Delphic Maxim 128: Do not trust wealth
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.
128. Do not trust wealth
It feels easy and appropriate to be writing a response to this maxim these days. Inequality is under the spotlight, provocative displays of wealth get picked up on social media and challenged (the Sydney Morning Herald just ran an article on Sydney’s rich residents going on holidays in Europe. Which, to be fair, so did I, but I have a point I promise). Class tensions seem to heaving around the place, and yet…elections in this country turn not on social justice but on the need, amongst other things, for financial security. Even financial success.
Why is this maxim warning us about wealth then?
Plato, for one, didn’t trust money. He felt that its influence was corrosive and corrupting, that it wasn’t good for developing moral virtue. In part he was right — but money is just a tool after all, so the problem is not so much the fact of its existence as it is the treating of capital as an end in itself. Which is really what capitalism is all about — so what am I criticising exactly here?
Wealth is a double-edged sword. The accumulation of it can harm the social fabric, because it accrues to people who already have it, gets passed down from one generation to the next, and compounds over time. The more you have, the more you make. Albert Einstein once said — supposedly — that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. If you think about the power that wealth gives a person today, it’s not hard to think how right he was.
But at the same time as wealth creates huge imbalances of power in a society, it also has the tendency to alter a person’s perception of the world: without something to anchor a person, like projects, hobbies, intellectual pursuits, true friendship, then untrammelled wealth unmoors someone from the earth. The real sense of value is lost — that’s actually how the luxury fashion industry makes all of its money.
I once saw an umbrella for sale made by Hermes or Burberry (forgive me for not knowing which). This umbrella was hideous — a kind of crocodile skin green, and I doubt particularly durable or waterproof. It’s utility-value was low, or at least on par with any other kind of umbrella.
It cost $3000.
Contrast this with the branded Sydney University umbrella that I bought repeatedly (as I kept losing them in bars and clubs when I headed out after work), which costs $45. This is a sturdy, reliable, large umbrella: high utility-value and well suited to the task for which it was designed — keeping the rain off me. And even at $45, I felt that this umbrella was a bit of a rort. So you can imagine my horror at spending $3000 on an umbrella.
I was at Hermes flagship store in Paris recently, ironically hurling myself into the centre of wealth mere weeks before Sydney’s elite hopped on their flights to Europe to do the same. There was a bag for sale that was worth over half my yearly salary. There were wallets that cost more than my flight to Europe from Australia. I don’t begrudge people who are able to purchase these things, good for you if you can, but…my god…how do they make their money? And what is the point of these beautiful things if not to what…impress other people?
Because ultimately that is what wealth becomes — a competition to outclass others. It’s a game. Which is fine, life is full of these little games (academia is an intellectual pissing contest, retail is a showdown of bitchiness, going to the gym is an exercise in both strength and also posturing and good lighting, social media — bloody social media — is a race to create the most falsely beautiful life you can).
The point is not to let any of these things spoil the character. It doesn’t go just for wealth, it goes for all the things I just mentioned. Don’t trust these things to fill in for character — being a good person, an interesting person, maintaining friendships and a rich life of the mind is actually far more important, at least as far as I argue and I think this maxims do as well.
