COMMENT: Putting money in its place--a dickens of a problem

By Adrian Barnes

This week I watched an excellent BBC version of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and attended a talk by former MLA Corky Evans at Selkirk College. Combined, the two experiences had a profound effect on me. Both Dickens and Evans are unabashed in their contempt for money when that peculiar abstraction operates against the interests of living, breathing human beings.

Indeed, Dickens’ entire output as a novelist, essayist, and journalist can be seen as one decades-long cry from the heart in favour of the human as opposed to the inhuman--the bureaucratic and the money-driven. There’s nothing more quaint and comforting than Dickens--and, at the same time, nothing more fiercely radical. In other words, we all hate Scrooge and love Bob Cratchit, but most of us would be well-advised not to spend too long considering which of these characters we most resemble in our day-to-day lives.

Reflecting on this, it struck me how un-radical such notions are when you get right down to it. Ask anyone you meet if people are more important than money and everyone, from the greedy, corrupt banker right down to the humble volunteer at the soup kitchen, will say ‘people’. And yet, if belief in the primacy of people were enough, we’d surely be living in a paradise. So why aren’t we? And why the disconnect between a universally-held value and the sad state of much of our world?

That’s the burning question.

When I used to think about issues around justice, I’d put on my political hat and view them in terms of voting or activism. But over time I’ve come to see how little these activities achieve. We recycle as the climate spins out of control. We vote in order to choose between two or three pretty iffy options. In a way, political action almost seems to be designed to leach away energy from the fight for human values, not to contribute toward it.

And then I had this thought.

If I was to draw a circle and ask you to place inside it a list of aspects of your life where money predominates, you’d probably put things like buying food and gas, saving for retirement, and covering your rent or mortgage. And if I asked you to add a list of things outside the circle that rightfully belong ‘beyond the world of money’, you’d probably include things like love, family, volunteerism, libraries, and--of you’re a good Canadian--healthcare. In other words, you probably wouldn’t sell your child to Microsoft if they misbehaved. Maybe not even for a billion dollars.

It seems like a pretty obvious breakdown, at least until you look a little more closely. What about water, for example? Corky Evans noted in his speech that the Columbia River Treaty is up for renegotiation as of January 1, 2014, and that there will soon be a gigantic feeding frenzy of government and corporate interests trying to grab a piece of that massive pie at the expense of the people of our region. So what about water? Is it something that should have a price tag attached to it? Or is water the birthright of the women and men who live here?

The first thing that we will notice if we contemplate our circle is that all the really important things in life belong outside of it. You might argue that essentials like food and shelter are inside the circle and you’d be right to a certain extent, but it’s also true that people in desperate circumstances have these needs taken care of--though often in a shamefully inadequate manner--by the community as organized in the form of our social welfare system.

When we start to think more about what belongs inside the circle and what belongs outside of it, things begin to get interesting.

What about activities like skiing, that are so important to our local culture? Should access to the conduit of the Internet be a citizen’s inalienable right rather than a paid transaction? Should the elder next door on a limited income have to pay to have her driveway shoveled or should the community take care of it?

In a Rossland context I like to use the example of frolf, a sport that my son and I have taken up this year. Frolf is a fun activity that brings with it many benefits, both socially and in terms of physical fitness. Frolf, as practised at the excellent course in Rossland, exists outside the world of money. It’s free and if you’re too broke to buy your own frisbee, loaners are scattered around the first tee. Hell, in a pinch you could show up and just throw a rock. Development and maintenance of the course are provided by volunteer labour and the support of local businesses.

As a free activity, frolf has huge value to the creation of genuine community in our area. When my son and I play a round we often discuss what we can contribute to the development of the course as we feel an obligation our neighbours who built it. That’s human value. If we paid to play we’d likely complain if the fairways weren’t mowed!

Think about these issues long enough and a pattern becomes apparent: activities and relationships that are money-free are of higher quality than activities and relationships that involve money. You can pay someone to fix a leaky pipe in your house or you can invite a handyman buddy over to help you do it in return for a meal or a case of beer. Which is the better experience? One keeps people at arm’s length while the other tends to bring people closer together.

From this we can make a claim: money is a tool that tends to create alienation.

Studies show that lottery winners, for example, usually end up less happy and more lonely after their big wins than they were before. Friends and family want loans. The winners feel compelled to move to more upscale homes where they don’t know people and may not fit in. Marriages end in acrimony (and alimony); children expect life handed to them on a platter. (interestingly, this exact scenario plays out to tragicomic effect in Little Dorrit when the hapless Mr. Dorrit comes into a large inheritance)

And yet we, as a society, spend almost all our time in pursuit of cold, hard cash--far beyond what’s required to meet our basic needs.

And herein lies the problem. Money has become associated with well-being when, in fact, too much money is antithetical to human well-being. In our society, accumulating cash results in an increase in status while doing things ‘for free’ carries connotations of desperation or the suspicion of the volunteer having too much time on their hands (is there such a thing as too much time? I’ve never felt that to be the case!).

At the end of the day, what we need is a community conversation whose goal is to put money in its place. Not to get rid of it--but simply to uncover its true, limited value. Speaking for myself, I’m not anti-capitalist at all. I am, in fact an entrepreneur and value greatly the creativity and freedom that comes from my work in that area. All I’m really arguing here is that money has gotten a little too big for its britches.

We need to sit down as a community, take a hard look at those two lists and, ever so gently, begin to nudge a few items from inside the circle toward the outside.

The result will be more community, more time, more happiness, and--crucially--a hell of a lot more fun.

Adrian Barnes is the editor of The Rossland Telegraph and the president of Lone Sheep Publishing. If this sort of rant interests you, check out FOMENT West Kootenay on facebook and consider joining the conversation.