In a time in which wealth, and therefore power, is becoming increasingly concentrated (Picketty, 2017) and control of media by the super-rich is seen as a threat to democracy (e.g Porter, 2010), it is worthwhile to examine what it is like to be rich. The following is a programmatic sketch around the idea that excess money may be spiritually harmful, based on a close reading of Francis Bacon’s essay On Riches.
The term “affluenza” has been used by psychologists to describe the increase in unhappiness that seems to accompany unequal societies that are driven by material consumption (James, 2007) as well as spiritual poverty, ill temper, egotism and general brattishness of children of the super rich (O’Neill, 1997). The term gained prominence in 2014 when it was used as part of the defense of teenager Ethan Couch, who had, the previous year, killed four people in a drunk driving accident. It was alleged that, because of his extreme wealth and privilege, he was unable to link his actions to consequences (Plushnick-Masti, 2013). This defense was successful: Couch avoided jail time, which caused a row of indignation in the public sphere. It is my contention that the affluenza defense had merit. I believe Couch was indeed suffering from a condition that impaired his judgment (although I believe jail time would have been an appropriate treatment for it). However, I believe the clever portmanteau used to describe the disease is wrong in two ways: It is chronic rather than acute, and it is not a contagious disease. Rather, it is a form of intoxication. In what follows, the word plutoxia will have this meaning.
The contention is not that money in itself is toxic but, rather, following Paracelsus’ dictum that “the dose makes the poison”, that wealth, for individuals, may reach toxic levels. This contention is based on Gregory Bateson’s (1979) reading of Jung’s distinction between pleroma and creatura, that is, between unorganized matter that may be understood by laws of physics and self-organizing beings that are sensitive to difference and information. Creatura, as distinct from pleroma, have a self organization that is fostered by optimums rather than maximums: Water is not straightforwardly good for a plant; rather, there is a level of water intake that is optimal. In the words of Bacon in relation to wealth: “Measure not thine advancements, by quantity, but frame them by measure” (1968, 142).
Plutoxia, I believe, is not a physiological, psychological or psychiatric disease but rather a disease of the person as a whole – put briefly, a disease of the soul. Consider Paul Piff’s study in which subjects participate in an openly rigged game of Monopoly where one player is given twice as many dice rolls, began with twice as much money and collected twice as much from the bank. As the game progressed, the privileged player was described by observers as growing progressively meaner, taunting and more entitled (as measured by consumption of pretzels from a common bowl). What is more, after the game is over, privileged players credit their own good choices and ability as reasons for his success (Miller, 2012). As the folk saying goes, they are born on third base and think they hit a triple. Their assessment of merits may be seen as a form of mild cognitive impairment but is better described as a moral abnormality. As for behaving like a repugnant person, that can hardly be called a psychological disorder, especially if we take into account the fact that being a “jerk” is not necessarily maladaptive behavior. Other studies have shown a positive correlation between high social class and unethical traits, such as flaunting the law, lying, cheating and holding that it is proper to behave unethically in order to advance professionally (Piff et. al, 2012). Plutoxia does not impair a person’s ability to do this or that but, rather, makes one a bad person.
Such luminaries as Francis Bacon, in early modernity, suspected that the concentration of money brings with it social instability: “Money is like muck, not good except it be spread” (1968, 62). Our focus here is, initially, not on inequality or even high concentrations of wealth as social ills but rather on excess money as something that affects the individual. Of course, the social and the individual are intertwined. Consider the fact that it is easier to make more money if you already have it. In Bacon’s words, when a person has enough money “that he can expect the prime of markets, and overcome those bargains, which for their greatness are few men’s money, and be partner in the industries of younger men, he cannot but increase mainly” (1968, 140). This means, on the social level, that inequality causes inequality; but it also means, for sufferers of plutoxia, the way back is very hard. It would be like an addict living in a poppy field. This blight upon the individual does have social consequences because people affected by plutoxia are also people who have great power in the affairs of the world. The hypothesis is the following: 1.) Excess money damages the individual’s soul; 2.) People with excess money will tend to accumulate even more; therefore 3.) Sufferers of plutoxia have great sway over affairs of the world in such a way that 4.) The state of the world (its injustice, violence and ugliness) reflects the diseased souls of those who run it.
For creatura, even water may be harmful at an incorrect dose; but it is quite incorrect to fear or hate water. Bacon’s advice seems wise: “Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly. Yet have no abstract or friarly contempt of them” (1968, 139). A key task, therefore, is to determine what dosage is toxic. I am not interested in something like the median lethal dose or any statistical measure because, humans being highly complex creatura, plutoxia would seem to be highly dependent on individual circumstances. Consider Bacon’s advice: “A great state left to an heir, is as a lure to all the birds of prey about, to seize on him, if he be not the better established in years and judgment” (1968, 142). A toxic amount for a young person, who could fall prey to manipulators, may not be so for someone more mature.
As with certain substances, it is possible to develop a tolerance for money over time: If it is gradually increased, an adaptive system may develop ways to homeostatically deal with an increased variable. But not only is it true that “when riches come from the devil (as by fraud, oppression and unjust means), they come upon speed” (Bacon, 1968, 139), but when they come quickly, they have devilish effects. From time to time, popular culture witnesses public breakdown of a celebrity who appears to be under the influence of plutoxia (Charlie Sheen, Diego Maradona and Britney Spears come to mind). But perhaps this is not a clean natural experiment since at least another variable, namely fame, is also suddenly increased. A better example, then, would be the often reported misery that has come upon lottery winners (e.g, Cockroft, 2016).
A good criterion for toxicity would be to determine at what point money stops being useful (“useful,” of course, needing a definition). A study by Kahneman and Deaton (2010) states that an increase in money correlates to an increase in subjective wellbeing but only up to $75,000 dollars per year for U.S. citizens, after which additional money does not seem to increase wellbeing. Once basic needs are covered and anxiety about the future is allayed, money does not seem to do anything. Just as a body is only able to metabolize a certain quantity of alcohol, opiates or vitamin C, so there would appear to be a limit at which more money can no longer be useful. Useful for what? The threshold after which a human body cannot further enjoy the fruits of money by drinking, eating or having sex seems pretty low in a world that has so many millionaires and billionaires. But there are other uses to money: for example, to influence the politics of a country, an action which spills over into the social ills of wealth inequality. Here also Bacon’s ideas seem worth retrieving: “Of riches, there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit” (1968, 138). In brief, money, beyond a certain point, is only useful as an egoistic-measuring tool. But whereas hunger, thirst and lust may be satiated, conceit is a bottomless pit. More importantly, when money becomes a status indicator, it ceases to be a means toward acquisition of other goods (such as travel, education, etc.) and becomes an end in itself. Money is used to get money. Consider the story of Erysichton in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: After committing sacrilege, he is condemned by the goddess Ceres to suffer unending hunger and ends up eating himself (Book 8, Ch. 5). In plutoxia, no money is sufficient; it is present precisely when all proportion is lost, when no amount of money is sufficient. In the film The Social Network, the character Sean Parker says: “A million dollars isn’t cool . . . You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” This operation can obviously be iterated indefinitely.
Rather than a brute number or a proportion, toxicity of money is best determined qualitatively: Money is toxic inasmuch as it is, for the individual, an end rather than a means to something else. If put towards a certain goal, that goal provides the just measure for money, e.g, I have enough money now to build this cathedral or fund research for the cure of this disease. Proportion is lost when money is its own goal. In the Treatise of the Emmendation of the Intellect, Baruch Spinoza (1992) puts forth a method for correctly understanding the world (and, ultimately, enjoying a union with God) that begins with a proper relationship with things, such as pleasure, fame or wealth. Far from rejecting such goods, Spinoza proposes that excessive desire for them is curbed when they are seen as purposes toward a higher end, which dictates the just proportion in which they should be sought. Plutoxia, briefly, is the condition in which an individual cannot be satiated with any amount of money.
The symptoms of plutoxia include a distorted perception of relative merits in society, an anxiety toward protection of one’s material goods, a sense of entitlement, an inability to feel satiated and at ease, and a general offensiveness. These symptoms can all be derived from a single, essential trait of plutoxia, as I will argue: a rejection of human finitude. On the topic of usury, Bacon says the following: “Usury is the certainest means of gain, though one of the worst; as that whereby a man doth eat his bread in sudore vultus alieni; and besides, doth plough on Sunday” (1968, 140-141). The objections of Bacon to usury seem to be merely legalistic. The Bible says we ought to earn our bread by the sweat of our own brow and forbids working on Sunday. But what does it mean to earn one’s bread by another’s sweat? It is as if one has grown another limb, shaped like a person, who does my work for me. Since money is more easily acquired the more one has it, this limb may grow other limbs, exponentially. The usurer is not bound, in his work, by the limits of his own body or his cycles of sleep and rest. A whole stable of workmen, who work endlessly for him, have become his arms. Lurking in this awesome power is the illusion that he may, after all, not be a finite being. The wealthy in general, not just usurers in the legal sense of the word, are those whose money is working for them and who plow quite hard on Sundays.
In Alexandre Matheron’s reading of Spinoza, the person obsessed with money would be the atheist par excellence, the mirror image of the person that has reached the intellectual love of God. The latter, understanding that every being is an expression of God’s power, comes to associate all goods with the idea of God. The former, living in a commercial society, perceives all goods as interchangeable with money, in such a way that, in his mind, money itself is seen as the ultimate good (Matheron, 1988, 116). But whereas a contemplation of God implies my own finitude (as a mere finite manifestation of an infinite power), contemplation of money scintillatingly promises an overcoming of the human condition. Limits are overcome by money; and money can be acquired, and is more easily acquired, the more I have. At the far end of the exponential growth curve the promise of no longer having to be human is glimpsed. For example, I feel my actions need not be bound by the consideration of others. The pain of plutoxia is the consistent disappointment produced by the illusion that finitude can be overcome. Money becomes an end rather than a means because only money promises this overcoming while other goods have the mark of finitude upon them.
For Bacon, great riches can only disappoint because a finite man can never truly possess them:
“The personal fruition in any man, cannot reach to feel great riches: there is a custody of them; or a power of dole, and donative of them; but no solid use to the owner. Do you not see what feigned prices, are set upon little stones and rarities? and what works of ostentation are undertaken cause there might seem to be some use of great riches? But then you will say, they may be of use, to buy men out of dangers or troubles. As Solomon saith, Riches are as a strong hold, in the imagination of the rich man. But this is excellently expressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact. For certainly great riches have sold more men, than they have bought out (1968, 138-139).”
Money is a stronghold in the imagination because no amount of money can buy you out of death, disease and suffering or, for that matter, buy the genuine love and respect of those whom you tread under foot. Anxiety is part of plutoxia because the promised security of money never comes. No matter the size of your bank account, you will still need to cooperate with other people. The idea that a society composed entirely of venture capitalists could subsist while the society they have left behind would collapse without them (Rand, 1996) is a fever dream of plutoxia.
According to Piff et al. (2015), the emotion of awe produces prosocial behavior by reducing the emphasis on the self. Seeing the grandeur of things outside of myself, seeing myself as part of something bigger, makes me more prone to help and have consideration for others. In Spinoza’s philosophical system, the intellectual love of God is intimately coupled with seeing oneself as a finite mode, as part and partial expression of something infinite. True knowledge implies egolessness, an identification of self and Nature (see, e.g, Wienpahl, 1979, 89-103, who compares Spinoza’s system with Zen Buddhism). In plutoxia, the tendency that is approached asymptotically (but can never be fully reached) is the complete denial of Nature, of something outside myself that may give me limits. Antisocial behavior is to be expected. Investment bankers are inverted mystics.
Riches, as a tool to accomplish things, are sometimes a necessary part of a virtuous life. However, in the ever fungible nature of money lurk two dangerous illusions: that money can buy anything (not just a great number of things) and that anything is possible to he who has enough of it:
“I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. The roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory (Bacon, 1968, 138).”
References
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