Last year I conducted an existential survey of Burton and Garran Hall. It was a multiple choice questionairre, something I had been toying with for a while, and we got about 160 responses (rougly 30%). There were 16 questions, but the one I would like to draw attention to was as follows:
If you came into half a billion dollars tomorrow, what would you spend it on?
a) pay off my parents mortgage and buy a bunch of investment properties
b) live in hotels while travelling the world for the rest of my life
c) become a professional philanthropist
d) put it on black
The results were quite evenly spread out amongst the first three options. I was surprised that so many people said they would invest in property, as the question is really "if money wasn't an issue, what would you do with your life?" When you're already a gazillionaire, why would you need more money?
A friend of mine replied that it was the parent's mortgage part that had swayed her (and presumably others), and initially I thought, fair enough. I think this says quite a lot about the fixation we have with mortgages and security, but I'll leave that to one side.
What's more interesting is that in the aftermath of the questionairre it became apparent that many people had not put much thought into what they wanted money for, they just knew money was important.
For many people, it seems that money has become an end and is no longer a means. They think about making money first, and then how to spend it.
In Wall Street 2, Gordon Gecko bumps into his old protege, Charlie Sheen, who had a shred of morals and so narrowly avoided insider trading before retiring young from the stock trade. He is, nonetheless, wealthy. Gecko asks him what his life is about nowadays. The answer: "you're looking at it: golf...philanthropy".
It seems Western culture's answer to what to do when you retire rich and young, is to play golf? We have perfected the acquisition of the means - youth and wealth - but we have dedicated nothing to divining the ends.
Golf is a pseudonym for comfort and leisure - the 'ideal' of Western Capitalism. Not the worst fate to be sure,but also not something I could spend a lifetime doing. What is meaningful about comfort and leisure? its pursuit would have worked fine in the Victorian days when you crapped in a chamberpot and everyone had Cholera, but we're living better, and longer. Retirement isn't five years, its thirty. Could you play golf for thirty years?
Now sheen also mentions philanthropy, and to be fair, if I had an open choice regarding what to do with my life, I'd be a professional philanthropist. But Sheen mentions this more as an ad-lib, and I am skeptical that he does it authentically. That is to say, I don't think he has much of a project tied up in his charity.
Authentic Philanthropists know exactly what they are giving their money to. They have very clear ideas about what change they would like to see in the world, and how they will bring it about. Their identity is intimately bound up in their philanthropy. I doubt sheen is the same. He probably gives money to Africa to get a warm feeling, and then reaches for a bottle of scotch to stave off boredom.
Let's get back to money. Any child who has read the story of Scrooge could tell you that money is meaningless, its what you do with it that counts. But recently we have warped the notion of 'success' to the point where it is synonymous with making money. It is "how we keep score", in the game of life. In Wall Street, a character is asked how much money he wants to make before he leaves the game, and he says "more". Money is no longer a medium of exchange, it is meaningful in itself, or so we are led to believe.
Now social prosperity is a different matter entirely, but that money doesn't buy happiness is the oldest proverb in history. So while this dream might suit some stockbrokers, it won't work for most of us. In the next article I might talk about how happiness doesn't live in poverty either, but for now let's acknowledge that riches are a ticket somewhere, not a destination.
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