Primitive Affluence

This past weekend, I visited an old friend. He is a man for whom I have only admiration and respect. He owns a business and works incredibly hard to make ends meet in this time of great economic adversity.

The nature of his business requires that he has a lot of stuff; from cars and trucks to nuts and bolts. I am always in awe when I visit his place of work, and I can’t stop thinking of the fact that someone had to sit down and figure everything out. How to acquire, store, track, maintain and service all the stuff and remain sane at the end of each taxing day. As a service provider to some of Africa’s largest companies, his time belongs to his clients, every hour of every day.

Observing his commitment to work, I was reminded of the great John Maynard Keynes’ essay titled ‘The Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren’, which was first published in 1930, when the world was also trying to find its way back from a great depression and the economic turmoil caused by a world war.

In this essay, he proposed that the world’s problems were temporary and that they were caused by the lack of technological innovation that drove improvements in productivity and long-term economic growth. He predicted a future of “technological unemployment”. He argued further: “This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour. But this is only a temporary phase of maladjustment. All this means in the long run is that mankind is solving its economic problem”.

Beyond this phase of maladjustment, Keynes hypothesised mankind will solve its economic problems, and will be able to satisfy all its material needs with much fewer hours of work. With less time required to meet our material needs, humans will have more time to pursue the more profound aspects of life that create joy rather than money and wealth. Things like music, art, family and, if I may add, cooking.

Some of Keynes’ predictions became true. Technology did bring higher productivity. In the USA, labour was four times more productive in 2005 than what it was in 1945. But instead of working less, the average person was expected to work more. In most parts, workers are expected to work between 30 and 40 hours per week.

If you own your own business, like my friend does, you are likely to work even harder and have even less time for music, art, family and, dare I say, cooking.

For Keynes, humankind’s oldest problem is subsistence. It’s the problem that shapes our core, what we think and how we behave. If indeed we could solve this problem, will we continue to work hard and create new wealth? Or will we move onto doing more profound things?

Keynes did not endorse the love of money as a possession. He proclaimed: “We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for 200 years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.”

Keynes misread our obsession with consumption. Despite technological advances, our lives continue to be shaped by and around work. Laws regulating employment prescribe our time to rest, recover, grieve, assist and bury. The same laws prescribe what we may and may not do. When we can do something and what consequences will be connected to our actions. We work because we wish to consume.

We require money and wealth not because we wish to be free, but because we want to own more things. In the process, we have blurred the lines between our true needs and our fabricated consumer aspirations. Even more troubling is the fact that we are prepared to go beyond our immediate monetary capabilities and into debt to satisfy our desires for more luxury and indulgence. Consumption is the new addiction.

No wonder so many people are hurt by times of economic hardship. The more you have, the more you stand to lose. The more exposure you have to the fire, the more you’ll get scorched. With modern problems such as climate change and the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution, our really tough times may still be ahead.

But is there a way out? A manner in which we could avoid or reduce the impact of work and the incessant desire for more money and more wealth on our lives and on our planet?

Anthropologists like James Suzman say there is. In his recent book ‘Affluence Without Abundance’, Suzman discusses the San as the “original affluent society”, a phrase first coined by economist Marshall Sahlins in the 1960s to describe hunter-gatherer societies such as the San.

Describing their economic approach of ‘primitive affluence’, Sahlins observed: “There is also a zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living.”

It would be naïve to think we could return to the old hunter-gatherer ways. But it would be possible to change the way we view work, money, abundance, affluence and poverty, and it is possible to change how we view the accumulation of luxuries beyond our most basic needs.

Someone once gave me a recipe while travelling through another of our regions characterised by views that ‘less is more’. The recipe is called ‘Fatima se Molshope’ and describes a dish that consists of heaps of mashed potatoes baked in a creamy sauce. I did not have potatoes, so I only used the recipe for inspiration, but the ingredients used are humble and could be substituted, should you wish to.

Maize Balls with Bacon and Tomato Sauce

• 1 cup polenta (or white maize meal)

• 1 cup cream

• 1⁄2 cup milk

• 1⁄2 cup chicken stock

• 1 can tomatoes

• 250 grams bacon, diced

• 1 onion (white), finely chopped

• 1 egg

• 1 tablespoon fresh (flat-leaf) parsley,

finely chopped

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

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