The Better ManThe idealistic fires of my anarcho-syndicalist side have been all but fanned as of late. With every passing day, I get more and more convinced of the futility of money for the sake of it.
I just finished reading a short story by Tolstoy called "The Death of Ivan Illych," and it really struck a nerve with something going around my head lately. At the risk of making this sound like a book report, the character is a lawyer who dies lonely in a rich house, accompanied by his estranged wife and his selfish children, his only pleasure resting his feet on an innocent peasant boy's shoulders to relieve the agony of the illness eating away his life. (It's pretty evident that the Russian realists weren't the chirpiest birds in the nest). And yet, the story is an examination of how Illych's life was over long before that, overdosing on an immoral cocktail of wealth, greed and power. In fact, the character is only redeemed after he acknowleges that his life, albeit pleasant, was not a good one. "But oddly enough none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had seemed at the time," explains Tolstoy at the turning point of Ivan's illness, who begins a much belated introspection only after admitting to himself that he will die soon. It might be a tad extreme and melodramatic, but who can say this scenario is strange to those who consciously live at the expense of others, forgoing virtue for social standing and a facade of success?
Then there's a Pearl Jam song I really like, mostly due to the lyrics (but also because of its cooky ukelele rhythm):
"Sorry is the fool who trades his soul for a corvette,
Thinks he'll get the girl he'll only get the mechanic.
What's missing? He's living a day he'll soon forget.
That's one more time around. The sun is going down,
The moon is out but he's drunk and shouting,
Putting people down. He's pissing. He's living a day he'll soon forget.
Counts his money every morning. The only thing that keeps him horny.
Locked in a giant house that's alarming. The townsfolk they all laugh.
Sorry is the fool who trades his love for hi-rise rent.
Seems the more you make equals the loneliness you get.
And it's fitting. He's barely living a day he'll soon forget.
That's one more time around and there is not a sound.
He's lying dead clutching Benjamins, never put the money down.
He's stiffening. We're all whistling a man we'll soon forget."
Lastly, there's this arsehole engineer I met at Jeff's bar the other night. He asked me about my job, and when I told him I was a teacher he gave me the most disgustingly condescending smirk. "Oh, so you're still doing /that/" he said, as though I was a complete loser for not getting an 'important' job at a so-and-so 'respectable' company like his. I really felt like bashing his teeth in. I just smiled, however, and proceeded to explain how great it feels to see your students learn things, and how teaching can be a million times more fulfilling than sitting at a desk all day, just so you can get bits of paper to exchange for shiny trinkets.
So much for unimportant jobs.
3 comments:
Dude, clear up the goddamn blog spam.
Sometimes having a friend that is radically different to you forces you to stop and think what the hell makes him tick. In doing so you may find that your apparent crystallization of ideas concerning his point of view is thwarted, and you're back to being a moral agnostic. Or not.
Anyway, my point is: Manuel, you and I know him, once said, way back in the day when we were about to go into University, and we had all pretty much chosen our careers, "Paul, you're gonna be flipping burgers with that career in Physics of yours". To be fair, I didn't deny it, and often joked about it. But when asked what he was going to study, he replied
"Dentist. That's where the money is. Work 3, maybe 4 days a week, make a shitload of money, and do what you like the rest of the time. You'll always have enough money to look after your family and you'll never be in need. It frees you to do the stuff you really want to do".
Just to play devil's advocate, I'll counter that a man becomes mundane when his needs become mundane, and more so, when he confronts them in a mundane way. You may be gung-ho about life and wouldn't mind living on the edge of a rice paddy all your life, but your wife and baby might not find it so hunky dory.
Protection from illness, safety, the best opportunities for your kids, all these things are mundane needs. Most people look around and confront them with the apparent solution they see most often, which is unfortunately: try to make a wad of cash, fast.
The man in the story you mention became sidetracked. In perfecting his castle, tending to his empire-family, he lost sight of other things.
There is a Quino sketch depicting an analogous situation. A man is battling with a tangle of string. After several frames, he manages to untangle it all. He is thrilled, he wiggles the string a bit as his self-satisfaction fades. He then looks pensive and says: "¿Y ahora qué? .
The difference is that getting rich, being "successful" and all that, has no outcome. There is no point when it is all untangled, just as there is no largest sum of money that can be accrued.
One can look at it from another point of view. What if the main character had had a real passion for something? Some expensive but fulfilling activity. Nowadays that might be skydiving, flying a glider, having a nice motorbike, and so on. Perhaps his reminiscences would not be so gloomy if he had not invested his time in objects, land and power, but experiences. Each experience will be gone after the sun has gone down, but if you've got the bread, you can do it again tomorrow. And the day after. While my rôle of Devil's Advocate would surely get too tricky trying to defend binges at Club Med and generally being a dirty old man, as being as spiritual (in the experiental sense) as perhaps harvesting rice and watching the mist roll over the mountains, one could probably ask, in a very ab-initio way, why the pursuit of some experiences is better than others?
Thanks for the comments Paul. I do agree with some of your views, but I dare say that you've completely missed my point.
I also believe that it's all about the experiences, and that like it or not, you need some means to carry them out. Like Alexander Chase once said "the rich man may never get into heaven, but the poor are already serving their term in hell."
But I wasn't necessarily talking about the pursuit of experiences, nor spirituality, at least not in its more mundane forms. Furthermore, as much as you might scoff at rice paddies and misty mountains (neither of which are a part of my life at the moment, thrust in the city trying to make a living that doesn't involve turnips), the countryside does not necessarily equate to poverty and strife.
My quandary is not with the pursuit of money for the specific purpose of bettering the life of yourself and people around you - it's the pursuit of money for the sake of it. Unfortunately, making a wad of cash is necessary these days to keep one going, but when is enough enough? In Illych's case his life was so bent on getting money, power and social standing that he ends up living with a wife who detests him, children who don't know him and vultures scrounging after his possessions instead of friends. He wasn't making money for a valid reason - it was all for nothing else than to feed his own ego, trying to buy intangibles such as respect, prestige and purpose. And so, he died lonely, with only his own ego to see him.
I see your point.
Btw, as requested, new post on mine.
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