It has always seemed to me that nature, in her quiet dignity, never once conceived of interest rates or compound debt, and yet she manages her affairs with far greater efficiency than any bank on earth. She keeps no ledgers, yet her books are always balanced. A bird eats a berry and, with what one might call unconscious philanthropy, deposits the seed at some distant place where it may grow into a tree more noble than the parent. The bird has no accountant and signs no receipt, yet the transaction is both generous and complete.
The same principle governs the lion upon the plain. He selects, with admirable discernment, the lame or the weak from the herd, and in so doing strengthens the living stock. Death itself is a contribution to life. Even decay, which men shun as an end, is only the soil’s inheritance, by which another generation is nourished. If there is a secret to the universe, it is that everything pays it forward. No act, however selfish it appears, is permitted to stand without consequence to the whole.
But man, ever ingenious, ever restless, devised money, and with this bright invention severed himself from the very pattern that sustains him. The dollar was not plucked from a tree nor deposited in the soil by a passing bird. It was conjured, and with it arose the strange idea that one may escape the cycle altogether. With money, we began to live not by the fruits of today but by the mortgaging of tomorrow. It is a peculiar alchemy, for it asks the future to pay tribute to the present.
One can hardly walk the halls of government without seeing the absurdity in full display. We rob Social Security, that modest promise to the aged, in order to fund some new indulgence, as if the old woman knitting by the fire might wait while we gamble with her bread. It is not so much robbery as it is a borrowing against the unborn, who have no say in the matter. We send our bill forward in time and congratulate ourselves on the cleverness of the arrangement.
This would be comic if it were not tragic, for nature is no co-signer on our promissory notes. She has no patience with deferred payment. When the soil is stripped, she asks for restitution not in theory but in fact. The dust bowl was a collection notice written across the plains. When the waters rise, they do not accept installments. We may think we are paying it backward, but the truth is that we are only postponing our dues, and with interest greater than any banker would dare.
Consider again the tree. A man chops it for firewood, which in its burning warms his house. The ash that remains enriches the garden, the scraps decay, the soil grows fat, and another tree springs forth. Here is an economy older than language, and it never fails. Yet we, in our brilliance, prefer a system in which we chop the tree, pave the ground, and then issue ourselves a paper note declaring that we are richer for it. In the short term, perhaps we are. The fire burns just as warm. But where is the seed? Where is the soil? We have written ourselves a false receipt and called it wealth.
I do not despise money outright. It is a convenient shorthand for labor and exchange. But it is not wealth itself, only the shadow of wealth. True wealth is the corn that grows in the field, the water that bubbles from the spring, the timber that may be cut and, in time, regrown. True wealth is cyclical; it returns upon itself like the seasons. False wealth is linear; it draws down what cannot be replenished and asks posterity to make good the loss.
The question, then, is how long can this fiction endure before nature interrupts? How long can we insist upon borrowing from tomorrow before tomorrow refuses the loan? Judging by her past conduct, I suspect she will reclaim her authority not with speeches but with consequences. A soil exhausted will yield no crop, however many dollars we wave over it. A sea fished barren will not be coaxed into abundance by subsidies. One cannot bribe the lion to eat paper instead of flesh.
Perhaps it will take some catastrophe for us to learn what the bird has always known, that the simplest act of living is also an act of giving. We cannot consume without contributing, nor take without returning. The law is immutable. To imagine otherwise is the greatest vanity of man.
When the day comes that the cycle reasserts itself, I hope we shall have the humility to step back into its rhythm, to live once more as participants rather than as auditors. We may yet learn to pay it forward, as the bird pays with his droppings, the lion with his hunger, the tree with its seeds. It is not so degrading a fate, after all. Indeed, it is the only wealth that endures.
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Cheers friends.