Why Being Rich Might Also Make You Sad

If you suddenly had over two billion dollars, would it make you sad?

Image source: www.401kcalculator.org

An article came out recently, with this alluring title:

"'I've never felt more isolated': The man who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion reveals the empty side of success."

The author re-posted a string of tweets by Marcus Persson, Minecraft founder, who sold his company last year and made a gazillion dollars.

Go to the article for the tweets (or follow him on Twitter), but this one gives the gist:

The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.

As a result of this very public (albeit brief) expression of frustration/loneliness/alienation, Persson received a lot of attention for what he would later describe, on Twitter, as simply a moment of venting. Just a while later, he was apparently feeling better already:

while there are articles about my depression because I had a bad day and vented on a trend I saw, I'm sitting here having a nice day.

And, then, with a deferential gesture to all the people with "real problems," he said this:

To people out there with real problems: I'm sorry the whining of a newly wealthy programmer gets more attention than yours. Stay strong

I found this brief thread of "whining" (his description, not mine) by a billionaire intriguing and then quickly put it out of my mind. He's surely right that the social media world over-reacted to a few off-the-cuff remarks.

But then I happened to pick up Karl Marx's  Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and turned to the essay called, "The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society."

I'm by no means a scholar of Marx, and I welcome others to correct me on any mis-interpretation.

Marx suggests here that what happened, as a result of the industrial revolution and the emergence of the capitalistic system, is that money began to replace real things, real property, etc., as the "object" of desire, of possession. As he puts it (more viscerally):

Money is the pimp between man's need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me.

Money, is the "medium" of interaction between the owner of the money and the objects of his/her desire. So of course, the "extent of the power of money is the extent of my power."

The consequence of the role of money in creating power, is that the possessor of money can seem to alter his reality by the mere possession of it. In this sense, a person's natural self, or natural characteristics, are no longer natural, or essential, because money goes between what a person naturally is and how that person is perceived and received, both by himself and by others.

Marx suggests that by having money, one is able to overcome what otherwise might be perceived or received as deficiencies in personal, character, appearance, etc. Whatever one lacks in essence (that is, apart from the possession of money) one might be able to make up for–or at least appear to be making up for–with money. That is, it seems that one can buy what one does not have.

But it is of course not so simple, because the power of money to bind people to objects of their desire has a reverse consequence: it can also divorce people from real things, real relationships, and even from the real "essence" or character of oneself. In Marx's terminology, the possessor of money (the "rich person") is both powerful and alienated at the same time. On the other hand, the lack of money (the "poor person") in a money economy is also alienating–by being a dis-empowering and limiting agent.

Marx says,

Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.

For Marx, the existential challenge with money as is its alienating function: it can a person from their true self (by masking or papering over their uniqueness, including flaws) and it alienates people from the objects of desire–either by giving the rich person too much power over them (say, the challenge of unequal relationships) or by giving the poor person too little access to them.

Now Marx says, if we could conceive of society apart from money as the determining factor and instead have genuine human relationships, then:

You can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically-cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return–that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent–a misfortune.

I readily admit that I am not a scholar of a Marx, so if I've misread or misinterpreted things, I will happily be corrected. I also am aware that Marx is not, by and large, a well-loved intellectual figure in our present capitalistic system. (Though given the notable flaws in the system, and our growing economic disparity, there's a resurgence of interest).

But it's intriguing nonetheless, in light of these recent gripes of a newly-made billionaire, to think about money as having this existentially and relationally problematic dynamic.

Most of us wish we could have just a little more (or maybe a lot more) of it. Wouldn't it solve our problems? We don't often think about what might actually result from having more. Maybe it wouldn't be peace, happiness, security, love, after all? Maybe it would alter our relationships to others–and to ourselves–such that it could get in the way of who we naturally are–perhaps even alienate us from ourselves, from our friends, even from our desires?

Source: Why Being Rich Might Also Make You Sad