Show me the money!

Something I’ve had to learn the hard way – and as you may well know: Most of adult life is spent trying to solve the problem of economics. We need money to survive and thrive. Often we don’t have enough of it and need more. At a quick estimate about 45% of our waking lives is spent dealing with this issue.

Unless, of course, we are rich.
Being rich really does solve this problem.

If I’m being honest, I would like to be rich. I regularly dream about what I would do if I won the lottery and revel in the idea of having that much money that I just didn’t have to worry about earning any more of it. I’ve enjoyed watching reality TV property shows where the buyers have some extravagant sum to spend in some idyllic location, or construct their dream home. Most of us, if we let ourselves go there – want more than we actually have, and maybe can ever hope to get. Some will say they’re not interested – honestly, godspeed for those for which it is true – but for most it seems the reality is we wouldn’t mind having the options that become available to the rich.

But as it stands, not everyone will ever be rich in the way the rich are. Even if all the world’s estimated total wealth were divided evenly between every person—the wealth per person comes in at somewhere between $3000 - $10000. It seems it’s factually impossible for everyone to be classically cash rich.

Meanwhile wealth creates more wealth, resulting in a vast inequality between an exclusive elite and the rest of the human race. The pursuit of this exclusivity is the source of ongoing extensive amoral non-goodness. The 2008 banking crisis possibly being the greatest example of the worst of this—driven by an unparalleled selfishness, greed and irresponsibility—it destabilised everything. This endless scrambling of many to get the better over everyone else breeds ever more instability, insecurity and inequality. And the more unequal a society is the worse it is – for everybody.^{[Reference 1]}

Simultaneously, those of us living in industrialised societies have never had it so good. Despite this we seem to have an ungrateful attitude to the degree of affluence we have already attained. We’ve quickly become accustomed to this unprecedented wealth and it never seems to be quite enough. In some ways this is admirable—an endless desire to improve and develop is no bad thing in my opinion – but when it comes to affluence, I think we need to be clear with ourselves about how much is enough. These days that line can be difficult to discern thanks to endless advertising saying its ok to buy and buy and buy and buy.

In the developing world, television is raising the aspirations of vast, relatively poor populations, to seek material wealth as a measure of success. This is adding an impossible burden to an already unsustainable amount of global neediness—as if it was really possible for everybody in the first place.

Meanwhile we live on a planet with dwindling resources available for our increasing populations and governments totally obsessed with economic growth, in a system that has significant limits to growth. We simply can’t really keep growing in the way we have. We need to reset our economics to a sustainable non-growthic focus on equilibriums, ecology and stability.

This is all vastly problematic! I suspect in a few hundred years we will look back at this age with a genuine disgust and awe for our mainstream obsession with what are largely futile preoccupations—born of modernistic and materialistic ideas and values of success. Our descendants will document the endless struggles of most people to just get by when there is clearly extensive wealth that can be shared: mismanaged and misappropriated by the ‘winners’ in the fight for ‘success’.

Affluence creates and equates to: free time, free energy, free space, freedom to think, to learn, freedom of opportunity, freedom to invent, innovate and renew.

Affluence is important

On the other hand, historically affluence has been a critical foundation for cultural innovation and development. Affluence creates and equates to: free time, free energy, free space, freedom to think, to learn, freedom of opportunity, freedom to invent, innovate and renew. The more of it we have the better, and the more people having equal access to it the better for everyone. Considering the high personal price most of us pay to achieve even a modocom of these things, a discussion on how we can all improve our lot is a pressing concern.

In a future where not everyone can realistically be rampantly cash rich, where we can’t have endless economic growth, we desperately need new formats and conceptions of affluence. Is it conceivable we could innovate a new kind of affluence that isn’t dependant on having lots of money—but simultaneously provides the same benefits of cash affluence? What would an accessible, common, cash poor, sustainable, stable, robust, broad-scale affluence look like? How could it work?

Can we conceive of a new affluence that is so attractive, dignified and viable, and fundamentally better, that it genuinely makes traditional affluence look sad, unattractive and shallow, if not downright wrong? Could we come to envision a world where personal wealth empires do literally become socially offensive—even for the rich? Can we invent even greater conceptions of wealth and manifest them in our daily lives so much so that alternatives become less attractive and more importantly, politically and socially non-competitive?

It seems we need to fundamentally evolve to find ways of subverting our endless sense of not having enough with new modes of happiness and wellbeing. Elementary to this is the development of an interest and ability to supersede and thwart our ancient survival drives that are obsessed with sex, status and money—augmenting and subsuming into higher formats and reasons for Human being.

I’m going to talk about how the possibility of us innovating a post-survival style of Human being could provide a new orientation and locus of how and why we strive to thrive in the first place. In the process we could very pragmatically redefine what our core concepts of what wealth and success actually look like.

To create a more stable, sustainable human world we need to think about our lives in a larger context and innovate new conceptions what true success really looks like.

So how much really is enough?

Don’t eat the rich, just think about them for a minute

If we want to be prosperous by any measure, it’s good to take a look at the official gold standard of affluent success: the rich. If you are rich: erm...hallo, you can skip this bit — also, send money.

Imagine you plus 10 million pounds. That’s what a rich person is. You with lots of money. You with similar fears and desires: now very wealthy. Of course it’s not quite as simple as that for all kinds of reasons. I mean, rich people generally tend to be of a specific set of values, usually modernistic (achievist, entrepreneurial reductionistic, post-traditional, innovative, individualistic, pre-postmodern). Unfortunately these modes of values tend to be the ones that breed the amoral greed that drove the 2008 banking crisis. I feel that’s usually what we are most concerned with when we speak of ‘the rich’ – the generally Machiavellian and amoral values that coincide with many of the modernistic approaches to being Human.

Modernistic values strongly contrast and fundamentally conflict with many post-modern and more progressive values. Because modernistic values and the modernistic era (~1543 to ~2008?) is where the really really rich mostly come from, they tend to get it from all sides—but there are many very not at all rich modernists. There are also many very rich traditionalists and many very rich post-moderns too. So I think we should keep a separation here between values and wealth. They just aren’t the same thing. Combining them clouds the discussion. In combination with that, I would like to emphasise here my intentional lack of rhetorical violence towards the ‘rich’. Progressive attitudes towards rich people are often very aggressive actually encourage division at least and violence as an extreme possibility. I don’t. Everyone knows the wrongness of violence—using it or advocating it in the name of progressive values always denigrates them. More to the point: there’s nothing inherently wrong with being well off. This entire article is about how all of us could maybe become really affluent in a new kind of way.

I’m trying to make a different point here: we all have a human problem, being that we’re all, well, human. The rich worry a lot and they suffer in their worry the way we suffer. The saying ‘first world problem’—like the hassle of sorting out your sporting equipment or buying a replacement blender—probably applies more to the rich, but suffer and worry they do. Whilst it seems that happiness and well being increases proportionately to income ^{[Reference 2]}, it seems it ultimately doesn’t matter. In a recent survey of 4000 millionaires it was reported over 50% of them they believed they needed approximately at least 500% more wealth to be happy. Only 13% believed they could be happy with what they had. Another study by Boston College surveyed people with an average net worth of $78m found that they felt they needed about 25% more money to really be OK.^{[Reference 3]} This is fascinating. Of all our problems it seems the greatest is that we humans can get used to anything. After a while, no matter what it is, we get accustomed to it, start taking it for granted and then start needing something else, something different, something more. I think it might be safe to assume the challenge here is to find a way to be satiated by life. Apparently having everything we could need in the world doesn’t do it for us – so what is it then?

So much of our behaviour is driven by greed, and greed seems to find it’s origins in fear: fear of not having social status, fear of not having the control that money sometimes provides, fear of being left behind, fear of not having enough. All said and done, that’s a sad basis for economics. Surely part of true prosperity begins with freedom from fearing each other.

It seems the bottom line with wealth is this: whilst wealth does provide greater happiness and well being, it does not provide satiation of our apparently endless need for more. The innovation of a new affluence critically depends upon the ability to thwart this embedded sense to endlessly always needing more of this or that, to feel ok. I think it’s a survival response built into our animal selves, and we need to learn how to overcome it with newer higher motives and concerns.

WHAT DO THE RICH HAVE?

Beyond that, what is it that vast wealth really provides? In the end, what is it that the rich have more of than the rest of us?

After writing several lists I’ve condensed the luck of the rich into some essentials:

- More Time/Increased Freedom /Greater Opportunity to live a life that reflects what’s most important to them
- Ability to provide opportunity to relatives, friends and offspring
- Ease of physical affluence: healthier lifestyle, better housing, nicer possessions e.g. grand designs house vs crap welfare terrace house.
- Status ( in social worlds that measure status by wealth)
- Networks of power: relative “status” and free time provide the opportunity to connect with others that have the same.

Freedom is basically what all these affluences add up to, as well as access and ease of access to all the things they need. The Rich have much more control over their lives. This is the essence of it. Ideally a renewed format of affluence natively includes much of the above list without requiring money to have them. If we want a post-money focused prosperity we need to innovate new ways of getting control.

Interestingly the rich also tend to have a particular attitude to life. The statistics on the number of superich who started out with comparatively nothing at all is significant. There’s lot of them. Many rich people have an entrepreneurial innovative creative industrious and attitude and outlook. They generally prioritise achievement, innovation and success as measures of value. I think these are admirable traits – unfortunately they tend to operate in no greater context than one’s own success—which ultimately has proven to be problematic.

Noticing this helps explain something: why, broadly speaking, rich people who have more than they need keep seeking more wealth. Actually what they are doing (in part) is pursing what’s most important to them, industrious innovation, achievement and further success. The money in many cases is secondary, but obviously provides excellent feedback and encouragement to continue pursing the same value mode.

On status: Rich attract other people who want to associate with rich people. Generally, women like rich men – or more specifically, men with resources and capacity – most clearly designated by large quantities of money. The best women will try and find the best rich men and so being rich as a guy is great way off attracting a great mate etc. This power of affluence in sexuality is obviously one of the absolutely core drivers amongst men for seeking wealth. Outgrowing these basic motivations means creating a truly more attractive, desirable version of what real affluence is.

WHAT DO THE RICH LACK?

Interestingly there are some things the rich can also lack. For one they can lack an authentic robustness. Basing one’s success on material affluence alone is really a very weak foundation to happiness and stability. What or who would you be if you lost it all?

Also, I think it’s interesting that wealth doesn’t at all directly relate to class. Rich people can be spectacularly unclassy. Whilst distinctions on class divisions are usually based upon material wealth—having lots of money doesn’t guarantee any class for a single second. You can buy someone else’s class, but it doesn’t mean you actually have any of your own. From the point of view of the New Affluent, the most important differences between people are in their degree of development, depth and subtlety, which can have absolutely nothing to do with money whatsoever.

To use a high profile example—would you say Donald Trump is an expression of a human being at the peak of development? I wouldn’t. I think there are probably hundreds of thousands (at least!) that could govern better than he does. I think he’s an interesting example of a rich person – he has all the money one could possibly need, has more power than most – yet he’s clearly immature by many measures. Money, influence, status and power do not for a second determine your capacity for humanity. Satisfying all the problems of survival i.e. materially, politically, socially doesn’t provide Donald with self knowledge generally possessed by your average post-modern American citizen. In this way he is profoundly impoverished and incapacitated, and probably doesn’t know it. He’s the perfect poster boy for a simple fact: Beyond a certain point, material affluence is irrelevant without genuine development in our capacities for Human being.

Is being materially rich in and of itself enough to satiate the needs of our existence? To the animal in our Hominid brains, it is. But, we are also Human. To me that means we’re something at least partially post-animal, something, partially, altogether new. And it is the needs of Humans we also need to fulfill. On it’s own, material wealth is futile – our Humanity includes an ever deepening and growing awareness of ourselves and everything else – designer handbags, Ferraris, open plan lounges or celebrated social status won’t satiate the needs of a deepening, self-aware and morally developed being.

Beyond a certain point, material affluence is irrelevant without genuine development in our capacities for human being.

Needs

At what point are we affluent? Is it when our needs are met? Over-met? Having been round the houses with this a couple of times I’ve come up with some rather obvious answers to start with: An ideal affluence or prosperity is when our needs are met, and easily met. Affluence doesn’t need to be excess, just access.

Interestingly, excess usually means we don’t have to worry about access—and not having to worry about getting the things you need is probably the most important aspect of classic affluence. For the sake of defining a sustainable and collective affluence—I’m defining ‘access’ as the kind you don’t need to worry about not having. Ideally, that means we don’t need to take or have more than we need—but when we need it and don’t have it, it’s readily accessible. Maybe this is in part why the richest are always trying to get richer—because they know they still have to worry about access?

Interestingly, also, there are degrees of affluence in relationship to any particular need: For example, being fed with a meal of baked beans on toast will keep you alive but isn’t the full nines in a five star Michelin restaurant, and probably won’t taste as good (Yeah, I know some people who would disagree with that, too). An old bashed up kitchen is a kitchen. A new spacious open plan modern architect designed kitchen is probably a better kitchen. When needs are met, they can be met to differing degrees of subtlety and quality. Affluence is extended in the degrees of subtlety in how needs are met.

Interestingly in regards to a meal – over either example provided I would prefer a locally sourced (ideally from a food forest) organic, ecologically and sustainably produced, ethicurian meal of simple unprocessed ingredients, – clearly I have certain personal leanings: real prosperity is also the freedom and ability we have to live life by the values we hold most dear—what we perceive as absolutely required will differ according to our values. This is no small point.

Humans are fascinating creatures in that our needs don’t end with the fulfilment of basics like food, shelter, safety and community. As soon as these needs are fulfilled new ones arise – and it is only in the light of an deeper understanding of this that we can really understand ourselves as cultures and a species.

NEEDS AND STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

An anchoring reference for discussions like these for decades has been Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ^{[Reference 4]}. As a model it’s now somewhat discredited but it’s still a great starting point for talking about needs.

Maslows hierarchy is almost always portrayed in the form of a pyramid which he never actually intended, commissioned or designed—nor does it appear in any of his works. The pyramid is someone else’s interpretation. Here we depict it [Fig 1a.] in a series of radiations of need alongside levels of individual development [Fig 1b], and stages of cultural emergence [Fig 1b].

There’s a stunning correlation, between Maslow’s hierarchy, stages of individual development, and the cultural modes of large populations in entire epochs of human history [Fig 1b] ^{[Reference 5]}. In terms of history, Maslow’s needs could be seen being fulfilled by entire cultural waves. Survival bands fulfilled physiological needs, tribal groupings provided safety and kinship, traditional (religious/nationalistic) innovated new forms of belongingness, modern achievism could be said to reflect self-esteem needs whilst self actualisation is postmodern.

Stages [Fig 1b] are broad systemic descriptions of human developments which in reality are far less clinical and not actually divided by neat reductionistic lines as I have done here—every single individual in our populations being at their own unique stage or state of growth. It’s a broadscale description that’s handy for broadscale discussions like this. Each of these stages in our development are characterised by several aspects including (but not only): moral development (Lovenger), cognitive capacity, values (Graves/Beck/Wilber) and needs (Maslow) that develop and deepen at each new stage. ^{[Note 1]}

Needs need meeting every day, so they are always with us. As different needs are dominant at different times (unlike stages of development which are much less dynamic), Maslow never meant his hierarchy to be a stage theory. Each day we need to eat and sleep and be loved by our families and friends. However, whilst you can theoretically meet self-actualisation needs before physiological needs, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s easier to do that when you are not about to get shot or starve to death—so a sequential or stage approach to needs holds it’s own well enough to be integrated with stage theory for broad discussion.

Interestingly, stages of development are always with us, too. Each one is a always a part of us and available to referral should the conditions of our lives require it. In Keagan’s and Graves stages of development [Fig 1b], each stage remains a fundamental part of us as we grow through them. The preceding stage is fundamental to the next—it’s where the next stage emerges from—but once arrived at it is the locus of that individuals existence. Each broad stage is a whole world of meaning making and need. Higher needs and values together subsume and deprioritise concerns that were otherwise principle reasons for being. ^{[Note 2]}

The reason I mention all this is: What’s meaningful, valuable and perceived as an overriding need to an individual critically depends on where they’re at – and where we’re at as cultures—and we are not all in the same place. This means what’s perceived as affluence to some is not affluence to others as their values and needs are different.

Previously I mentioned a general interest of modernists in achievement, innovation and profit? A life without these things for such individuals is bland and not really that worth living. It’s really important to them – so an abundance of achievement is where so much of the riches in life lie. For a progressive liberal interested in social justice, equal rights, self determination, liberty and sustainability, what’s considered affluent looks completely different. There’s great value in collective equality and more socialistic formats of organisation. The progressive affluence looks very different to a modern version of affluence.

Beyond the basics of physical survival we usually strive for affluence in what is meaningful to us. That could be getting respect on the street, time with your church, launching a tech startup or achieving new equalities in your social sphere. It applies to whatever is most meaningful to you—your abundance in it is part of your affluence.

...real prosperity is also the freedom and ability we have to live life by the values we hold most dear - what we perceive as absolutely required will differ according to our values. This is no small point.

PART IV

Affluence hacking

We can’t all be rich like the rich are. In this section I’d like to suggest we look at the idea of affluence hacking. Whilst it’s brief segway from the main thrust of this article I don’t think we can skip this topic to provide a well rounded discussion.

Hacking affluence is something most of us are actively doing consciously or unconsciously to some degree. Most of us already know a lot about it, and much of what I’ll mention here has been covered well by others as well—but I believe including thinking about the systemic realities of affluence can be clarifying. It can be a helpful exercise in thinking of how we can reprioritise our lives.

We don’t all have easy access to our basic value and subsistence needs. We are all usually scrambling to some degree or other to fulfil everyday ‘survival’ needs. The idea of affluence hacking is to reorganise our lives in such a way that we have everything the rich have and everything they lack—true prosperity—by actually innovating what’s considered affluent—do it with less cash, and be happier. The hope of affluence hacking is we don’t need cash to have time, opportunity, education, things, influence, social fluidity, status or security. It’s just a bit trickier.

Having looked at what the rich have (More Time/ Increased Freedom/Greater Opportunity/Ease of physical affluence/”Status”/Power networks), not including money, the affluence hacker asks: How can we imitate these without large amounts of cash and innovate affluence at the same time? This is a very brief look at the general scope and possibilities of affluence hacking.

UNLEASHING OUR POTENTIALS

First thing to do in affluence hacking is to look at what we have to work with. We have a huge abundance of things already, for free including:

- Time
- Awareness
- Imagination
- Space
- Potential
- Opportunity
- Information e.g the interwebs
- Perspective: if we educate ourselves
- Hopefully you live in a ‘free’ country
- Limitations: limitations can and often do crystallise creativity. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy amount of stress. Limiting stressors are something some rich people will lack.
- Friendship
- Communities

That’s quite a collection. We’re already doing fairly well.

TIME HACKING

Obviously not at all a new topic and absolutely key to affluence hacking. Freeing up time frees all of our already possessed potentials for new things. So much of our relative poverty seems to come from lack of time due to the cost of housing, food, energy and transport. The cost of living is not just a cash figure. The time spent making the money we need to pay for our lives is the time we loose with our families, friends, communities, passions, places and potentials. Working within neo-liberal economic systems in jobs we don’t like is actually very expensive.

The key to time hacking is living more cheaply and changing the amount of time spent working for money. Freeing up time in conventional full time jobs is tricky. The most common of course is the ‘sick day’. We can construct new work contracts where time is much more flexible as many organisations including the RSA are currently doing. Alternatively, freelance style working can free time.

Time hacking can be as simple as relishing the spare time we do have and using for more proactively.

CASH HACKING

So much of what we think we need, we don’t. A lot of our spending is about social conformity and that’s questionable. As a very social species we do have significant propensity to follow each other around like a herd of sheep. We can innovate our spending by innovating our values around the price of money. Will we be happier with less new clothes and old wooden floors but twice as much time? Yes, we will. It takes some guts and emotional energy to stop socially conforming to norms but it’s also liberating. Many of things we pay for we can do ourselves if we have more time. Also, so much of what we purchase new we can purchase second hand. We currently live in rich economies that have an abundance of most goods ready for re-use via carboot websites. A less stressful life means we need less holidays. A more networked life means we can use local currencies to ‘trade’ timesharing with others in our communities for building, renovation, caring and food.

For some cash and time hacking has become a movement—F.I.R.E (which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early). For many of its followers it is apparently not so much about retirement as it is about the financial independence bit—living on less so that one’s life is more fulfilling in other ways. ^{[Reference 6]}

HARNESSING THE POWER OF COLLECTIVITY

Our current modes of urban architecture and land management have a huge amount to attest to. Take your average terraced housed street in a city in the UK, or any block of flats. There you can find upwards of 20 houses joined together with at least 20 bathrooms, 20 kitchens, 20 TVs, 20 dishwashers, 20 washing machines, 20 internet connections, 20 cars, 20 backyards, 20 mortgages, 20 isolated individuals or families. We could innovate situations like these through better architecture by re-envisioning collective but separate living where we have the best of both private lives and shared lives. New co-housing projects in London and San Francisco are experimenting with these options—though so far they seem very expensive and poorly designed.

Collectively organising these things could transform everything. Strangely there seems to be a real taboo around collective living in the UK.

Harnessing the power of new collectives is the replication of the power networks of the elites in a new format. The new affluent’s network of power is the new affluent community. Truly great collectives can have real status of a new kind and the power of influence and connections. We can create a networked richness supported by collectively run non-government, non-commercial collectives that self organise for the sake of the general good and in doing so create new social environments.

Cooperatives, collectives and communities have an economic, and political impact through their very existence. They can be safe havens that allow us to want less because we fear less, allow us to live in more sustainable ways with less resources and more time. Child rearing becomes easier in communities of mothers and fathers, saving vast amounts of time and money on child minding, etc. Collectives have the potential to revive simple happiness in the time and energy they free up for us. There are clearly many complexities to setting up living collectives—this is where great architecture and social design comes into play and is just waiting to be further innovated in this new context.

COLLECTIVE BUYING NETWORKS

Also, we collectively can organise our economic environment by thinking of our spending as ‘voting’ for companies and methods of operation, production, distribution and other practices. Companies make money because we give it to them. With diligent organisation, customer pressure alone can cap and supersede amoral corporate practices. Companies fail without customers. An organised ‘voting’ with our cash, collectively boycotting those companies who do not express scalable values and behaviours required for a sustainable global culture in the third millennium can be a form of collective networked power.

SOCIALISM

Socialistic policy really solves many of these issues and is still evolving possible methods of implementation. An example of this is Universal Basic Income (UBI), currently being trialed in Sweden. (UBI was apparently within a whisker of being made national policy in the U.S. by Richard Nixon in the late 60’s, and many people still view it as an inevitability). However, it’s critically important to understand: this will never be enough. I think it’s best if we think of socialistic innovations as a partial means to a freedom from the problems of just getting by – so we are all freed up for the greater adventures in human being. Making socialism the be all and end all—as socialists often do—is shortsighted, lacking context and bound to be profoundly disappointing! Passively receiving a government initiative will never innovate our human being. Socialism cannot innovate the soul of who and what you are. Apparently, no amount of cash or ease of getting by, no matter what form it comes in will do that! Just take a look at the—never-ever satisfied and not necessarily that grown up—rich. We will always have to be the ones that make it a launchpad for something really new and better.

Hacking affluence alone is a critical step we need to start taking – recalibrating from a materlialistic feeding frenzy to a more human caring community building sane and dignified existence. The ‘hacking’ part of this term makes it sound temporary—but I mean it as a permanent development. Poorer, richer living as the baseline format of society.

I appreciate this has been a brief discussion of the potentials and methods of “affluence hacking” (a term I made up, to the best of my knowledge). I felt I had to cover it as I believe it is a critical step in innovating affluence—but I see it as a foundational development from which even greater developments can emerge—which I’ll now discuss.

PART V

Transition, survival and being

I do not think the human adventure ends with just finally being able to get by in the nicest possible way. Achieving a broad and robust new affluence is just the beginning. I think we can go one better by talking about and innovating a new wave of post-survival Human being and redefining the reasons why we strive and thrive.

In this conception of a new affluence I am working towards championing here—the richness fundamentally lies in the individuals freedom and capacity to innovate their own version of Human, free of the constraints of just getting by. When we need to do this and we don’t need things and houses—not ideologically or intellectually but very actually—I mean, you actually have all the things you need and a house or a home—and free time—we’re in a different kind of epoch of what affluence is about. Getting by ideally becomes a habit like breathing or walking. It’s in the background, it’s automatic, built in, standard—it’s not the front and centre obsession and an endless scrambling for existence to one degree or another. Any higher callings can only really become possible for us on a broad scale when getting by is easy.

Our problems today can no longer be solved from a first tier subsistence toolbox that has been exhausted...Will humanity decide to take the momentous leap forward and begin to design from a systemic perspective that is informed by the lessons learned from the subsistence value systems and past human behavior...? If we choose [this] we will evolve to the “being” level of existence on our upward journey of human emergence.

- Clare Graves

SURVIVAL AND TRANSITION

The radial structure of the previous diagram of cultural stages [Fig 1b] helps express the emergent nature of new cultural systems. They emerge out of the preceding levels of development. The future of Human cultures (and their subsequent needs) can be seen as uncapped, emergent and unprecedented developments—and we are in the midst of this adventure.

Clare Graves (an evolutionary psychologist, also colleague and friend of Abraham Maslow) mapped in his data an entirely new era of human emergence after post-modernistic developments, distinct in a preoccupation with being over previous values and modes based around subsistence or survival and fulfilling deficiency needs.

Almost all the major waves of Human culture to date have seemingly been preoccupied with resolving deficiency needs in one way or another. Even the latest biggest wave, post-modern liberalism is, in it’s major movements, usually championing minorities and the less empowered, is largely about people surviving other people. It’s also about overcoming mental illness and becoming a deeper more sensitive individual, discovering new compassionate perspectives. These are also about survival in my opinion, but survival of the capacity for self reflectivity – surviving ourselves! Maybe unorthodox of me but I’m of the belief that dealing with self reflectivity has been a huge challenge and burden do us as a species. It doesn’t come with handbooks—we’ve had to deal with surviving it, living with it without any guidance in massive social collectives. So I lump dealing with the phenomenon of being self reflective beings as something to also understand, overcome, and “survive”.

There’s a big fuzzy line here – but I want to make a broad and sweeping distinction to try and help us think about the future of humans and our affluence. As Grave’s did, I’m very strongly of the opinion that this era of survival and transition ends with the fulfilment of the realisation needs of post-modern liberalism, after which there is the potential for a new tier of values—a schism, a shift to new modes of post-survival Human being. Self-fulfillment is the final step in this process of ‘transition’—in this instance surviving each other and finally ourselves.

Surely human history doesn’t end with us watching Netflix—now with democracies, equal rights and equal pay? So what is that which begins after this? I put it to you it’s the beginning of post-transition human being. After we have survived the wilderness of Earth, after we’ve innovated nature through industry and science, after we’ve survived each other and innovated equal rights and compassionate values, once we’ve discovered ourselves and overcome mental illness that can plague us, we finally arrive at the beginning—the beginning of Human Being. Being, significantly free from the problems of just getting by.

Once this ‘beginning’ is conceived of, the entirety of Human history can be arguably—and I’m arguing it—broadly seen as transitional. Transitional from being wild living hominids – essentially wild bipedal intelligent talking apes, to the beginning of something distinctly post-animalian, post-mammallian in the entirety of our ambitions. From this point of view history can be seen as the processing of the issue of environmental survival, collective social survival, personal realisation, development and sanity in the face of the extraordinary problem of being self aware.

When we are discussing new forms of affluence, identifying the new needs that come with this shift is critical. This ‘beginning’ initiates a whole new world of need. The needs and obsessions of ‘survival’ during this transition start to take a distinctly second place over the desire for a new creative freedom of being. This is how we can innovate conceptions of affluence, by imagining or even casting, ourselves into this new mode, envisioning and exploring a post-survival transitioned culture passionate about our now freed capacities for self-reflective being.

Already this is a schismatic departure from what Human life has traditionally been about. Quite a thing, this way of thinking. At that point subsistence/survival ‘transition’ needs are essential and simultaneously a distraction—fulfilling them is still critical, but not the main point. Ideally they are a background concern. They are seen more as a means of fulfilling freedom needs – rather than the whole point of Human existence. The heat previously invested in Ferraris, gold club memberships and designer handbags is gone.

PART VI

New affluence for new humans

Again, as we individually and collectively emerge out of transition/1st tier modes, naturally that emergence contains the discovery of new values, perspectives and subsequently... needs. To innovate conceptions of prosperity beyond those we already know, we need to innovate conceptions of what human life might be about beyond solving the problems of just getting by. The evolution of our needs will redefine what affluence is.

RADIATION OF DEPTH AND CAPACITY

As Socrates famously supposedly said: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. I think at least in part what he was pointing at here is the richness in being that comes from deeper awareness of oneself and everything else. As someone in mid-life I know this to be true—as we grow—if we grow (some people don’t grow much)—we deepen, we become softer, humbler, more aware of others, more available, more able to care, more generous, considerate and sane, and these changes bring with them contentments, happinesses and joys we previously did not know of. This deepening in ourselves is a deepening in our relationship with everything.

Indeed, the entirety of Human history is the history of our ever expanding and deepening awareness of the world around us. Much in the same way our needs have grown, our awareness has grown. This Deepening of awareness has meant the deepening of our capacities for relationship with everything. Our entire society is in the midst of this ongoing unfolding of Human depth and understanding.

I believe this can become the preoccupation of “post-transition” humans. It’s this growth that is most crucial to a rich and rewarding life.

LINES OF DEVELOPMENT

I’m always fascinated by the development of aesthetic taste in people. On the bad end of the scale you have “Kitsch”. It’s just bad to look at. Seemingly good ideas badly implemented or just really bad ideas. Kitsch is bad. (Actually I’m confused—I think the hipsters made it cool again, I’m not sure.) Then on the other end of the scale you have sublime aesthetic sensibility of some sort. It seems the incredibly rich and the incredibly poor can both manifest the best or worst of both—the rich just doing it with more gusto. Why? There are definitely and simply differences in taste, no doubt, but there are also gross and subtle sensibilities.

This is an example of the development of subtlety – in relationship to aesthetics – but we have many of these trajectories of development. ^{[Reference 7]}. We have intelligences and sensibilities in: aesthetic intelligence, kinaesthetic intelligence (movement and dance), analytic intelligence, emotional or emphatic intelligence, moral and ethical character, and more. [Fig 2] These intelligences in their entirety are our humanity and collectively form our capacity as a human being to understand and interact with our universe. In the warped world of money above all th ey count for little or less, but for the new affluent I would argue they are the whole point.

A new real affluence could in part be seen as a wealth of capacity in each of these lines. The new rich are rich in their human experience because it is deeper and more subtle.

New affluence, truly new affluence rather than hacked subsistence affluence is all about the depth of our capacity to be. The breadth and depth of our self knowledge, our philosophical cognitive, kinaesthetic, moral and emotional being is the depth and degree to which we are living—and the degree of richness in our experience of being human.

Lifelong personal development that results in real personal growth, and ever greater maturity, in ones intelligences, understandings of oneself and others is the hallmark of the new affluent. This is authentic enrichment.

PASSION FOR GROWTH

Personal development in this context becomes a critical need. Personal independent development of that now already actualised free individual via their own initiative and self directed maturity. This would lead to the emergence of a culture of deliberate, directed lifelong personal development amongst adults.

These developments are something that—as we saw with our friend, Donald—money does not guarantee. The only thing that can guarantee these developments is us. We can guarantee them by cultivation a passion for growth and pursuing growth as a baseline of how we approach life itself.

Prosperity provides opportunity for these developments to take place, and that’s why we should strive to get it—even without having money. We can create our own opportunities. Life long education becomes a critical addition to the lives of the new affluent. University is a great start but an even greater start is an independent self driven passion for learning things you don’t already know. “Self-driven” being a key phrase here. Discovering our heartfelt talents and passions is elementary, but possibly the greatest thing we need to learn is how to be independently intrigued, passionate, creative, proactive. Only with these capacities can we self-direct our own unfolding and growth.

Other people have started creating systems specifically designed for rapid multidimensional growth. The standout in my mind is Integral Life Practice. Always fundamental to success in any of these is one’s passionate independence.

LIVING FOR EVERYTHING ELSE

Increasing depth means also a radiation in our capacity for awareness and thus a radiation in our capacity for care. As our personal lives and the trends of human history already attest to—with growth comes greater ability to care and an interest in ever more careful, morally and ethically developed culture.

My experience is we naturally become interested in the ethical reality our society manifests in it entirety. “What is the most mature and profound relationship we can have with our community, society, bio-region, country, planet, cosmos?” hopefully becomes a burning concern.

These concerns naturally demand we become an autonomous generation point of perspective, intelligence, love and new actions. I believe this can become a natural, authentic, original, independent obsession with hyper-morality and hyper-ethicality. The vegan movement may be an example of the early stages of this.

I hope this means we start to see our own development as part of a greater unfolding, a series of universal developments, rather than personal achievements.

Either way, in this new world I think we can hope to see the manifestation of a greater capacity in us for good. Ideally, as a species, we will discover an authentic and robust purity in our post-survival motives that begins manifesting as a hard baked, durable and sustainable integrity.

In our survival based world we value above all those material things that can never fade, never corrode, never be corrupted—the greatest of these of course being gold. In this new post-survival, post-transition world fascinated by depth of moral capacity, intelligence and self reflective maturity, we may find integrity to be the new gold standard, also non-corrodable, non-corruptable, undiminishable. Something to run to when all else fails.