Hear the author “perform” the essay:
Jesus & friends hand out refreshments at event — stolen art photo-manipulated by the author
After let’s say ten thousand years of sacrificing our dignity, our autonomy, our labor, our time, our children, our hopes, and our lives, so the pharaohs of this world could have pampered existences of excess and luxury, the majority of the human species is owed recompense. It’s a debt that keeps on accruing as long as grotesque wealth and power inequality continues and it will never be repaid. But it justifies the following scenario:
The world’s ten richest men own more than the combined wealth of the bottom 3.1 billion people. During Covid their wealth doubled somehow. The sensible thing to do is as follows: take away their wealth and divide it up among the bottom 3.1 billion people and see how the world’s ten richest men feel living with absolutely nothing for a day or two. Just a day or two.
The bottom 3.1 billion people currently have wealth below $10,000, but the 3 billion people in the wealth tier just above them have between 10,000 and half a million dollars or more. So it seems easy to take the bottom 6.1 billion people and equalize their wealth at, say, $50,000.
That leaves the top 1.76 billion people who each have wealth upwards and in excess of $1 million, according to figures derived by extrapolating from studies about wealth inequality by Oxfam and Credit Suisse. Doing some rough back-of-the-envelope math, but with no envelope and a paucity of math, we should be able to confiscate and redistribute so everyone has between $100,000 and $200,000 in wealth. Even given small rounding errors, impracticalities, fluctuating exchange rates and deflation due to the blessed discontinuation of artificial scarcity of goods and services like that which held under the previous regime of wealth disparity, a few minor differences in wealth in the 1 to 2 hundred thousand dollar range seems tolerable.
Now let’s get back to the formerly richest 10 men—because they are men—who currently in our scenario have nothing. Surely 7.95 billion people can contribute a few hay pennies each to bring the put-upon ten to par with the rest of humanity.
In realistic terms, this could happen tomorrow. The only thing preventing it is the political will to put in place the necessary bureaucratic organization. And public wealth hasn’t even been dealt with. So far we’ve only dealt in private wealth. The fact that certain resources people need are concentrated in a few localities is not insurmountable. There will be some actual shortages, of course. But with everyone’s wealth being relatively equal, the main obstacle to finding fair solutions to problems of need will be gone. Yes, certain people will still have power others will not, that’s simply the nature of living in a universe that is divided by time and distance, and in a species among which individuals possess differing needs and abilities.
Individuals will still come together to create organizations to pool their resources in order to leverage the collective power thereby created. One such organization might be a school or university. Another might be a hospital. Another, sadly, might be an army. Smaller or more temporary collectives can tackle municipal issues or pool artistic resources in order to create entertainments.
The most pessimistic prognosis is that humanity will recreate all its past institutions, including the ones that enforce injustice. Let’s call that the worst case scenario, at least for now, until we can imagine even more dire ones. Well, that will take some time. At least we can get maybe a decade-and-a-half of relative economic equality.
And what about all the resentful people who have had to give up things and privileges in order that everyone can live decent lives? They’ll get over it. If we force them or encourage them to. People learn to live with resentment all the time. What they don’t learn live with is starving to death or being imprisoned for bad reasons or having bombs explode on top of them.
But who really has the time, let alone the skills, to implement this plan? We as a species have come together to achieve some pretty incredible things. Often we think the process leading to great achievements requires one person in charge telling others what to do. Is that merely an artifact of the way history narrates the past? One way to find out would be to put my wealth distribution plan in place and see what emerges from economic equality.
Since this is my plan, I could arrogate to put myself in charge of it and tell all of you what to do. But I don’t have the inclination. Even more debilitating, I don’t have the power or authority, and anyone who’s spent more than a day’s worth of time with me will tell you I have neither the negative nor positive qualities necessary to acquire the power or authority.
Nevertheless, on my own recognizance, I have already been in the process of implementing my beneficent plan. Everything I do, think, say, and write is all part of my effort to create a just world in which no one is deprived of what they require and no one is in a position to thus deprive anyone else. I know it might not seem like it all the time. Like when I display anger or crabbiness or despair or nastiness or pettiness or shallowness or lethargy or apathy or self-neglect or self-centeredness or self-aggrandizement or ridicule or shortsightedness or shortness of temper or shortness of breath or cowardice or fear or caution or trepidation or outrage or silliness or lechery or crapulousness or lack of curiosity or resentment or gluttony or sloth or envy or pride or wrath or greed or sloppiness or shyness or boorishness or intrusiveness or foolishness or cleverness or petulance or pedantry or levity or gravity or grace or klutziness or slovenliness or splendor or mendacity or perfidy or purity or insanity or inanity or amity or enmity or ineptitude or aptitude or rigor or torpor or furor or humor or expansiveness. Or narrowness. Or slyness or slipperiness or dissolution or ambiguity or magnanimity or parsimony or sincerity or frivolity or redundancy or sourness or dourness or weakness or sweetness or need or speed or languor or lasciviousness or naïveté or childishness or decrepitude or rottenness or jadedness or cynicism or nihilism or altruism or spoilage or freshness or cheek or jowl or gland or organ. When I stick out my tongue or give the finger or shake my fist or roll my eyes or take a knee or take a powder. Whether I take it on the chin or on the lam or in the butt or with a glass of water or to the limit or in the alley or on the roof.
Every allegory or metaphor or expository utterance, every gesture, declaration, excuse, deception or confession. It’s all for you, world. My goal is that by the time the moment arrives when the final breath of life is expelled from my lungs, the world will be able to carry on without me. And the cherry on top would be if all humans were in a position and of an inclination to be kind to each other. But of course the cherry is never necessary, and if I die without a cherry on top, well, I can live with that.
Anyway, if I get on my soapbox or my high horse and nitpick or dismantle, I truly do it with the desire that everyone, even the people we can’t help hating, end up in a decent place. Call it what you will. Look down upon it. Laugh at it. Mock it. Spit on it. Condemn it if you must, but I really want an end to injustice for everyone if at all possible. That desire is how I’ve ended up in this predicament, a covertly yet also obviously absurd circumstance.
We don’t all have equal difficulties. But we are all ensnared in what used to be called “the human condition.” And as important as it is to recognize one’s own value and not allow representatives of any system to devalue anyone else or any group of people for any reason, it’s just as important to exercise the three Cs: conscience, compassion, and courtesy. When doing so, it will feel as if you’re getting the worse in a negotiation, the short end of the stick. If you’ve lived before under false utopian schemes that have been unmasked as totalitarianism, I ask to you to give generosity another chance.
When you practice generosity—yet not to a fault—and experience it as the best of what we are to each other, that’s when you know you’re not a sociopath. You feel it. And what we need more than anything, and what my efforts are all meant to lay down a fertile soil to cultivate, is a critical mass of non-sociopaths which will tip the balance in favor of the people. Please help us all reach that critical mass.
:):):) !!! I'm behaving