(from a published work, by me)
Chapter 4: “Personal Enterprise.”
“Where life had no value,
death sometimes had its price.
This is why the bounty killers appeared.”
-Sergio Leone
“Such was the way that revenge was cheap, and gratitude expensive.”
-Edward Gibbon
If a commonality does not suffice to keep us all vaguely intertwined, then certainly the immediate worries begin to address the balance. Thinking of the next meal, if nothing else, were it a a few blocks away, a few rooms away, a few steps away, or even at our fingertips already, it calls to us; these and other matters call to us, like housing costs and car insurance. Laundry. More pressing matters remind us of our humanity, and in the meantime, we can become blinded to any kind of similarity to anyone else as we go about procuring food and shelter, clean clothes, and so forth. So even as we do something remarkably common, we do it in a sort of blinded self-interest, a kind of miasma of self-indulgence, a kind of rumple-snort at living.
Seneca reminds that he is not an expert, but a sufferer of the thing called life. He merely shares his observations, and does not pretend to give perfect instruction. He says he has not advanced above basic human concerns, and claims in no way to be above anyone else. What he gives is the advice of fellow human being. Indeed, advice can help, and sometimes it spares us from a rather pronounced indignity or sufferance. Indeed, in any fold, one need look only to either the top or bottom for an obvious difference in being, but the question is, do we seek help from the avoider or the one that has become injured? Need way a spectacular success or failure to do more than remind us that we are human, when the common fellow can give as good advice as those others.
Imagine then a man walking through a jungle. Do we look to a perfect person as a guide? Or conversely, do we look for one that has suffered a few missteps? It seems past experience with trouble would give someone a wealth of experience for others, but in society we so often look to seemingly perfect people. It is as if to say to the bomb-injured man, that he could tell us where he thinks the mines are, since he has experience already. So many would seek the advice of a billionaire. Do we think we’ll have to worry, personally, about how to hide our billions? Or would we rather make use of a few dollars here and there to get buy on the basic necessities? A few years back, a popular television show advertised how to survive on forty dollars a day, and that show ran for a number of years; the advice was practical, and not extravagant or given to fancy: it was relatable to the common experience.
High or low, then, perfection or bitter experience, beckons us, in the quandry to decide which advice we might prefer. This goes back to the phenomenalism, exceptionalism that so many preach to us without end. We can but rely on one that has either sidestepped something, or one that has made the misstep and would help us avoid it, after. We are given that choice, were phenomenalism is so much easier, bitter experience finds us on the street level, eventually, even as we ourselves begin to point out potential missteps to others, after our own dreams have been contested. The cult of phenomenalism, on the other hand, would hold a rather rare dream in front of our eyes, and we would forget still the bitter words of the richest and wisest man in his world, from the Bible, King Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, telling us that the trappings of wealth are unimportant, that we should instead enjoy our lives.
We would gladly forget and finance ourselves into a pit on unimportant baubles, having to toil constantly to survive, get by, make interest payments. And that, we’re sold on an impossible dream, and we service that dream as we live a life that is almost unbearable. The promise of the dream, the one in a million dream, is what keeps many on the treadmill of finance and indulgence. Many of us have been there, faced with that dream, and all the while living on just enough to keep the lights on and food on the table, doing impossible service to that dream, burning, igniting, surviving on the fuel of human hopes and dreams.
Faced with struggles in the immediate future, was the old way to go the aged and experienced, who had already surpassed and survived those challenges. They could tell us well where the “vanities” or wastes of time are, what we could be doing so very differently, instead. Such is the way of a life goal, to look for survival, or happiness, but rather in the commonest sense, people today seem bent on the pursuit of wealth instead of happiness, though the hinge seems to be making a pendulum movement in the opposite direction more and more. We know one can only buy things, set up experiences, and not actually purchase happiness, barring some procurement of a drug that defaces the mind into a false happiness. And yet we are sold, by collaboration of different forces, to strive for that ultra-wealthy fantasy, through advertising, through making payments, sold on the easiest way, the best way, and always at a cost.
There is even a path of least-resistance and seemingly available to all, in the lottery system. In a capitalist system, this is democracy writ large, perhaps, the seemingly random chance at life-changing abundance, when it is again, available to all, our all who buy in. Note buy in, particularly, that the wealth-dreams of millions are focused to one, and that one, under phenomenalism, is separated out, perhaps as a news story, a footnote for the public conversation. One in one hundred million, and the everyone contributes to that, with a corporation and the ticket sellers taking their own little cut of the indulgence. It is, in many states, specifically endorsed by the states, advertised, and drawings are shown on special television broadcasts. All is a collaboration to get that precious few dollars per head, every week, and where that is not enough, then two or three times a week; it is collaborated upon and speculated by those behind the scenes. We are beset by forces angling for our money, an army of people who study on the practice of taking our money. We are then, under all these forces, given a diet of daydreams, and that without mentioning the television, radio or internet, an endless spectacle to encourage our daydreams, and pull money from our pockets.
One need only get really close to the wealthy to catch hold of some essential indecencies, some vain and constant pursuit of growing wealth. All of the phenomenal never give up the pursuit; they rarely take hold of that worker’s dream of never-ending vacation. Indeed, the few phenomenal ones are consumed almost to the point of torture, obsessed with growing wealth, and get us started on the topic of power? Sheesh. Beyond that, it was made a tax credit to donate money to registered charities, which gave the wealthy an incentive to just hand wads and wheelbarrow loads of money over to charitable organizations. One of this writer’s favorite children’s shows was shown nationwide on PBS, the production financed by one Carnegie Endowment, which was essentially a hand-out of untold wealth, given over to public television, which was also supported partly with taxpayer dollars. Nevertheless, with an incentive, the wealthy can be made to be more generous than regular old nature seems capable of by itself.
We would look at a Warren Buffet, and we would immediately see, even in advanced age, he presses on at the pursuit of more and more wealth. And in addition to his income, there is a wealth of responsibility, thousands of workers relying on the stray thoughts that come down the pike from the one man, like a king or pharaoh of old, holding court over the housing of thousands of people. And in Buffet’s specific case, so many people listen to his investment advice, too, as the journalists apparently spend a lot of time asking him questions on the topic. And nevermind how many have become millionaires by his investment advice, but just the fact of his vast wealth gives him that sort of crown of success that so many seem to look up to, where yet others would possibly even think good ole Warren had ruined his own life the day he realized he had more than a million in the bank.
He is famous for nothing else but successful money-making, yet would be held-up as an example to the masses, as an example to those in business school, and to those investing, those interested in the private sector. He has also weighed in on some political matters, like the Affordable Care Act, so called “Obamacare”, as the cult of phenomenalism has him as one of its chief figures. What almost orgasmic delight they had when a commoner happened upon Sir Paul McCartney and Warren Buffet sitting on a bench along a public street. It was poster filled with poster children for the pasting and stapling all over newspapers and the like for days, and the notion was told that even a commoner might rub elbows with two famous, wealthy celebrities.
Perhaps to this end I sound like a revolutionary, as if I have some moneyless idea as counter to capitalism, but I do not. I point at the system and regret some aspects, but I too live in the system, and to a large extent, I play the same game as all of my readers. I simply remind there are plenty of other things in life to worry over, rather than money. And despite popular opinion, plenty of happy experiences do not cost anything at all. Do not discount the old King Solomon, writing dejectedly of his earlier years wasted on the acquisition of wealth and power; it seems he had simply over-burdened himself with worries and baubles, all which needed continuing care and polish. His own one-time avarice, made his life miserable, but it was just like the food glutton, that it took more than one meal to make a fat person; it took diligence and a continued effort. His regret in his chapters was how much he did towards the goal of wealth, and that he did not focus his life more on other aspects; when the time was gone, there was no way to go back and un-do all of those wasted years.
Consider that ethics are enforced by the government apparatus, so that the others can freely pursue wealth under the system; judgments are made on money-making opportunities, which seem to free up executives from real ethical concern. They can focus on pure commerce, the building of wealth, while legal experts and accountants give them pointers in the right direction to keep everything within the real of legally-allowed enterprise. Indeed, many executives today approach the narrow scope of things that selling a valuable company is easier than actually keeping it running. They, somewhere along the line, bought in to the daydream of a buyout and an early retirement, leaving a small army of workers unemployed in the meantime, but the executive gets a cut of the sale as reward, as a salary bonus. “Slash and burn capitalism” was a term once used over the actions of some dubious stewards of industry, people that ruined competitors, people that bought companies just to sell them for higher prices, people of some preferences that seem on the far margins of legally-sanctioned behavior.
It happened with the Hostess baked goods company. They could seemingly take the money and run, the executives could, in the shuttering of the firm, meanwhile thousands of workers relied on the company running to make a continuing income. Nevertheless, the executives could pocket a portion of the sale price and take an early retirement, while totally disregarding the rank-and-file workers. The Japanese model was oriented against these techniques through many decades, with the worker cared for by the company. The companies seemed genuinely interested in the well-being of the workers, and the workers were generally kept happy. However, the Japanese companies coming to America, particularly the auto industry, fear the unions, and keep their US-based factories in states that are less friendly to unionizing.
It was one of the King Richard’s in Shakespeare, under fear of death, that offered anyone in earshot his crown in exchange for horse to flee his own death; seemingly all things can be boiled-down to more immediate concerns, seemingly so distant from the concerns of large commerce and the apparatus of corporations. It is a matter of speculation as to how often the worker’s concerns are taken into consideration, like the auto industry. At first there were skilled craftsmen, then came the Ford model of unskilled workers doing menial tasks at a low rate of pay. Eventually, the pendulum swings back to somewhat skilled craftsmen, as Ford itself would later have a hand-assembled engine factory where a highly skilled worker, piece-by-piece, readies an engine. This is not considering the unions that rose-up to fight for fair wages, and not even really considering the army of fast food workers in almost every town across the nation that are still largely non-union workers. Also not held out in the debate is Walmart’s training videos that discourage unionization of its workers.
What I advocate is not revolution, not the outright abandonment of capitalism, but a more pronounced sense of personal economy. A Charlie Chaplin filmed coined the term “personal enterprise”, but in Chaplin’s vision of personal enterprise, so many moments of smiles and rest and positivity were taken in passing, moments in between the more responsible and productive things of society. Clearly he had a vision ripped from the headlines, of unemployment, new factories opening, of union picket lines and so forth, a kind of balance between commerce and that “personal enterprise”. I would note early in his film, Chaplin’s factory worker has nervous breakdown from working at a frantic pace throughout his entire work shift, and from there he languishes between prison stays and various attempts at “regular life”. Indeed, during rampant unemployment, Chaplin’s tramp asks not to be released from a prison stay, but to be allowed to continue to enjoy what for him has become easy-living, free from regular responsibilities, in the dubious comfort of a prison cell.
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