ohOn a calm, beautiful morning off the coast of South Devon last week, I was watching a pod of small dolphins from my kayak. I spotted them on the surface, feeding and playing, from half a mile away. They were heading towards me so I sat on the water and waited.
But from around the cape came a huge twin-engine self-propelled sea gun at full speed. The dolphin was clearly visible and had plenty of time to stop or avoid it, but it went full speed towards the dolphin. As it passed by, dodging it by a few meters, the driver turned around to catch a glimpse of the dolphin but did not check its speed. The dolphin dived. It appeared for a moment, far away from the shore, but was never seen again. The sound of the ship could be heard long after it had disappeared. It sounded like a jet plane. God knows how much pain it caused the dolphin, which is very sensitive to sound.
I was overcome with two sensations. One, of course, was disgust. The other was confusion. Where was the joy? If there is one thing that most people love and, if they are lucky, enjoy watching, it is dolphins. No one would stop to look. Being at sea a lot, I have had the good fortune to experience this dozens of times, and the excitement is lingering. The euphoria can last for weeks.
But to the boat's driver, the sea seemed like a mere highway hurtling toward the horizon, reminding me of something I've seen so many times: the paralyzing effect of wealth.
You have to be pretty rich to own and operate a 35ft boat like this. The retail price is around £300,000, plus the extra costs of mooring, winter storage, maintenance, fuel etc. Isn't that kind of money supposed to buy fun? If not, what is the point?
Too much wealth can seriously impair enjoyment. As Michael Mechanic writes in his book “The Jackpot,” there are two groups of people who have to think about money all the time: the very poor and the very rich. Great wealth controls you as much as you own it. Managing your wealth becomes a full-time job. You may not know who to trust, and you may begin to imagine that your friends are not friends at all. Wealth can dominate and harm family relationships. It can hollow you out socially, intellectually, and morally.
But I wonder if there's yet another corrosive aspect of wealth that isn't often discussed: Great wealth flattens the world. If you can go anywhere and do anything, everything is just beyond the horizon. You move past the local and the particular toward an endlessly escalating ideal of luxury: better marinas, bigger yachts, private jets, super homes. The horizon of contentment can recede before your eyes. Places have no meaning other than as settings with which you might impress friends you no longer trust. But those who are impressed by money aren't worth impressing.
There also seems to be a connection between speed, noise, and ego. There must be something unresolved about someone who feels the need to fill the air with noise and grab the attention of everyone they pass, whether on the road or on the water. And, certainly, it is almost always “male.” Studies have shown that there is a link between traditional notions of masculinity, speed, and risky driving. It is not surprising that attempts to curb driving behavior, such as speed cameras and low-traffic zones, have become such a powerful theme in the culture wars, pitted against perceived threats to traditional gender roles and power relations.
Traveling by kayak, I have to stay in less water and closer to shore than those zipping around in motorboats. But I have an intimate connection to the places and ecosystems around me, the sounds of nature and subtle signs invisible at high speeds (sand eels dotted on the surface, the dorsal fins of perch chasing them, holographic sea gooseberries floating in the water column, cowrie shells eating sea squirts on exposed rocks at low tide). I can't imagine dolphin dispersers having any more fun with a £300,000 megaphone than I am having in a kayak I bought second-hand for £300. Why? Because I can't imagine any greater joy than that experienced at sea.
I have met many very wealthy people. Some of them are lively, inquisitive, and active, but among the rest I have noticed the same thing over and over: a dull mind. A sense of a lack of stimuli to capture their attention, of a loss of the ability to marvel. The roaring boat proclaims its owner one of the winners. But what else can you call someone who cannot enjoy the sight of a dolphin but a loser?
We burn our life support machines for the illusion of transcendence, of escape from connection to other life, because we subscribe to the earth-devouring, soul-sucking exploitation we call capitalism, because we believe, quite wrongly, that we have all become temporarily rich, that one day we too might live the emotionless lives of the super-rich.
It's amazing how much we give in to them. In Salcombe, on the coast, most of my painter-and-decorator friend's work involves renovating holiday homes, which sit empty for much of the year. But he says his clients often leave the heating on and the lights on to give the impression someone is at home. Three years ago the district declared a housing crisis, yet we still allow the super-rich to buy up local homes and leave them empty, burning fuel like there's no tomorrow. Just as the boat owner scattered the dolphins, the super-rich threaten to dismantle communities, displace people and ultimately push us all out of the human climate niche – the temperature range in which we can thrive.
We should seek abundance — abundance of community, knowledge, wonder, life, and love — that does not impoverish others. We should seek personal fulfillment and public luxury, not private luxury.
But as angry, empty-headed billionaires fund Donald Trump, we may yet see how much harm they can do us. Democracy, a fair distribution of resources, peace of mind, and a habitable planet all depend on curbing the power of the super-rich – their noise, their occupation of our shared space, and their encroachment on everything we hold dear.
