Delphic Maxim 122: Do not stop to be thrifty
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.
122. Do not stop to be thrifty
I mean I suppose this is timely advice, after I get back from a holiday that was the absolute opposite of ‘thrifty’. Thank you very much, Oracle of Delphi, for this validation.
Why would we be asked not to stop to be thrifty? I think part of the clue lies in the idea of ‘stopping’ — it’s as though we were wandering along, doing our thing, and then suddenly slowed everything down in order to slow things down. Thrift isn’t necessarily a bad quality — but I think that we understand it as equivalent to ‘living within your means’ today. It is not.
Aristotle talked about greatness, liberality and magnanimity as virtues: it wasn’t enough to earn money, you had to spend it on good things as well. He didn’t mean that things should be gauche and gaudy, that was an extreme of magnificence that deviated from the golden mean. But he suggested we should have nice things — all the while keeping in mind that temperance was a virtue as well.
Macklemore’s brilliant Thrift Shop comes to mind when I read this maxim, probably because it’s one of the less archaic uses of the word thrift in the culture today. That song isn’t about saving money though, it’s about the quality of costume that you can find in a thrift shop — less about stinginess, more about the way magnificence doesn’t need to cost a fortune (and it can be fun as well).
Years ago, my friends and I used to dress up in glorious costumes when we went out clubbing. Many of these were acquired at thrift shops — it wasn’t because we were cheap (though that can sometimes be a factor in your early twenties, especially if you live in Gosford), but mainly because it was fun. In effect, we weren’t stopping anything in order to be thrifty, but actually the thriftiness was a side part to the main game.
While Plato loathed the role that money could play in life, I don’t imagine he intended for people to live poorly — and the other philosophers at the time definitely didn’t. Living within your means — ensuring that you had the capability to continue your lifestyle without depending on others, or in a way that was sustainable, means adapting to your cashflow. In some instances that might mean thrift, but I suspect that thrift is actually a relative term.
Since we only live one life, it doesn’t make sense to slow it down for the sake of building up cheese in the bank. This probably runs contrary to some of the other advice that we’ve seen in these maxims, and I’m definitely not advocating running up huge piles of debt (which is one hundred percentcontra the advice of Nassim Taleb, for whom I have a lot of time). But it does mean living a good life — an enjoyable life, a pleasurable life — in whatever ways you can.
That’s pretty middle class advice though, to be honest. The ancients were pretty classist when you think about it, and their advice for the good life was almost always pitched at the well off (which is why Diogenes, gutter-dwelling cynic that he was, is such an interesting other voice). For those whom thrift is essential, the advice from this maxim isn’t do not be thrifty (it has its benefits for everyone), but rather not to let thrift get in the way of life. Be thrifty in order to live, if that’s what it takes, but don’t live in order to be thrifty.
