A Prosperity Calculus

The automaker GM lost $15 billion in the second quarter of 2008, the headlines read today. The Gates Foundation is endowed with billions of dollars to fund the fight against infectious diseases in the developing world. AIDS is on the comeback again in rural southern States of the U.S., often cited as the result of lack of education about how it spreads and how we can prevent it. Rich patrons in Asian restaurants buy sharkfin soup for thousands of dollars a bowl. I've met Thai farmers who are happy without two nickels to rub together, and we've all read about multi-millionaires who couldn't resist cheating on their taxes to keep even more of their money.

In the endless hamster wheel that is my brain, I've recently been ruminating about poverty and wealth, and what it means to be wealthy. They are concepts that come up a lot in the media, and are huge, fundamental aspects of how we understand the modern world. We can donate to the global campaign to Make Poverty History, which is organized around the goal of forgiving Third World international debt. We can measure our lives to see if we're above or below the poverty line. We can go to the library to get a wealth of information about any topic we choose. We can talk with a financial planner to find out how best to manage our wealth. A lot of what we do is look around at our fellow homo sapiens and try to place ourselves in the pecking order of rich to poor. Where we find ourselves each day, month, and year has a profound impact on what we choose to do next.

Beyond these ideas of wealth and poverty, I've been wondering about our culture as a whole. Are we headed towards greater collective wealth as we learn more about the world and what is happening in it? Buckminster Fuller defined wealth as "the measurable degree of established operative advantage". Elsewhere, Fuller described his notion as that which "realistically protected, nurtured, and accommodated X numbers of human lives for Y number of forward days". Philosophically, Fuller viewed "real wealth" as human know-how and know-what which he pointed out is always increasing. (These excerpts stolen from the Wikipedia entry on wealth.)

I think it's important to keep our view of wealth as broad as possible, and to learn to recognize poverty as well. I think if nothing else, we can check our gut to see if we feel rich or poor when we think of a situation. Some examples from my prefrontal cortex:

Wealth is the huge amount of fresh surface water in Canada. Poverty is selling it to the U.S. because they mismanaged theirs and don't have a plan to do better in the future.

Wealth is a society that encourages public discourse so everyone feels well represented. Poverty is having only two political parties from which to choose a leader of a 300 million person country.

Wealth is having done a hard day's work and being properly acknowledged for it. Poverty is feeling trapped into a life of it without being thanked.

Wealth is having a lot of money, while poverty is feeling that you can never have enough.

Wealth is admitting that we're in a collective crunch with regards to the planet's climate problems. Poverty is accepting talk of outdated and inadequate agreements as signs of a solution.

Wealth is saying that something isn't right and we need to talk about it. Poverty is shrugging our shoulders in anger.

Wealth is freedom that comes from thriving with a simpler and more sparse life. Poverty is keeping our demands high and living a life to feed them.


The common thread, as I see it, is that we feel empowered with wealth, and feel fearful and powerless with poverty. There is no baseline for wealth - the measure is floating in all realms of our lives. If we are financially flush and unhappy at home, are we wealthy? If we don't make much money but can pay our bills and take care of ourselves, are we impoverished?

As we advance our own understanding of the world, and act on that information, we create our own wealth. When we take charge of the quality of our food, we feel wealthy. When we think about our footprint on the planet, and change it if we don't like it, we feel empowered. When we question existing systems that seem broken, we benefit ourselves and the world tremendously, even if it's not clear right away what to do with our questions.

Wealth also begets wealth. Development studies show that by increasing the baseline amount of education for women in poor countries, they in turn have fewer children. Fewer children means less strain on the natural resources there and elsewhere. Less strain on the resources (sometimes) means fewer wars within and between groups of people. We take our knowledge and empowerment and roll with it.

So what does all of this mean for those of us truckin' along in our jobs and daily routines? Let's get wealthy. Ask questions to yourself and those around you. Preserve your health so that more of your life down the road is good. Experiment to find out what you have enough of and what is lacking. Do you have enough good food, sleep, exercise, love, time with your dog, reflection, etc? Do you feel trapped in any pattern in your life that you want to change? Where do you feel impoverished? Follow your gut. If you're already overbooked in life, don't add another thing. Don't sell your coal, timber, and precious metals to the neighboring empire - save them for your own rainy days. Talk to those around you and see if anyone else is feeling like something isn't right. Our friends can be such a rich deposit of wealth.

And remember, no matter how rich or poor, you've got to do what Annie Dillard recommends. "Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you."