In relentless pursuit of freedom.
Prices are a language.
The beauty of this reality hit me while on a walk. I had my phone so I recorded my thoughts in the moment of delight. I’m often overcome by how beautiful markets are. It’s almost a spiritual experience when you ponder long enough.
Humans are not like other earthly creatures. We cannot live for only the biological imperative to survive and procreate. Humans require purpose. Lack of purpose is the greatest disease against which all of humanity must daily fight. It is the one disease that will not and cannot be overcome by advances in medicine.
You can’t have purpose on accident
Our existence is couched in a series of accidents. That we were born, when, where, and to whom are accidents (they were not accidents to our progenitors, but from our own point of view). Our genetic structure is an accident. The first language we hear, and therefore learn, and the first beliefs to which we are exposed, and therefore predisposed to, are accidents. Purpose can not come from accidents. We do not discover or live with purpose naturally, the way we grow physically.
None of these accidents are good or bad. The simply are. In your exploration and creation of purpose you may find that a meaningful life demands radical differences from the norms and beliefs in which you were raised. You may find that it demands beliefs and norms almost identical to those in which you were raised. Whatever the end result, the one consistent demand is that you choose it. You cannot discover and live a purposeful life by simply following rules handed down to you, taking the path of least resistance, and sitting idly on the conveyor belt you were plopped on. It’s not where it takes you that matters as much as who decided to go there. If it was not your decision, you will never find fulfillment from it.
Suffering with and without purpose
Suffering is terrible. It can also be valuable, in the same way the physical sensation of pain is valuable. Without it we would soon die of unattended wounds. Because pain is valuable doesn’t mean it’s noble or to be sought. Psychological suffering is the same.
To suffer is no noble deed. If the suffering is avoidable it’s a worthless or even cowardly thing to suffer. If the suffering is unavoidable your response to it can be heroic. There is nothing heroic about the suffering itself, but heroism can be found in someone who chooses to respond by finding meaning in unavoidable suffering.
Do not mistake your suffering for heroism. If it’s at all avoidable, the heroic thing to do is to escape from it. If not, create purpose in it.
There is no right decision
There is no decision that will give you purpose. Your life is not a series of binary choices, with the door on the left leading to meaninglessness and the door on the right leading to purposefulness. What you choose at each juncture of your life matters little compared to the fact that you, not someone else, choose. You can’t find a perfect version of your purposeful life. You have to create it by the undivided, definite choices you make. Consciously choose to do things you value and find meaningful. Consciously exit those that aren’t. It doesn’t matter what you choose so much as that you choose. Complaining about a path someone else pushed you down and against which you did not resist will not do.
Purposeful living is a process of exploration, experimentation, feedback, adjustment, and joy in the midst of it. There is no pressure to get it right because there is no right. There is better and worse, as determined by you. It requires self-knowledge and self-honesty to find your own scale of better and worse. It requires courage to abide by it.
Are you the 2%?
At any given moment 98% of us will choose – or rather not choose – to live by default. It is only the 2% who decide with definite purpose to act according to their own wishes who are really living. How often are you among them?
Watching Mr. Selfridge with my wife last night I was reminded of an under-appreciated feature of free-markets. The wealthy subsidize beauty for the less well-off by patronizing luxury retailers.
Selfridge’s, a pioneer in the development of department stores, is a purveyor of fine goods. The upper crust are its clientele. Yet one of the things that made the store famous is available to the general public for free: it’s beautiful and dramatic window displays. The sale of expensive goods to wealthier individuals is the goal, but thanks to the dollars from those customers and the desire to get more of their business, the store goes to great lengths to display their wares in an appealing and provocative way. The result is a positive externality for every passerby on the streets of London.
Other luxury items have the same effect. If you can overcome the urge to envy, you notice that high-end cars and buildings make the world around us more beautiful and enchanting. Market detractors often fret about negative externalities in a free world, but how often do they account for the immense richness experienced by all, thanks to the wealth of some?
Our sense of life is made up of many things, including the aesthetic environment in which we dwell. The seemingly extravagant expenditures of the wealthy can create surroundings overflowing with creativity and elegant design. If you’ve never enjoyed the art of a neighborhood full of houses you couldn’t afford and landscaping you’d never dream of, I recommend taking a drive through one. Put prejudice aside and let the sensory magnificence seep in. Humans are amazing creatures who can shape our environs in amazing ways – I’ll be damned if I’m going to let those with nice stuff be the only ones to take pleasure in it!
Part eight in a series of eight on the morality of capitalism.
Beauty is not often on lists with virtues like peace, honesty and humility. But true beauty is a virtue—it is awe-inspiring, praise-evoking and brings the kind of joy that humans seek for fulfillment. When I think of life’s best moments, beauty is involved; a sunset over Lake Michigan, my wife’s smile, a moving piece of music, my kids laughing, a good cigar. These experiences are sensory, emotional and, each in a different way, beautiful.
Odd as it may sound, I also feel a sense of awe when I walk in to a retail store and ponder the myriad products in front of me. Perhaps I’m a little crazy, but the more I think about it, the more beautiful capitalism is. There are times when I actually get choked up at the operations of the free market!
Consider, as Leonard Read famously did, the production of a simple pencil:
I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.
The wonder only grows as technology progresses. Consider, “I, Smartphone.”
The products we consume for our survival and enjoyment are not produced by you, me or any of us. Yet they are produced by all of us. How does this happen? How can the provision of the most basic necessities of life be beyond the ability and comprehension of any of the individuals who need those necessities? There is profound beauty in this mystery of human cooperation.
If you’ve ever been moved by the observance of a stranger coming to the aid of another, nothing should move you more than the operations of the market. A group of volunteers cleaning up and rebuilding homes after a disaster is beautiful. But consider that the same disaster, if markets are allowed to operate, will cause millions of people living thousands of miles away to reduce their consumption of needed water, plywood, generators and flashlights so that those in the affected areas can get enough. It will induce complete strangers, some of whom don’t even know of the disaster, to channel their energies toward the production and distribution of goods to the victims of the storm. The market is so powerful, in fact, that it will induce even those who dislike the victims and would wish ill upon them to alter their behavior in ways that alleviate the sufferers.
There is daily innovation in a capitalist economy. Entrepreneurs are in relentless pursuit of ways to make their fellow man happier and better off. The cornucopia of products from around the world available to us in a moment’s notice is truly a miraculous exception to the experience of humans throughout history, and it is human creativity unleashed by free-market capitalism that has made it possible. Free and open exchange is one of the most awe-inspiring, community-enhancing, peace-loving, relationship-building, cooperative and coordinating things humans can engage in.
The fact that the prosperity of a capitalist economy is the result of the laws of nature and facts of human nature, rather than anyone’s conscious design, makes it all the more inspiring. Consider the unlikely way in which bees are the keepers of flowers; as they seek only their own survival they pollinate the flowers and produce a dazzling garden.
Likewise, it is utterly amazing that billions of individuals seeking to better their condition do more to promote the welfare of their fellow man than any direct effort to do so ever could. I don’t want to confuse by saying that capitalism does this, because capitalism, or markets, can’t do anything; they represent the interrelated actions of individuals. It is the action of individuals that make this complex mosaic of harmonious interests and outcomes. But make no mistake; capitalism is the only canvas on which such a work of art can be created.
That, to me, is enough to stand in awe of a genius creator who put things in place to allow for this; or, for the non-religious, a spellbinding universe that is like a benevolent conspiracy of good. Capitalism is what occurs absent the use of coercion in human relationships, where spontaneous order emerges. Capitalism is beautiful.