A Creative Life

When I talk to many Americans these days there is a very common line I hear from them: "First I want to get rich so I can do whatever I want." I, too, have thought this was what I wanted at various points. It seems to be a pretty common perspective to the point that it looks to me like a stand-in for the American Dream.

It brings up some questions for me, though. Like, if you knew what you would be doing without the need to work, why not orient your life around that to whatever extent you can? It seems many people do not have a good answer here, in large part because they have been stuck in the unfreedom of a life of labor which results in them not having something that they care about enough (building that care takes energy) which they might do before they retire. Incidentally people retire and then are lost for what to do. The question "what would you do if you didn't have to work" fails people.

I'd like to offer a different question: what kind of life are you willing to be poor in order to live it?

I think this is a hard question for several reasons (especially for Americans). First, our culture's predominant mode of existence is consumption, and to be poor means to have limited consumption and therefore limited existence (in the eyes of the predominant worldview). Second, money is a placeholder for morality in the United States, so to imagine oneself poor and living a good life is dissonant, making it difficult to even consider an answer. Third, few people have practiced caring about anything deeply enough that engaging with that thing fulfills them in a way that no amount of money could, hence money always appears a better alternative (in sufficient quantity, leading to nearly everyone wanting to be rich). Alternatively stated, an unwillingness to be poor is the realization that one loves nothing more than money.

These appear to me as the narrative foundation for many Americans (and their cultural compatriots the world over). There is a scarcity of alternatives, to the point that as different narrative ideas pop up they get coopted into this framework of wealth. A startup with the mission "to help humanity thrive" raises venture capital because the story demands scale (all of humanity! billions of users!) and the mission becomes little more than a bedtime story for employees building something whose existence is entirely contingent on extracting profit and which caters to capital rather than human welfare.

I have seen people lie to themselves, at times tried to lie to my own self and suffered deeply for it, have felt the dissonance in their hearts wanting to express their being and finding the world demanding that it be expressed in economic output.

If only we could be free! Isn't that the American dream? If only we had alternative stories than this stop-gap utilitarian "money first, meaning later". What if the meaning actually happens without the money? What if they occupy a shared space where to get rich first makes it impossible to identify those things which you might care about so much you'd be willing to be poor? Because once you're rich that's no longer information you can access (save for those who very deliberately practice dissonance which, having attempted and failed myself many times I can assure you is almost no one and probably not you – and the belief that one is special here only serves to alleviate dissonance).

But how do we change? How do we come to grips with "I want to be special, privileged, comfortable, powerful, important, secure" as fundamentally self-alienating? To give them up is to fall into a terrifying void, into the recognition that no amount of money can heal a damaged relationship with people you love, that no amount of self-importance will ward off death, and that no amount of comfort can make a person feel fulfilled.

So don't ask what you would do if you were rich, if you didn't have to work. Ask what you care about doing so much you'd be poor to do it. The path reveals itself. The rest is working with fear in order to walk it.

And together may we create Paradise.