Welcome to all of the beautiful new good young moneyers who have joined us since last Thursday. We’re building a values movement, join us!
Hi 👋 hello. This week I’ve been deep in Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist and the beast of a book that is Shantaram. Let’s get to it 💫
Inequality is persistent. The history of social progress makes this clear - we have never been without inequality, rather, we have been in constant transition:
“The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of existence, has passed into the rank of universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny.” - John Stuart Mill, 2003.
In gender equality, large initial wins such as the right to vote have transitioned to campaigns like dismantling the invisible barriers to women’s advancement. This week, it was the national HILDA survey revealing Australian women do almost double the amount of unpaid work as men. Where the unpaid domestic labour gap has tightened, it’s largely due to women opting out and hiring staff for household chores. Then there’s the mental load of managing the household. All important issues, but less *exciting* than the right to vote.
Much like ascending Everest, progress naturally slows as we advance towards ‘true’ equality. At higher altitudes, it’s more difficult to move. Social movements lose momentum. Like the law of diminishing returns:
Image credit: Mark Manson
When we’ve made monumental leaps in being able to vote, it’s easy to discount the value or importance of ‘smaller’ wins like the gender pay gap. It’s easy to discount the people who continue the campaign as ‘idealists’, who ignore the practical reality of ‘bigger’ wins to chase in other social causes.
Being called an idealist is not usually a compliment in this world where wealth is our proxy for success, power and status. In fact, step four on the path to filthy riches is to ‘avoid idealists’ according to Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. We’ve written previously about Hamid’s ironic exploration of the mindsets behind hyper-capitalism, neatly disguised as a self-help book, and his position on idealism sums up our world well:
“Surely ideals, transcending as they do puny humans and repositioning meaning in vast abstract concepts instead, are by their very nature anti-self? It follows therefore that any self-help book advocating allegiance to an ideal is likely to be a sham...so you’d do well to stay away, particularly if getting filthy rich tops your list of priorities...people so doing [spouting idealism] should be given wide berths too.”
Idealism transcends self. Wealth is individualistic. Which makes it hard, but not impossible, to be both wealthy and an idealist, when accumulating wealth generally involves being both highly practical, individualistic, and accepting of the status quo.
In fact, it’s so hard to be an idealist today that Samantha Power (former US Ambassador to the United Nations in Obama’s presidency), ends the preface to her memoir ‘The Education of an Idealist’ with:
“Some may interpret this book’s title as suggesting that I began with lofty dreams about how one person could make a difference, only to be “educated” by the brutish forces that I encountered. That is not the story that follows.”
The fact that idealism is hard is not a compelling case against idealism. Like Matt Ridley’s ‘rational optimist’, there is a strong case for ‘practical idealism’. First, if history has shown that society is constantly widening its definitions of injustice, isn’t it highly practical to err on the side of history, and bias to idealism?
Where idealism falls down is in attachment to outcomes. The idealist who believes the world must match their reality will struggle:
“Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.” ― Peter Senge
A practical idealist does not believe things will get better, but rather that they could, as Power writes:
“...My idealism has never been rooted in a prediction that things would get better.. It has been based on a simple belief that they could. History reminds us that nothing is foreordained…”
Isn't the very fact that things could get better argument enough for trying?
“Sometimes, no matter what we do, events unfold in the wrong direction...sometimes, we believe we have had no effect whatsoever, and only months or years later learn that our actions offered encouragement to those deciding whether their struggles were worth enduring. Sometimes, we save lives. People who care, act, and refuse to give up may not change the world, but they can change many individual worlds.” - Samantha Power
Practical idealism is dreaming of a better world. Then taking steps to act. After all, our ambitions are only our dreams that have become familiar to us. Of course, we won’t always get it right. But to dream of a better world is to love the world, and isn’t that better than the alternative?
“It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world.’”- Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
As always, thank you for reading. I hope you found value here. If you enjoyed this article, tell a friend?
P.s. next week will be the last essay of this year! I’ll be back to writing mid January.