Bound in Time— At Principle Gallery
The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wealth (1860)
Really did not feel like writing anything this morning, unsure that I had anything worth committing to paper. Well, digital paper as it were. But it’s tough habit to break and I do have a promise to myself to write every day. I did have one thought that came to mind unexpectedly as I walked in the dark over to the studio just a short while ago.
Maybe I can share that, for what it’s worth. It might have nothing at all to do with art, though the more I think about, it may have much to do with art. Not really sure at this point since this is not a fully hatched idea. It is still a chick in the egg pecking to emerge into the world.e
The thought I had was about the inequality of wealth that has been taking place here and around the world. The gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened at an alarming rate over the past several decades. It rivals or exceeds the gap that existed during the Gilded Age. John D. Rockefeller, the first billionaire, was long considered to be the wealthiest man in American history, would not be near the top now when comparing his inflation adjusted wealth to some of the present day billionaires.
The point here is that the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the average American is wider than it has ever been. And widening.
My thought walking through the woods this morning was that their immense greed, that has little or no restraint, has virtually erased one of the barriers that they have depended on politically to divide the lower classes over the past three or four decades. It was easy work for them to make a comfortable and large middle-class view the lower-class as beneath them in all ways. Lazy leeches who were somehow taking something from them in their struggle to make ends meet.
But as the greed of the wealthiest increased, the upward flow of money needed to come from somewhere and the middle-class happened to be the next in line since there was little more to take from the poorest among us. More and more average Americans, what used to be called the comfortable middle-class, began to struggle as their own wealth bega a slow decline.
Suddenly the gap between them and those poor folks they once demonized was not so great. They began to see that their plight had more in common with the poor folks than with the very wealthy. The mirage that they had a chance of joining the Rich Boys Club began to fade, replaced with the realization that they were the ones financing and helping those same Rich Boys buy their multiple jets, yachts, and the politicians who would shape the law to protect their scheme.
A scheme that left the average American out in the cold, where they found themself shoulder to shoulder with the poor folks who have known this for some time but couldn’t be heard across the divide between them and those just a bit above them in the class system. A divide devised and built by the Rich Boy Club.
It just feels to me now that the Rich Boys have went to the well once too many times and have, in effect, taken away the power of the dividing line that has provided both and distraction for their avarice. They are slowly killing their Golden Goose.
What does this mean? I don’t know. Not even sure if this is accurate. Just a feeling from an average person sitting in the woods on a dark Sunday morning.
Geez. I wasn’t expecting to write all this. Surely hadn’t planned it when the thought came to mind early this morning. I actually just wanted to share the song below, Ascending Bird from the Silk Road Ensemble and Yo Yo Ma for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I thought the song fit well with the passage from Emerson at the top which states that real wealth comes not from acquiring and hoarding but from investing in the spiritual.
Investing in the spiritual betterment of oneself and others is the best investment one can make, one that sends the spirit soaring.
Like an ascending bird.
I think your point about the erasure of the dividing line between the ‘middle’ and ‘lower’ classes makes sense. If people ever decide to do something other than gripe on social media, there could be some interesting results. See: data centers.
Great example, Linda.