relationships are strongly and simply correlated with happiness, most Americans spend most of their time trying to be happy by pursuing wealth.

Why?

Individuals and societies do not have the same fundamental needs.

Individuals want to be happy,
and commercialized societies want individuals to consume.

Most Americans do not feel personally responsible for stoking America's economic engine;
Americans feel personally responsible for increasing their own well-being.

These different goals present a real dilemma, and commercialized society cunningly solves it by 'educating' Americans - consumption brings happiness.

Corporate controlled consumer society convinces Americans that what is good for the economy is good for us individually.

This message is delivered to Americans
by every magazine, television, newspaper, and billboard,
at every bus stop, grocery store, and airport.

This message finds us in our cars, it's made its way onto our clothing.

Happiness,
Americans learn,
is just around the corner
and it requires that we consume just one more thing.

And then just one thing more after that.

So Americans do,
we find out that the happiness of consumption is thin and fleeting,
and rather than thinking to ourselves,

"Gosh, that promise of happiness by consumption was a lie,"

Americans instead think,

"Gosh, I must not have consumed enough and I probably need just one small upgrade to my stereo, car, wardrobe, or wife, and then I will be happy."

Americans live in the shadow of a great lie,
and by the time we figure out that it is a lie we are closing in on death
and have become irrelevant consumers,
and a new generation of young and relevant consumers
takes our place in the great chain of shopping."

- Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Hedonic Psychology Laboratory.

"To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one center of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities.

The first farmers in fertile regions taught themselves farming and storage methods that created harvests beyond the needs of the day. Very quickly warriors supported by religious authority took power gathering these new abundant harvests largely into their own hands, by means of taxes and direct seizures. With this division of labor the subjugation of farmers by warriors and priests was institutionalized, a subjugation that has never ended. This was the first inequality.

Men established a general domination over women and their heirs. These are the second and third inequalities, of men over women and men over children.

Added to the subjugation of farmers, women, and the family, was a forth inequality, of race or group, leading to the subjugation of the most powerless peoples to slavery.

This is history.

Nowhere in history has there ever been a great civilization were the wealth of the harvests created by all has been equitably distributed.

Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion has done its part to add to the general inequality, which has risen in direct proportion to the wealth gathered; for wealth and power are much the same. The possessors of the wealth in effect buy the armed power they need to enforce the growing inequality. And so the cycle continues.

The result has been that while a small percentage of human beings have lived in a wealth of food, material comfort, and learning, those not so lucky have been the functional equivalent of domestic beasts, in harness to the powerful and well-off, creating their wealth for them but not benefitting from it themselves.

If you happen to be a young black farm girl what can you say to the world, or the world to you? You exist under all four of the great inequalities, and will live a shortened life of ignorance, hunger, and fear. Indeed it only takes one of the great inequalities to create such conditions." - adapted from Kim Stanley Robinson

"The only parental habit that has a significant effect on the income of offspring is keeping a clean house. Household cleanliness reflects an overall ability and desire to maintain a sense of order in a wide range of life activities. This trait is apparently shared to an extent by the children of good housekeepers, causing them to have higher incomes as adults." - Tom Hertz, American University

money
or the dominion of money

"If you don't have money you are second class." - Joanne Minsky

The Five Hundred Gold Pieces
One of Junaid's disciple came to him with a purse containing five hundred gold pieces.
'Have you any more money than this?' asked the Sufi.
'Yes, I have,' replied the disciple.
'Do you desire more?' asked the Sufi.
'Yes, I do,' replied the disciple.
'Then you must keep it, for you are more in need than I; for I have nothing and desire nothing. You have a great deal and still want more.' - Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur

"Very little is more stressful in modern life than the acquisition of money. Money is a complex signifier in contemporary western culture. It encompasses the movement of social patterns both towards desire and away from social survival concerns. In tribal cultures, survival and desire are linked to community and expulsion is the greatest fear. In contemporary society, people are separated, while desire and fear are linked to jobs by way of income. With such stress attached to money, convincing someone to spend money means the communication to direct action requires a very strong emotional appeal." - Edward Wilson & Wes Unruh

"Industry took to its conclusion the separation from nature that started on the psychological level with symbolic culture and was projected onto the land with agriculture.

Whereas these earlier developments reduced reality to object, industry turned object into commodity, time into money, and human being into consumer.

Everything in the world is being converted into money.

The conversion of all forms of wealth - social, cultural, spiritual and natural - into money violates our sense of beauty, rightness, and purpose. It has made the world uglier.

Just as the conversion of the world to money makes less of the world,
so does the conversion of life to money (Time is money!) make less of life.

Leibnitz' merciless phrase, "Time is money," encapsulates a profound reduction
of everything into money - totally enslaving the human spirit.

We have even sold off authentic human relationship.

The more common wealth we convert to money the more of our lives falls into the dichotomous realm of mine or yours and the less common ground there is to share life and develop unguarded relationships. The conversion of life to money reduces everything to an economic transaction, leaving us the loneliest people ever to inhabit the earth. The conversion of everything into money is unsustainable.

Anything you learn to do for yourself or for other people, without paying for it; any utilization of recycled or discarded materials; anything you make instead of buy, give instead of sell; any new skill or new song or new art you teach yourself or another, will reduce the dominion of money. " - adapted from Charles Eisenstein

Woe to those who build iniquity and violence, and lay deceit as a foundation; for quickly they will be overthrown, and they will have no peace. (1 Epistle of Enoch 94.6)

Woe to you, rich, for in your riches you have trusted; from your riches you will depart, because you have not remembered the Most High in the days of your riches. (1 Epistle of Enoch 94.8)

Although most Americans would deny that American culture worships wealth, aka money or material riches, actions speak louder than words and the truth is that the American Dream is not what it once was.

"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." - Benjamin Franklin

Images of dollar bills, fantasies of wealth and wads of money arouse feelings of self-sufficiency that result in selfish and often antisocial behavior. Money makes it possible for people to achieve their goals without having to ask friends or acquaintances for help. Even subtle reminders of money inspires people to be self-reliant - and to expect such behavior from others.

"Money changes people's motivations. They are less focused on other people. In this sense, money can be a barrier to social intimacy." - Nicole Mead

"Money is easy to make if it is money you want. But with few exceptions people do not want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration." - John Steinbeck

Matthew 6:24 (spoken by Jesus)

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams

personal wealth through theft

"He who has a purse full of gold has a place like the light of men's eyes.
As the goldsmith's son so well put it: 'The noble is the man who has gold nobles.'"
- Saadi of Shiraz