Living In Luxury

We live in luxury, don’t we?

What’s wrong with that sentence?

First, define luxury. Second, who is we?

Most dictionaries will define luxury as something involving comfort and/or elegance, and being expensive to obtain.

The luxury of comfort then could include: a home that is able to be heated in winter and cooled in summer; readily obtainable meals that are nutritious and tasty; a car fitted out with surround sound, Bluetooth, and push-button adjustable seats; holidays once, twice, or more times per year in a location of choice reachable by international flights; a large-screen television; comfortable and stylish clothing; a washing machine, dishwasher, clothes dryer. microwave oven, an air fryer; an outdoor pool with an electronic BBQ nearby; an investment property or two; a share portfolio providing passive growth and/or income ….

In short – all the mod cons. It’s a comfortable life.

It may be argued that only a few of these are expensive. Then wait. There’s more to come.

Before going further, who is we?

A question? In what income decile of the population would you have to be to afford these luxuries? Let’s say the top decile – i.e. the top 10% of income earners.

Now, here’s the rub. What income does someone need to be in the world’s top decile of income earners?

It turns out to be just US$20,400 per year (A$30,000 if you live in Australia for comparison.)

Doesn’t sound like a lot does it. It would be easy to look around and point out that “I’m not as well off as that person, or that person, or that person…”

Easy to say if our vision is restricted to our cohorts, our peer group, or the society we happen to live in. But, if our perspective is broadened out to encompass the whole world, then US$20,400 is a high income. Let me say too, before the objections come, this figure is adjusted for cost of living from one country to another.

Now, it is possible to answer the question of who is ‘we’? ‘We’ are the citizens of the wealthy, rich nations of the world. Of the 20 richest nations per capita, 10 are in Europe, 5 in Arabia, 3 in Asia, plus the USA and Australia. The highest ranking South American nation is Guyana at 44^th. The highest African nation is South Africa at 92^nd. Of the 176 nations with identifiable income levels, 18 of the bottom 20 are African nations.

Furthermore, that US$20,400 is thirty-eight (38) times the income level of the bottom 50% of the world’s population. Thirty-eight times!

The we identified above are living in luxury. Two groups of people are paying for this luxury. One group are all those living at poverty levels; levels that are way way less than US$20,400.

The other group, ironically, are the we. We are paying for it with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diseases of luxuriousness.

Additionally, there is a third player that is paying the cost of our living in luxury – the planet itself. The planet is suffering from our disease of consumption.

On the first page of their ground-breaking book on inequality epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett warn that ‘… the truth is that the luxury and extravagance of our lives is so great that it threatens the planet.’¹

Luxury – An earlier definition

It is time for us to remind ourselves of what the word luxury originally meant. In the Old French language, the word luxurie had connotations of debauchery, dissoluteness, and lust. Prior to that, the Latin word luxuria meant excess and profusion.

Isn’t this exactly what our living in luxury has brought us to? Excessive and profuse consumption leading to debauchery (doing too much of something that is not good for us, or for the planet) and dissoluteness (acting without moral – or even material – constraint.)

By the 14^th century the word luxury had taken on association with lasciviousness and sinful self-indulgence.

Are these historical and etymological meanings of luxury closer to a proper denotation of living in luxury today?

Notes:

1. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, Penguin Books, London, 2009.

Learning From Cousin Bonobo

All our siblings have died. Homo erectus – dead. Homo habilis -dead. Homo neanderthalensis  - dead. All our evolutionary brothers and sisters are dead and extinct. Only us – Homo sapiens – are left alive from our immediate family.

But we do have a couple of cousins. Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus. More commonly these two cousins are known as chimpanzees and bonobos. They are the closest to us in the evolutionary family. We share 98.7% of our genes with these other two primates.

Our common ancestor lived some 6 million years ago, at which point our immediate families diverged. Then the families of bonobos and chimpanzees further split around 2 million years ago.

Using corridors across the river that no longer exist, one family, the chimpanzees, settled north of the Congo River. The other, the bonobos, made their home south of the Congo River. Neither chimpanzees nor bonobos have learnt to swim, and so the two species live separated today by the mighty Congo River. Hence, they learnt to adapt to their unique environments and learnt differing behaviours.

When Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in their natural habitat in the 1960s she thought that if the behaviour of chimpanzees was similar to that of humans, then the behaviour of our common ancestor (the one that lived 6 million years ago) was probably also similar.

Soon after she began her research one of the big debates in the scientific world was that of nature versus nurture. This debate centred around the question; Is a baby born with a clean slate, and will only experience make that child aggressive or kind? Jane Goodall thought she could answer this question through her studies. In a 2021 interview in response to a question about this debate, Jane Goodall replies that, ‘When I said no, there’s an instinctive element to it, I was heavily criticised. But I think it makes sense. How can you possibly look around the world and say that there is not an innate aggressive tendency in humans?’¹

Goodall’s reply is based upon the recognition that within chimpanzee society males show a tendency to use violence and to dominate female chimpanzees. This portrayal of chimpanzee behaviour has been tempered slightly in recent times, with the co-director of the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, in the US, saying that aggression ‘only makes up a very small part of their daily activity,’ and that the trait has been overemphasised.

But what of the other cousins – the bonobos?

Research on bonobos living in their natural state has not been as long as that for chimpanzees. Bonobos tend to live in less accessible forest than do chimpanzees, plus their numbers are much less, making study of bonobos less easy than the study of chimpanzees.² However, we are able to discern differing behaviour between these two primates.

Bonobos tend to display contrasting behaviours to that of chimpanzees. They are less aggressive and females are the leaders of bonobo groups. It needs to be noted however, that (as with chimpanzees) this portrayal is also simplistic. Bonobos can be aggressive.

The aggressive behaviours of chimpanzees and bonobos, though, are markedly dissimilar. Chimpanzees show a proclivity towards ganging up on an opponent, whereas bonobo aggression is displayed in one-to-one combat. Significantly, chimpanzees will kill (murder) their opponent, whereas bonobos do not.  

Learning from Cousins

We might ask ourselves: Can Jane Goodall’s wondering about whether the behaviour of chimpanzees and that of our common ancestor suggest an innate tendency towards aggression in humans?

The answer has to be: not necessarily. The answer is nuanced and ambiguous.

When our cousins diverged from each other 2 million years ago, with one going north of the Congo River and the other heading south of it, then, presumably, they took with them the innate tendencies of the common ancestor of them and us from 6 million years ago.

Yet, their behaviours in natural settings today are very different, albeit (as noted above) their behaviours are not clear-cut. We have to conclude that chimpanzees and bonobos learnt differing behaviours. This suggests that they each adopted dissimilar cultures.

Since chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest cousins we could learn something from them.

If we could listen to Cousin Bonobo we might learn how to get along with each other without resorting to murder or warfare. We might also learn how to live in a more egalitarian society in which women bring their nurturing skills and values into the communal setting.

For us to listen to Cousin Bonobo however would mean we would need to give up our belief that we are superior to the “animals” and have nothing to learn from them

Au contraire. We have much to learn.

Notes:

1. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22585935/jane-goodall-chimpanzees-animal-intelligence-human-nature  accessed 20 August 2024.

2. Both chimpanzees and bonobos are endangered. Estimates for chimpanzee numbers in the wild vary from 170,000 to 300,000. Bonobo numbers are much less, estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000

Mystery, Awe, and Curiosity

How many times have you stood, sat, or lain, watching a sunrise or sunset? How many times have you gazed at a rainbow as it hung in the sky? What about the stars at night? Have you peered at them and wondered how many there are, how far away they are, or how big they are?

Turning to the smaller things in life: have you ever lain in a field and studied a blade of grass, or a tiny flower? How about sitting on a beach and letting a handful of sand filter through your splayed fingers? Have you seen the world, as Blake did, in each of those grains of sand?

Mysterious isn’t it? How is a sunrise or a rainbow formed? What enables that blade of grass to grow?

If we do stop to ask ourselves such questions, we are compelled to stand, sit, or lie, in wonder and awe. Life, in all its magnificent arrays is mysterious. Albert Einstein commented that, ‘the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science.’ Remember that this was a man who probably understood the workings of the cosmos far better than any other person. Yet, he perceived this cosmos as mysterious.

Perhaps, like another Albert – Albert Schweitzer – both of them understood that, ‘as we acquire more knowledge, things don’t become more comprehensible, they become more mysterious.’

Mystery invokes curiosity.

A meteorologist can tell us how a rainbow is formed.

But, a meteorologist cannot explain why a rainbow is formed. A meteorologist cannot take away the mystery.

And I, for one, do not want a meteorologist to remove the mystery.

I want to stand, sit, or lie, in awe and wonder. I want to be curious about the mystery of life and all it has to offer.

The mystery of life does not need to be explained to me. I do not need a first cause. Nor do I require, as Aristotle did, an unmoved mover.

We might want to explain this mystery by positing an anima mundi, God, Allah, the One, or even the Divine. Yet, all of these imply a first cause, as if everything can be explained if only we could trace each effect back to a cause, which itself is an effect with a cause. We could do this ad infinitum, without ever arriving at the initial cause.

Because there isn’t one.

Everything is dependent upon everything else. In the ancient Indian texts of the Vedas and Upanishads and early Buddhist writings we find the Pali word Pratītyasamutpāda which has roots in words that can be translated as to spring up together, or to come to pass together.

Simply put, when everything arises together, and co-dependently, we can only stand, sit, or lie, in awe and contemplate the mystery of it all.

Furthermore, we are part of this mystery. Jack Kornfield observes that; ‘We not only are witness to the mystery, we are the mystery looking at itself.’¹

So, next time you are gazing at a sunrise or a blade of grass, or letting grains of sand run through your fingers, or looking up at the Milky way, be curious enough to consider that you are seeing yourself.

You are contemplating the Mystery.

Note:

1. Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart, Ebury Publishing, London, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg, 2008

Castles and Walls

Have you ever wondered how many castles there are in the world? What’s more, have you ever wondered where most of them are located?

The answer to the first question is open, with estimates varying between 200,000 and 1 million.

However, the answer to the second question can be answered with more certainty. If you guessed that most of them are located in Europe, you would be correct.

Some 98% of all castles in the world are located in Europe, with Italy, France, Ireland, and Germany together accounting for around 88%.

Although there are over 300 castles in the USA, all of them were built following European colonisation.

A castle, according to experts, is a fortified structure built primarily by, and for the use of, nobility or royalty. This distinguishes castles from, for example, palaces, mansions and other similar buildings.

A castle is fortified.

Another fortified structure is the wall. Some of the earliest cities in the world, particularly in Mesopotamia and the Levant area were walled. Cities such as Uruk, Babylon, and Jericho were walled and fortified. Any traveller in Europe will have noticed the old city walls often found in the middle of European cities today.

Again, most of the walled cities of the world are located in Europe.

The other major parts of the world in which we find fortified walls are in China (the Great Wall is especially famous,) the Indus Valley, and the walls built by the Romans in northern England (Hadrian’s Wall) and Thrace (Anastasia Wall.) Apart from Myanmar, most walled cities in SE Asia were built following European invasions.

Apart from now being tourist destinations and part of the heritage of many European cities, what do all these castles and walls suggest to us?

They strongly suggest a continent of conflict, where one side had to wall themselves in to protect themselves from outsiders.

Castles and walls suggest a mindset of us versus them.

Castles and walls are mean to divide, to cut off the in group from the out group.

This us versus them mindset appears to have arisen concurrent with the building of fortified castles and walls. This mindset arose within one continent and one culture. Europe and the European culture. Walls did not only get built physically, they got built mentally also. Walls and castles got built in our psyches and in the ways in which we perceive the world.

This mindset has since been exported (by the process of colonisation and globalisation) throughout the world.

Let us not pretend that humanity is naturally antagonistic, brutal, distrustful, and divisive.

Most indigenous and nature-based cultures are not. Some groups within these cultures have become so because of the hegemony of the Europeanised culture that has swept the world over the past 500 years or so.

We can read it in the castles and walled cities of Europe.

It is up to those of us from within this European culture to tear down the castles and walls within our own worldview and mindset.