JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE BEACH
We’re all standing on a rock that’s hurtling through an unfathomably large expanse that we call space at nearly 70,000 miles per hour, and still there are those of us who like to think they’re in control. I guess if you narrow the focus enough… If I needed any reminding about how quickly it can all be taken away, Malia’s cardiac arrest gave it to me. And…like most who go through similar experiences…it got me to thinking about how much we take for granted. And I pretty much came to the conclusion that…after a short time…we take for granted just about everything that doesn’t cost money. Our health, our time, time with loved ones, sunsets, hugs…and the like. That was my conclusion because those are the things that we routinely sacrifice for money. It’s a cliche that I’m sure you’ve heard before, but it’s all too often true that people take better care of their cars than themselves.
I had this strange and sobering thought when I was giving CPR to Malia…well…I a had lot of them actually, but this one I remember more clearly than the others: The reaper doesn’t take money. And it’s obvious, and true, and…we just completely ignore it. But if he did…I thought…what would I offer for just one more day together? Then I compared that figure with what I had just traded what appeared to be our last day together for. And let me tell you…the numbers weren’t even in the same universe. In the end, the best that money can do for most of us is buy us fancier versions of what we already had…and likely didn’t need in the first place. And…to our detriment…we mostly seem to be ok with that. Until we get the wakeup call…that usually comes to late.
But…why are we ok with it? We’ve all heard the “sudden death” stories. We talk the talk…family first and all that. Hell, the US even has a family values coalition that’s filled with…well…that’s probably a topic for a different discussion. The self-help section of most bookstores is now bigger than the business section. There’s almost as many therapists as lawyers now. Why aren’t we getting it I wondered? Somethings gotta be holding us back…but what?
I kept on puzzling my puzzler as Dr Seuss would say, and a FANTASTIC book called “The Challenge of Abundance” written by Robert Theobald (in the 1970’s…the guy was a visionary) sent me on my way. Backstory alert: My personal philosophy…greatly derided by many I might add…has long been that the true cost of anything isn’t the number of dollars that changed hands. It’s the amount of stuff that can’t be replaced…time…time with loved ones…sunsets…etc, that it took to get those dollars. I’ve just never been able to see the logic of something that’s replaceable being more valuable than something that isn’t. And Theobald’s book put a far more elegant structure to my philosophy than I ever could have hoped to. So…of course…I loved it.
His idea was that we’ve confused money with wealth and it’s crippling us. Wealth is material. It’s lumber, iron, energy, technology, knowledge, health…etc. And money is of the nature of time, temperature scales, centimeters and inches, and lines of latitude and longitude…it’s the thing that we invented to measure wealth. In other words, like we use a tape measure to measure inches…we use money to measure wealth. Period…end of story.
I’ve already talked about how this misunderstanding has us sacrificing what can’t be replaced for something that easily can…stepping over the dollars to get to the pennies as my Dad always put it. But it’s also led us into some rather shallow notions of our lives “WORTH” being merely the difference between what we own and what we owe. And I think that this goes a long way towards explaining why the sales of anti-depressants are through the roof. I mean…can you imagine a more impoverished view of one’s life?
On a global scale our confusion over money and wealth has led to behavior that’s even more absurd. For example, imagine that you went into your local hardware store…the only one in town…to buy a tape measure only to find out that they’ve run out of them. I don’t think that your first thought would be that there aren’t any more inches. Yet, that’s exactly what happened in the “great recession” of 2008. For some complex reasons and some simple ones…like fraud, the world awoke to a dollar shortage…and the first thought was that there was no more wealth. But there was EXACTLY the same level of wealth and energy and raw materials as there was the day before. The Treasury simply invented more dollars to end the shortage…and…contrary to the dire predictions from the “financial experts” and the professional hand wringers…the sky didn’t fall. We really are THAT crazy.
There’s no doubt that we’d get a lot more from our incredible technical innovation if we put some innovative thinking behind it…and ask some different questions. Questions like: Does work and income have to be inextricably connected? Should we be paid for the work being done on our behalf by technology? Isn’t the income tax system of the US archaic? It’s perfectly clear that we now have the wealth to dramatically raise the living standard of every single American. But we won’t…not because we can’t figure out how to do it…but because our ideology won’t allow it. And that’s just not very innovative. In fact, I think that our technologies have moved us far past the old ideologies of the left, right, and middle…but our “leaders” simply haven’t kept up. And they hold us back by trotting out the same tired old questions that people have been asking for a thousand years: “Who’s going to pay for it?” And, “Where will the money come from?” Never grasping for a second that money doesn’t and NEVER HAS come from anywhere in the first place. Meanwhile, I think it’s interesting to know that the US has spent far more money on making war over the last hundred years than it would cost to guarantee every American food and shelter for a similar time frame. Maybe that’s because war is more of a moral question than an ideological one. I’m sure that many who currently serve us in our government would rather be branded a “hawk” than a socialist…though I claim the latter is now obsolete.
If you don’t think it can happen…it’s happening in Iceland now (and Alaska for that matter). When the financial crisis hit they didn’t bail out the banks…they FORGAVE mortgage debt, let the banks fail, and INDICTED the bankers who committed fraud. Today the citizens of Iceland receive a dividend from their government for the work that’s being done on their behalf by technology. (Isn’t it obvious that the point of technology is to reduce human work?) And the result hasn’t been an increase in devilish deeds brought about by newly idle hands. Quite to the contrary it’s been an increase in gardening, art, community service, and physical activity. If the idea of a dividend sounds somewhat…less than American shall I say…I’d like to point out that one early advocate of just such an idea to distribute to Americans a shared interest for their public lands was the great Thomas Paine.
“That’s a load of hippy…dippy…baloney!” I can hear my Dad the finance guy saying. “You’ve got bills to pay, mouths to feed, and there aint nothing in this world for free.” (that’s a great song btw) And, sadly he’s right…about the latter. Until enough of us “get it” we’re gonna have to deal in dollars and with the old thinking. But we can certainly do it more creatively. We did it by making our health and time together non-negotiable and letting that determine our lifestyle. And honestly, we haven’t regretted the decision nor have we missed any of the things we left behind. And when I calculate my worth in terms of health, family, time together, experiences, knowledge, growth…and the like. It’s a TOTAL no brainer.
DON”T WORRY THE FISH ARE SAFE
Toynbee’s observation was that cultures don’t change. They die off and a new one comes along and replaces them. Sociologist Paul Ray believes that at any given moment 25% of the people are ready for change. He claims that the problem is that they’re all audience…waiting for someone else to take the first step. Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that we’ve figured it out and this is the fix. What I’m saying is that it’s time for a vigorous discussion over many new and innovative questions. And one of those questions is certainly: What’s the new culture going to look like? Oh, and…by the way…we’ve taken a first step.
