Hildegarde

I’m having a kind of odd day.  After a long time when I’ve had much too much to do, I suddenly have nothing at all to do, at least not on anybody else’s schedule but my own. 

In general it’s nice to have days like this, but this particular day feels like a too-short breather at the beginning of what’s going to be a really long, drawn-out pain in the butt.  If you know what I mean.

And I’m trying to write a publications list that will be accurate and complete, which is harder than you’d think.  I’ve written a lot of different things over a very long period of time.  I don’t even remember all of them. 

This is why there are graduate students.  Except, of course, that I’m pretty sure there are no graduate students devoting their time to me.

At any rate, it’s a kind of weird floaty day, and I’m still reading Augustine.

Which brings me to my puzzle for the day:  why is it that it has ever been the case that people considered themselves more virtuous, and other people more virtuous, because they went without ordinary human comforts?

We’re so used to the idea that there is something virtuous about poverty–or at least voluntary poverty–that it feels a little strange to ask why that should be so.

And yet the answer is nowhere near obvious. 

For one thing, I can’t think of a society anywhere–and certainly no particular society in the West, ever–where poverty has been hailed as a virtue in and of itself. 

In general, we don’t like poor people, and we tend to feel contempt for ourselves and other people if we/they are poor.  Certainly in the United States today, the assumption is that the poor have something wrong with them.  Either they are the unfortunate victims of circumstance–the homeless mentally ill, for instance, or the severely physically disabled–or they are useless reprobates, people who don’t do any work, or who get themselves addicted to drugs and alcohol, or who just won’t finish school and act like grown ups.

Once of the consequences of modernity–of a world in which life is infinitely more stable than it was in, say the Rome of antiquity or the Europe of the Middle Ages–is that we feel that, for most people, poverty or prosperity is a matter of choice.

We feel this way whether we are conservative or liberals.  Conservatives think poor people are responsible for being poor and therefore need tough love.  Giving them welfare payments and food stamps only makes it possible for them to enjoy their poverty and not bother to seek ways out of it.  Liberals think poor people are addled.  They’re too stupid to know how to run their own lives, which is probably “society’s” fault, but whatever it is, they’re to be treated like children rather than adults.  Whatever caused it, they’re now either intellectually or psychologically defective.

And yet the notion persists that there is something wrong with being not-poor, something wrong with enjoying the things of this world and the comforts and the pleasures they can bring.

In a way, this idea made some sense in a world that was far more random and unstable than the one we live in now.   In Augustine’s time, Rome was subject to wave after wave of invaders.  You could live a very nice life for decades, only to see it wiped out in an instant, without warning, because the barbarians decided to invade.

But even your very nice life couldn’t be counted on very far or for very long.  Even if the barbarians didn’t invade, you could have other things to worry about.  In a world without antibiotics, women died in childbirth routinely, even small infections could kill you in a day or two, and the very food you ate was a lurking danger.

Some part of the ancient injunctions to abjure the things of this world must have come from the simple fact that you couldn’t count on them.  Death was not just inevitable but likely to be unexpected and possibly soon.  Destruction of other kinds was equally unpredictable, and happened often.

In a way, the counsel of modern philosophers like Paul Kurtz, that men and women should find the “meaning” in their lives by concentrating on the wonder and joy to be had in this life in this world is a modern luxury, born of modern wealth and modern stability. 

The project only looks plausible because we feel secure in the lives we lead.  We do not expect to die young, and we do not expect to lose everything on the whim of an invader or the collapse of a civilization.  Life, we are convinced, does not work like that any more.   We find meaning in the future because we believe we can count on having one.

You can see where the fault lines are in this idea of the meaning of life by comparing the writings of somebody like Kurtz and the writings of the ancient philosophical school he and philosophers like him claim to admire:  the Epicureans.

Certainly the Epicureans believed that the meaning of life was to be found in the enjoyment of it, but they defined “enjoyment” much differently than modern men and women do.  It had a lot less to do with feeling good than with an iron self control, meant to put each man firmly in control of his passions, his desires and his habits. 

The Epicureans never lost the sense that the world was a dangerous place, violent, vicious, dangerous and unpredictable.   Kurtz seems to think of it as a Club Med vacation, if only we’d stop worrying all the time about what it all means.

And there is also, of course, the fact that there is something about too much  money, and too much stuff, that makes people–off, somehow. 

Not all people, of course, and not everywhere–but still, there is something. 

These days we would probabaly say that acquisitiveness is “addictive,” but I think what it really is is easy.  It’s a little like what happens to so many really beautiful girls.  Almost any real achievement requires hard work and at least some sacrifice.  It requires self control and dedication.  Why bother with any of that if you don’t have to? 

None of us really has much use for people who spend all their time talking about how much money they spent or what their clothes cost.  There is something superficial and annoying about this.  We think these people are not worth much on any other criterion besides money,  and no matter how much some of us may suck up to them, we don’t respect them.

The idea that voluntary poverty is a virtue, however–that not  having things makes you a better person than having them–is much more complicated than that, and much less easy to understand.

Granted there is something intrinsically idiotic about caring passionately about whether you’ll change five-figure ball gowns midway through your debut, it’s less clear why you are a better person for forgoing a good mattress and box spring to sleep on a board, or for living in a fifth floor walk up instead of a four bedroom/two bath in the suburbs.

Some of this, of course, is just moral exhibitionism–especially these days.  Augustine and his fellow bishops often gave up significant fortunes to enter the church, depriving themselves of all worldly goods in order to emulate Christ in his poverty.

These days, people preening themselves on their poverty relative to those evil, greedy, jerks in Scarsdale sometimes spend more on their self-conscious non-acquisitiveness than it would have cost them to acquire serious real estate. 

If you don’t believe me, I suggest you check out the world of eco-vacations, where it will set you back ten to fifteen thousand dollars to spend two weeks being miserable in the rain forest.   Spend five thousand more and the tour company will supply air conditioned tents.

But even with all that, I am left with the original question: why should be a mark of virtue to voluntarily have less money than other people?

Of course it’s a mark of virtue not to think about material things all the time or waste your life chasing after ephemeral “stuff” that you’ll throw out before you use it.  Of course it’s a mark of virtue not to lie or cheat or steal or violate your integrity for money. 

But it makes no sense to me whatsoever that just doing without what you could have, honestly earned, is better than having it.