“The fortunate man is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others…
Good fortune thus wants to be ‘legitimate fortune.’”
~Max Webber, ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions'
Rachel Sherman’s ‘Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of affluence’ examines the thoughts and behaviours of fifty wealthy New Yorkers to see what makes them tick. As it turns out most privileged people are painfully aware of their privilege, and have a desire to feel deserving of their privilege. Because of this, they feel a strong urge to be seen as hard working (I’ve worked hard for what I have), financially prudent (I am more financially responsible), to be giving back to society, to see their consumption as reasonable and to be good parents. They also prefer to identify more with the idea of ‘the middle class’ even as the middle class gets hollowed out and disappears.
While the book focuses on the affluent, I have also learned one or two things about myself. The book describes affluent people as either downward looking or upward looking. Upward looking people look at people who have earned more when comparing their wealth with others. This enables otherwise rich people to see themselves as more a part of the middle class (there’s always someone richer). Downward looking people tend to be more aware of their wealth in comparison with others, hang out with more diverse socio-economic groups and have more balanced perspectives. What I realised was that I would prefer not to be a primarily upward looking poor person (by ‘poor’ I do not mean by ‘world standards’, but in comparison to others in my own country).
In Keith Payne’s book ‘The Broken Ladder’ he talks about the social and psychological effects of living in a highly unequal society. We have a tendency to compare our wealth with that of those around us. Even if a person is not poor by world standards (clearly, even a person on welfare in Australia is far more wealthy than someone experiencing genuine poverty) the effect of living in a highly unequal society can make one feel poor, and have a lot of the same symptoms as real poverty. When a person feels poor, they tend to abandon long-term decision making in exchange for a quick fix, not knowing when the next opportunity will arise. In fact their whole biology changes. Highly unequal societies have more crime, more addiction, more teenaged pregnancies and a raft of other social problems. I realised this feeling I have of ‘being poor’ was something I could have a degree of control over, depending on who I spend my time with, and who I choose to compare myself with. I would prefer to be downward looking, even if I am on welfare. Almost all of my friends, family and associates are better off than I am, and it can be very easy to only look at them and loose perspective of those in our society who are struggling far more than I am. Spending time at No Bucks (where you can get a free lunch. Yes, there is such a thing...at the moment) has really helped me in this regard. I have friends from a wide cross-section of our society. Having regular contact with the elderly (I’ve got this lovely old fella called Peter who’s always happy to see me), the severely disabled, people living with chronic pain, the homeless, people with a criminal record, addicts, people with severe mental health problems and the like has given me the capacity to be a little more grounded in how I perceive my position in life.
It has also helped me to adjust how I perceive people who are better off than I am. By this I mean looking not only at the things they have received that I did not, but also to take a look at the things they struggle with that I do not in a genuine, compassionate way. So I have been doing a lot of cost/benefit analyses of what it means to be wealthy and what it means to be poor in our society. The one element I leave out of this cost benefit analysis is money. I do not look at who has more or who’s earning more, rather, what the wealth enables you to do that a poor person cannot, and what it costs in terms of stress, self perception, physical health etc, and whether or not it seems worth it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not worth it. Inheritance tends to lead to family problems I don’t have and will never have. I may be poor, but I am at least financially independent, and it does wonders for my relationship with my mother. But the real benefit, I think, is that I do not feel a need to prove myself morally worthy of my wealth. It’s ridiculous the knots people tie themselves up in trying to do this. To be perceived as ‘hard working’ (even if you are financially secure enough that it is not necessary), to be seen as ‘giving back’ to overshoot at being ‘good parents’, to be perceived as ‘financially prudent’. And then there is the nasty flip side of the coin. In order to see yourself as more morally worthy, there needs to be a ‘morally unworthy’. Notice that I have used the words ‘perceived’ a lot. It isn’t actually as important to be morally worthy as it is to be seen to be morally worthy, or to have a reason to see yourself as morally worthy (for example there’s a chapter in Rachel Sherman’s book aptly titled ‘Working Hard or Hardly Working). So the idea that you are smarter, more organised, a better worker, more charitable isn’t necessarily the truth, it simply how you choose to see yourself. The image you choose to project. I am wealthy because I am prudent, I am wealthy because I am hard working, I am deserving of my wealth because I give back. Therefore those who do not have wealth must be poor due to failings in one or more of these areas.
That's not to say that there are people out there who earn what they have, and it's certainly not saying that there aren't people out there that create problems for themselves. What I am saying is that when a person has an emotional attachment to an idea (I am am where I am because I deserve it. Others are where they are because they deserve it) it can become very difficult to perceive your own bias.
I’m not saying anyone deliberately thinks this way either. This is a tendency that is going on in your subconscious. It’s not that you think these things explicitly - that would just be nasty - but there is a bias there. You will notice and remember when you are behaving in a morally worthy way and ignore the areas where you are not. You will notice failings in a person without wealth...because without even realising it, you are always looking for them. The reason I say that the feeling of being morally worthy or unworthy isn’t attached to reality, is because I've noticed people feel this way regardless of the facts, and they also feel they have come to this conclusion by rational means, and without bias. I’d like to remind everyone that it is very difficult for any of us to see our own bias, especially if there is not much incentive to do so (you may not like the answer, in fact you might outright reject it if it turns your ideas about yourself and others on it’s head). If you were to put down all the instances of moral worthiness and unworthiness on a ledger, you might find that a lot of poor people are actually a lot more hard-working than you, despite the fact you see yourself as the more hard-working – because you have a burning desire to see it that way.
Remember, the mother of all biases is: "I'm not biased."
A poor person is by definition more prudent than a wealthy person, because they are forced to live on such a small budget. Yet you will in life count up all the times a person on welfare has made an irresponsible financial decision, and dismiss all the luxuries you enjoy (perhaps even calling it "self care"). You’ll look for behaviors that make them bad parents, and fail to notice your own parenting failures, then credit your child’s success to good parenting, rather than parenting advantage. This is a great example of how thinking in this way stifles debate about the distribution of wealth. Instead of talking about who has what, who gets what, and who’s more advantaged, we are instead tied up in arguments about moral worthiness. One of the central themes in ‘Uneasy Street’ is how arguments about moral worthiness obscure issues of class and distribution. It just doesn’t get discussed. In wealthy circles it’s a taboo. You don’t speak explicitly about what you have, only about why you deserve it and why others don’t.
I’m free of all this nonsense and I can see it now. I will never have to have a major family dispute about wealth. I’ll never have to be beholden to my parents emotional needs because I am financially dependent on them. I’m free not to have to judge people or myself by these perverse and unrealistic standards of moral worthiness. I don’t have to do mental gymnastics to justify my position in life, including putting down people that are not only having a hard time, but don’t actually deserve the criticism itself.
For that reason I absolutely do not envy the wealthy. I do not have a house or one on the horizon, I may not be able to afford travel or many other types of recreation, it can be more difficult for me to start a business or to study. Think of all the things that money gets you in life. It may seem extreme to sacrifice all this just to avoid the stressors of the affluent, but I think it’s worth it.
In my opinion the pressures wealthy people tend to put on themselves are so bad that it’s worth the sacrifice.
What’s more, once you let go of all those things, you realise how shallow they really are. You refocus on what really matters. True self development. Not the owning of a business, but the honing of a skill. Not the accumulation of money, but of knowledge. Not volunteer work for a charitable organisation on the weekends, but true charity in your heart to all living things. When people insist on seeing you as morally unworthy it frees you not to care about their perception of you. You make progress without having to be seen to be making progress. And I can tell you, it feels much more to me like real progress now that I’ve let go of whether or not people choose to see it.
It also means I don’t get any free passes. This can often be difficult but has the advantage that any worth that people do see has to be earned, and I can be confident that it’s well deserved and based on my actions. I have to work pretty hard for people’s acceptance.
That's ok. It can only make me a better person in the long run.
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