Rich Versus Wealthy
Two men were walking down the street when one, having spotted in the distance a newly-minted billionaire, said to the other, “You know, we have something he’ll never have” . . . . “What’s that?” asked the other . . . . “Enough.”
The Vanderbilt story is a slight twist on the quintessential inter-generational rags-to-riches-to-rags dynastic plot line: first-generation founder, a visionary, ruthless perhaps, forges financial empire out of nothing but cunning, luck and single-minded passion; energy dissipates as heirs shift focus from offense to defense marked by the consolidation of riches and self-indulgent excess; fortune eventually exhausts itself among the squabbling trust-funders of the unfolding lineage.
Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt built an empire front-running the railroad promise of 1800s America. He and his son William left a legacy that would make the Sun God blink, an amount said at the time to be in excess of all the money in the U.S. Treasury. That fortune, becoming largely depleted by wretched excess, was left to grandson Reggie on his 21st birthday who expressed his gratitude by devoting his life to “brandy and gambling”, thereby blowing much of the remaining riches and dying by choking in a pool of blood from the consequences of an enlarged liver at age 45 (The Rich And The Wealthy).
Reggie’s maternal grandson, Anderson Cooper, has now provided us with an autopsy of this self-destructing dynasty as he chronicles, and ultimately renounces as a curse, those lingering ghosts. The issues raised are those we shall be discussing i.e. the difference between being rich and being wealthy. Scoff if you like but the experiences of the ultra-rich, while perhaps vastly different in magnitude, may offer lessons to those of us closer to the ground.
As we focus here on primarily the financial component of multi-dimensional wealth (the other components being health, time, relationships, and wisdom), one take-away from the article is the (paraphrased) offer of what it means to be wealthy i.e. you have sufficient (financial) resources to provide you with the independence, the autonomy, and the time to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, and for as long as you want. The threshold question then is whether you agree with this as a serviceable definition of what it means to be wealthy.
If the answer is “no, something more”, the question becomes what incremental riches are called for and to what would they be applied. The answer could be $100 million for a Cultural Arts Center. It could be $100 billion to go to Mars. It could be I have no earthly idea how much more or for what – I just know the more I have the more my wants become needs.
Another answer, though, as we saw in the Vanderbilt saga but has applicability to us all, is what we discussed in MM 12/6/21 Ego Is The Enemy: It’s a matter of what you choose as the object of your attention, of what you worship. If it's money and things, you will never have enough. If it's to body and beauty and sexual allure, you will die a million deaths as you age. If it's to power, you will feel weak and afraid. If it's to intellect, you will end up feeling a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Enough, already.