The recent news that an American worth 115 billion dollars plans to spend all his money before he dies, has made me happy. This philanthropist will likely keep enough to fund a luxurious lifestyle and make sure his children want for nothing. And I don’t have a problem with that. In my excitement, I’m already spending the bucks that he’s willing to share. Naturally he’ll have his own choice of pet projects but apparently, whilst rebuilding Ukraine may be a tad dear at around $524 billion, provided we get that ceasefire, for $53 billion he can rebuild Gaza.
To an everywoman like me with just enough savings for an unexpected dental treatment or tech repair, it makes sense to spend money whilst you’re alive and witness other lives being transformed or even saved. What a feeling to go to bed at night knowing that you’re a material saint and yet you can still fly privately (unless you’re a committed climate change activist.) I bet the more a person gives, the less a person needs mansions, bling and motors which billionaires tend to accumulate. In some cases (and maybe with the help of therapy,) the perverted desire to watch money burn could become a pure pleasure to watch money beget and renew.
I’ve always felt that the inverse to success is humility. Certainly it’s a belief that more CEOs are embracing – the idea that you lead from behind and that a lucrative and balanced business is one where the employees are treated with the same respect as leaders and directors, albeit that they have different responsibilities and skills. A lack of humility seems to be a key reason for the failing of companies spewing terrible amounts of sewage into our environments and needing to ask for government bailouts whilst raising the price of water. With too much care for influential shareholders, there’s not enough concern for the least powerful majority who drink tap water and swim outdoors, the dumb rivers and lakes, and voiceless aquatic animals.
How can anybody argue that the materially highest and lowest in society are not integrally linked? Usually, the first thing a person with a fabulous home needs is a cleaner, or a few; and even if you can pay for private refuse collection when there’s a strike, that’s not something to be encouraged. One may be in the comfortable position of ordering in food from whichever restaurant at whatever distance away, but generally somebody has got to be poor enough to take the job of delivering the takeaway.
We all start and finish life with inevitable humility – from meek and vulnerable babyhood to the moment of death which is commonly preceded by frailty. Some people experience early life with a much stronger dose of humbleness, and how I love a triumphant rags to riches true story. But what I find remarkable is, to quote Jimi Hendrix, when the power of love overcomes the love of power. I always remember President Jose Mujica (2010 -2015) who declined to live in the Uruguayan presidential palace and had a Volkswagen Beetle and bicycle to get around. Mujica, dubbed the world’s poorest president, supposedly gave much of his monthly salary to charities supporting low-income people and small entrepreneurs. In 2013 at the United Nations General Assembly’s 68th session, he gave a speech about “a return to simplicity, with lives founded on human relationships, love, friendship, adventure, solidarity and family, instead of lives shackled to the economy and the markets.” According to a BBC correspondent, “Mujica left office with a relatively healthy economy and the kind of social stability which Uruguay’s bigger neighbours could only dream of.”
To clarify, I do fantasize about being inordinately rich. In my imagination, someday not too far away, I own a caravan, a 4×4, one fast car like a Porsche Boxster, a state-of-the-art motorcycle and I never stop using my electric bike. And that’s just earth-bound wheels. However, I like to think that when I’m picking the millions (many thousands will also do) of my backyard trees, I’ll have hired somebody to help me give away a fair percentage which I really don’t need, whilst looking for a house cleaner too.
