On Spending
Dignity and Money
Money and dignity. Dignity and money. We invented currency to smooth over the challenges of unequal exchange and to store an invention we called “value.” Barter was awkward when all you had was a round of cheese and all you wanted was a horse. Or vice versa. Money allowed for dividing pies. It’s a useful idea and works, because like language, we all agree to it’s rules.
And so this concept, this faith system, grew and we layered all sorts of more complex inventions over it, the stock market, systems to short stock, options, derivatives, currency exchanges, commodity exchanges for futures contracts. Economies grew in scale. All of these immaterial marketplaces were convertible to some degree back into the stuff we actually need and use, whether for pleasure or out of necessity, food, clothes, houses, etc.. Currency is supposedly a proxy for utility.
And so currency became an integral part of who we are. And our dignity is part of that. One of the most insidious and challenging habits is the belief that our individual value to the world is reflected in our incomes and savings. Is it? Like most clichés, there’s something valid here and also something wrong.
When we have plenty, we have options, though high earners may sometimes lose sight of this. The poetry of earning a lot is sometimes a poverty of time. Of course people may earn little and also have no time, the doubly poor. And with little time, there is little creativity, little unstructured or eclectic thinking, which is actually a wellspring of invention and the generation of new market value.
A few mavericks have figured this out and are envied for their ability to weave leisure into their relentless schedules. These are the doubly rich. By distracting their conscious minds through leisure, their unconscious gears are freed to do the spinning that produces fresh approaches. They are good oblique thinkers.
Slowly, the most forward-thinking companies, even large in scale like Google, are re-engineering their physical spaces, the routines of employees, prioritizing their physical and mental health and creating positive and productive social frictions that end in more and better ideas. Slowly, I think, I hope, “exhaustion chic” is going out of vogue and the best of creativity theory is resulting in real change.
And where is the fallacy in “your resources are your worth?” Well, in some sense, we all possess the same currency to spend and of an indeterminate amount. We don’t know when we’ll die.
Our truer currency is our time in the world, as measured against the quality of our experiences. And the path to crafting great satisfaction in life’s unfolding is in introspection, the knowing of our own values and the workings of our own minds. To have the breathing room for this, Daniel Kahneman argues that happiness comes with a median income (in the United States) of $60,000.
But back to dignity. If resources represent a wellspring of potential, this does make some sense. Cash in the bank can equal rich experiences, be it day to day in a wonderful car, boat or home, or when we get to explore the world on more than a shoestring. Of course, even here the measure of an adventure’s rewards often has more to do with who we’re with than what we’re doing or where we are. Having resources also allows for the profound satisfaction of giving money away, to charities and to family, to support friends in need or treat them all to a destination party somewhere. And if we’re lucky enough to be both time and resource rich, the sky is the limit.
How we deploy all that value, both time and currency, will in large measure come to define us. It will be each of our legacies. We hope to spend wisely, achieve balance and find those third ways, wherein the spending of our minutes or dollars benefits self and others through the alchemy of trust, community and shared rewards.
