This is what I said to her: “I would hate to have that much money.”
I don’t think it was the response she expected from a register jockey, because she looked at me a little strangely. I elaborated, “If you have a lot of money there’s a lot of extra work and stress that goes into managing that money. You have to hire people to look after it, to look after your houses, to look after the people who look after your houses. That much money needs to be handled in a special way and it’s really noticeable when you screw up…so you have to hire more people. All these people have to be paid. While it might be nice to have a lot of fancy things and travel a lot, it seems like it would be more trouble than it’s worth.” Or if you prefer the boiled down version: “Mo money, mo problems.” She agreed with me, but I had the distinct feeling she didn’t go into it feeling that way.
Long after the conversation ended, I was struck by my own response. I realized that I really meant it. While there are things that I would like, I don’t really want money itself. The things I want are simple and attainable by my social class. However, there was not a single thing I felt I needed or would feel discontented if I didn’t get. There’s not a tangible item I own, no matter how sentimental, that I wouldn’t be able to do without. The only things I need are the basics of health: Food, shelter, and social interaction. I believe that if you are unhappy, money will not change that. I honestly just want to get by and I hope that I can do just a little bit better for the sake of stability, security, and comfort. It is happiness and contentment that I seek in life. Joy comes to me, because I succeed at it often.
Somewhere along the way, and without my realizing it, I became non-materialistic. I realized that I had no real interest in capitalism or a capitalist society, and in this society that made me a bit of an eccentric. I don’t fit in, because I don’t desire infinite growth. I don’t understand profit for the sake of profit, and at the expense of others.
I see the inherent flaws in the infinite growth paradigm. It is alarmingly obvious to me that the way we are doing things isn’t working. We have grown as a culture to desire growth over our, and our neighbors, well being. However, we’ve grown to accept it out of habit. We ignore or understate the flaws in the system because we don’t want to admit it doesn’t work. We have finite resources, so unless we start doing things very differently we might lose everything we’ve built so far.
I am no longer convinced that our government is able to fix what they have brought to pass. I am of the opinion that our current government is no longer doing what it set out to do. I cannot expect the Obama administration to fix all our problems because it has been given the task of the near impossible. Perhaps if we consider Thomas Jefferson’s political philosophy, we have been too long without a revolution. I am convinced that the solution is to scrap the current methods and find a better way of doing things. However, we better do it quick because if things keep going the way they are we won’t be given the option.
I worry about us, because as a culture (sadly it is a world culture) we have become so detached from each other that we’ve lost our sense of community. We no longer interface with each other, we interface with machines, and honestly it isn’t the same thing as face to face interaction. To see this in play go to any public place: People are not interacting with each other; they are interacting with their devices. I love technology myself, but it should be a tool for relaying information, not a substitute for social interaction.
Something is wrong with the way our society is changing…
Then I had to wonder what I’m going to do about it. I’m one person, I hardly matter…
I guess I’m going to do everything I can…
Crossposted to Facebook
