Will COVID Change How We Think of Money?
The era where wealth was associated with more human values and community benefits is rapidly disappearing. Instead there was the importance of patient and diligent work. Even the most ardent of capitalists maintained, in their public profile at least, that wealth derived from its contribution to the general good and would lead to the advancement and happiness of future generations.
In other words, wealth and work were co-existent – not just for financial advancement but for the building of moral and community character. It became the modus operandi of the emerging middle class and drove much of the innovation and reach of modern capitalism.
In 1937, Napoleon Hill penned his bestseller, Think and Grow Rich, which built on the outlook for the prophets of modern wealth. He would even go so far as to conclude, “You can never have riches in great quantities unless you can work yourself into a white heat of desire for money.”
In a world where the possession of wealth is more important than how it was acquired, it no longer is of consequence what methods were used to accumulate riches. Many of the world’s top millionaires and billionaires are decent and diligent people who often practice philanthropy. The particular manner in how they raised their money is never as important as the fact that they possess it. Our modern world is now faced with the uncomfortable reality that much of this wealth came from cheap labour, or the avoidance of taxes, and much has produced environmental harm. Eugene Victor Debs watched all this unfold and made a prescient observation:
“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a meaningful existence.”
No one could have anticipated the global revolutions that took place in the twentieth century. Gradually, over the decades, wealth had quickly been embraced and brought home like a new family member. Gone were the questions of conscience, the nagging doubts of having too much. The warnings had given way to full-blown adulation and respect.
It is likely too late to reverse the process of the last century. Like it or not, we must now come to terms with money - its problems and potential - if we are to find our own spiritual path. And we must be honest with ourselves in this regard. We all want it. We all wouldn’t mind more of it. And in the end, we don’t want to live without it. So, we can’t examine this from some sort of moral distance because we are now enmeshed in its tentacles.
Money is now a force, often unchallenged, in our daily existence. Love and hatred, eating and sleeping, safety and danger, work and rest, marriage, children, fear, loneliness, friendship, knowledge, art, health, sickness and death - money is frequently the determining factor in all of these.
Think of our relationship to nature, to ideas, to pleasure, to sex, to our self-identity and personal dignity. Think of our choice of where to live, how to live, or our impulses to help others or make our world a better place. Think of how we travel, where we travel, with whom we associate, and how we spend our salary. Money is there in everything, wrapped around our ideals and failures. Think of what we dream of, what we fear, of how we want to spend the rest of our lives. Can we even consider such things without money factoring in?
When we consider the condition of the entire human family we find money’s fingerprints everywhere. Every world crisis hinges on it; every earthly paradise is affected by it. War, social injustice, the oppression of peoples and classes, crime in all of its manifestations and our dying natural environment, are a product of how we approach wealth. It motivates the world’s masses, either by its presence or absence. As Gustave Flaubert noted: “As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue?”
Today, for most of us, money is life and we can’t get away from it. he old principle still holds true: our inner more noble selves atrophy the more materialistic we become. But this time we can’t come at it by avoiding money but actually by embracing it for its ability to transform our inner lives.
In the past, whatever money existed was used for survival, either for group or individual. This kept us closely grounded to our higher ideals. But money today has transcended such parameters - a fact that ironically threatens our survival.
Here is the ultimate tragedy of modern luxury - we do not experience the inner world as vividly as the outer world. Our feelings and thoughts about truth and value pale when compared to the needs and sensations delivered to us almost non-stop by the outer world.
The Covid-19 phenomenon has effectively reduced much of life down to its basics. Suddenly, family and community really matter again. We have to deal with the fragility of our health. There is a subtle acknowledgement that the survival of the human species is at stake. Will that understanding reshape how we think of wealth, how we spend, save and invest in a better planet? The next decade will tell, but one thing is certain: we are facing the consequences of an unbridled materialism is a naturally limited world and it can’t be sustained.
