Envying Bill Gates and Bertrand Russell

I'm reading "The Conquest of Happiness" by Bertrand Russell. A delightful book, written in the 30s of last century, but amazingly refreshed. Were set at that time, at least in the United States, the foundations for the current century XXI, of Bill Gates. What Bill Gates has related with it?

Well, there is a chapter in the Russell's book in which he comments about the envy we feel we can not have what others have. I have a couple of feet, but the neighbor has a pair of s and a pair of shoes. And other has legs, shoes and a car, used to neither to spend your shoes nor to do not tire your feet. And another has a private jet, to no waste time traveling by car. And also, at the end of the line, he, himself, Bill Gates, that if is not the most envied man in the world, is one of the most. To be precise, is not the man who is envied for what it is, but his fortune which is coveted by size it is, even though, according to the very billionaires say, nothing you can buy in the world today with a fortune of a billion dollars can not be bought by one who is only ten million. In short, very rich people admit that no need so much money to have almost everything that money can buy, except some irrational extravagances. So why would we want so much money? And why so much envy and greed?

I, for my part, realized a long time, and Russell had the same opinion forty years before I was born, that the best that money can buy is time and security: just that I had enough to not need more work and live in relative safety, and it would by enough. Why?

According to my calculations, a citizen with two or three million dollars can live happily forever... if so, why would we want more?

Segundo meus cálculos, um cidadão com dois ou três milhões de reais pode viver feliz para sempre... se é assim, por que queremos mais?

The problem is that we do not have these two or three million, or shadow of it. If we had a tenth of that value, here in Brazil, we would be lucky people. So the problem is not the jealousy, but the misery.

It reminds me of a story I read in in a old Reader's Digest magazine many years ago, when I was a child, and that has affected the way I see the financial world and life. I should was twelve, thirteen years old, not more. And the magazine was old, very old, from the fifties. A cousin of my mother, well off, had in his basement a cardboard box the size of a refrigerator completely full of old Reader's Digest magazines, probably from the forties to the most recent time, in the early eighty. He left me to play comfortable with it all, and in them I read an article with a strange name: "Have you seen arusty clip?"

It was a text that said that probably we never saw rusty paper clips because they have a so derisive value  that are discarded before to rust even by time and use. This text told me something today lost its importance, it is the habit of using in fact what we have. The text tell about a pair of leather sandals that the owner used comfortably for decades, although occasionally a band unstick and he became to repair it. Nothing during that time was done that these leather sandals  loses its real utility, and beyond that, beyond its usefulness, there was no reason to replacing it, exchange it, throw it out the other younger. Nothing that new could offer the old no longer offered. Finally, the text has taught me that we should use things, rather than just have them by the desire to have them.

Many years later, I discovered I assimilated that text so deeply. I have personal items that simply are with me, in use, for decades. A pair of glasses that I bought ten years ago, was only now retired, a few days. My contact lens is almost six years! My PC is a Pentium II 266! And I have no car ... in a city like Goiânia, where there is a car for every two inhabitants, I am a rare case. Simply I live without cars.

After, I came to confirm this way of life when I read that "there are two objectives to be achieved in life: first, to get what you want, and then enjoy what you got. Only the wisest conduct the second" a thought by Logan Pearshall Smith, who I do not know he is, but whose sentence is in "the University of Success", by him, himself, Og Mandino. I know that quote phrases is easy, but I see it as a challenge rather difficult to be achieved.

 

I think we live in a world of excess in every way. All excuses to consume wantonly are just it: excuses. I do not believe in asceticism, in detachment, in the abandonment of our lifestyle, but I think mindless consumerism is a bullshit. We should only consume once we reflect on the very real need to realize that consumption. We should only buy more clips after our old clips were too rusty to be useful.

Speaking about consumption and even about recycling, and about old and good things, I'm listening to "Music of the Gothic Era" from Deutsche Gramophon collection, one that appeared in magazines a few years ago. Yes, I bought a hundred fascicles, patiently. I knew I had something to be consumed for the next hundred years. I do not regret it.

Studying classical music involves studying its real history. You take an ordinary book on the history of music and see that before Eminem and Skank (a terrible brazilian band) came many good composers. Most better than Eminem and Skank.

In this historical context, the collection of the Deutsche offers, first, in chronological order, a CD of Gregorian chants.

The Gregorian chants came before the gothic music. And before Gregorian chants there was music, but there is nothing in the collection period prior to the Gregorian chants. Maybe a CD with Greek music is a good way to complete this pre-Gregorian, but there is nothing from Greeks in the Deutsche collection. Moreover, Deutsche, for market issues, have not released the the fascicles in a historical-chronological order, so that if we are listening to CDs in the order they were released, we ran without a comparative reference between the various styles of the time and the various composers, and works of these composers do not know what it was composed at the beginning or end of their careers, which is not very good in terms of learning and appreciation of works of art. The correct, in my opinion, is always to study what we hear. So, a book of history of music and an Internet search on the works of a particular composer are fundamental things to do if we want to appreciate classical music.

Yes, gothic music, with five hundred years old or more, are good to hear. Very good. Pairs and trios of voices that make the mind fly to the realms of Peter Pan, castles and forests, innocence and purity. Art is it: a millennium does not make it worse or better than modern art, just different. And if it is good art, is still worthy of being consumed. Bertrand Russell, a great philosopher, logician, mathematician and writer, is also still worth reading. He, who, wise, learned to live up to its 98 years old. Someone who lives so long and teaches  how it's can be done can not be overstated. And to think that a Gothic music cd costs a few dollars and a book by Russell, no more than a cd, and I feel privileged again, and doubly: first, to be able to dispose of the necessary money to by to myself these wonders of art, and second, and more importantly, by being able to enjoy the pleasures of art, and feel happy to do it, though I do not have a billion dollars.

I doubt that someone with just money and nothing else is able to make this money turn into pleasure and satisfaction the way I make with mine .

Now, I envy Bill Gates less.