Meaningful Returns

Since the tragedy of Anthony Bourdain’s recent suicide I’ve gone back and watched some of his old show on Netflix, Parts Unknown, and last night I watched an episode where he goes to Congo. At one point toward the beginning of the show he visits a fishing village that had an opportunity back in the 19th century to stop Sir Henry Morton Stanley (who would later become an arguably key figure in the Belgian King Leopold II’s brutal colonization of Congo). Bourdain asks one of the villagers whether he ever thinks of what would have been different for Congo had the village not allowed Stanley to keep going on his “exploration,” and the man replies, “Someone else would have come.”

“Someone else would have come.” In other words, the problem of European colonization was not just the problem of Stanley or Leopold as individuals–such that diverting one of them would have diverted the pillaging of a nation–but rather a systemic problem that would have produced some other Stanley or Leopold inevitably, no matter the action taken by a particular Congolese fishing village.

Though this sort of reasoning can be foreign to us hyper-individualistic Westerners, it’s something that permeates our lives–the idea that causes and effects are not driven simply by free agent individuals, but by a whole complex system of interrelated parties and ideas that coalesce around certain actions. In the late 19th and early 20th century, it was no secret that Europe viewed the African continent and its people and rich resources as something ripe for the taking.

Stanley and Leopold were not exceptions. In fact, it would have been more surprising had Stanley and Leopold not come along.

You and I make decisions with our money every day, and we have a certain level of autonomy and freedom with which to make those decisions. We can choose how much to save and how much to give, and we can choose which things to indulge in. We might even do a decent job of making those decisions.

But I think it’s also really important to consider the ways our freedom to make decisions is heavily influenced by the environment around us, because otherwise, even if we succeed in avoiding individual bad decisions and diverting our resources to better uses, we’ll succumb to the financial version of “Someone else would have come.” 

There are a bunch of ways I see this happening in my own life and the lives of others, but there are two in particular I’ll mention today:

Over-rating status. Here’s a thought experiment for you: When you drive up to next to someone in the brand new BMW (or Lexus, or Mercedes, or Chevy Tahoe for that matter), do you ever think to yourself, “Gee, the lady driving that car looks so happy!” or “Gee, the guy driving that car looks so cool!”? Of course you don’t. You think (as I do), “Gee, if I was driving that car I would be so happy,” or “I would look so cool.” The irony is amazing.

The same is true for the homes we live in. We are obsessed that our homes project something that only we ourselves perceive. Do you know what others perceive? Your hospitality. Your warmth and generosity. Your vulnerability. Your kindness. Your compassion. Or the lack thereof.

It goes for jobs, relationships, hobbies, social media presence, etc. The point is, if we aren’t wise to the way our society over-rates status, then eventually (and perhaps frequently) we will make financial decisions that don’t make us happy and don’t give life to anyone else, but that succeed in winning a game that doesn’t matter. We’ll buy a car we don’t need with money better served elsewhere for the 10-day thrill of luxury. Or we’ll buy a too-big or expensively apportioned house for reasons that don’t meet muster, just to say something to people who aren’t listening anyway. And we’ll do those things because as much as we are individuals with free choice, we are also products of our environment.

Under-rating simplicity. Did you know that this moment in history is the first time since the beginning of human civilization that the wealthiest people are also the people working the most hours? It used to be that wealthy people would work the least hours and have the most leisure hours. But now that is distinctly not the case. What’s more, wealthy people are likely to be more busy outside of the jobs they spend too much time at. Their kids will be involved in too many things, they will be on too many boards, and they will need to download an app to pay someone else to walk their own dogs and prepare their own food.

This tells me several things, not least among them that wealth can be really toxic. But it also tells me that wealthy people would be happier by intentionally simplifying their lives, even if it means making career changes. Less “extreme” (is it extreme to do something for the good of your health, family, and community?) ideas include: automating every financial transaction that can be automated, learning to say “NO” more often (to your kids and the boards), getting rid of a bunch of stuff in your house, maybe even getting rid of a bunch of house.

Again, as with the status problems above, if we don’t take intentional steps to place a high value on living simple lives, we stand no chance as wealthy people of recovering some semblance of sanity and rest.

We are individuals, free in some respects, and remarkably beholden to our environment in others. The awareness of this fact in concert with a determination to value things like justice and peace and kindness above anything we hold title to will help us transform our communities and our environments, and therefore smooth the way for future generations to use their freedom for good. 

Who knows, we might even transform “Someone else would have come” into a message of hope. A message that our communities, far from inevitably producing Stanleys and Leopolds, would inevitably produce Dorothy Days and Martin Luther Kings.