Boethius' Wealth and Flexing Luxury on Instagram
It’s often said that money can’t buy happiness, and a lot of philosophical thinking about money boils down to that very basic statement. It’s often true—a basic way to view money is that is just a means to certain ends. Those ends can be tangible, like food, or clothing, or they can be intangible, like safety or security. There is a lot of focus on how an excess of tangible goods doesn’t satisfy, i.e. you can have the nicest car in the world and be miserable. That is a reasoning that is introduced to people when they’re kids, grade-school level logic. I think what doesn’t get a lot of attention is the intangible things that money can provide. These are things that actually do nominally increase when you have more money. Rich people have a lot less to fear when a hurricane comes their way—they can flee easier, they can rebuild easier. That intangible security directly increases with wealth. There isn’t much said, at least at the grade school level, about the happiness associated with those kinds of intangible goods that money can directly provides.
Another intangible that I think is related to this is social status, which because of social media partly, and human nature in general, is a powerful motivator for people. For example, travel, we can say, is a tangible good—it’s the end to which money is the means. But it is not simply that one might have the money to travel to beautiful places. There is an added dimension of showing off your travel on places like Instagram. To take another example, say you have a really nice car. We know from grade school that the car can’t make you happy, but what about the feeling about showing off the car on Instagram, augmenting your social status among your peer groups? It doesn’t matter what you spend your money on—more money means higher social status. So if social status is a good that makes one happy, and social status can increase with money, no matter what it is spent on, then money can produce happiness by itself.
I think this conclusion is untenable, but in order to refute it, we have to go deeper than the simple phrase “money can’t buy happiness.” The question is partly what is the nature of money, but it is also what is the nature of social status, security, and all the things, both intangible and tangible, that money can provide? What is the nature of our chase of these ends and means? Boethius has some answers to this.
Boethius in Jail: Tragedy and Inspiration
Boethius was born shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when Italy was controlled by Rome’s Germanic successors. He was born into somewhat high status, and became a wealthy and successful politician at a young age. He entered the service of Theodoric the Great and held a lot of power in Theodoric’s court. He used his power to speak on behalf of the poor, including taking efforts to stop a famine. He was also a preeminent scholar, and worked to translate many of the Greek philosophers, Aristotle included, into Latin, so that people without a formal education in Italy could read them. His sons were also appointed as consuls, about the highest political office that they could obtain. Boethius was a big deal in post-Roman Italy.
For reasons that likely had more to do with the political situation at the time, rather than any explicit wrongdoing, Boethius fell out of favor with Theodoric. He was accused of treason and corruption, and jailed by Theodoric for a year. In that year, he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, a book where Boethius engages in a dialogue with a kind of angel named “Philosophy.” The book is the dialogue between Philosophy and Boethius, where they go over Boethius’ feelings about being at such a high status and then struck so low, separated from his family and put in prison, stripped of all of his social status and all the good things. Through the teachings of Philosophy (the angel and the subject), Boethius is guided to see the true nature of things, and to take comfort in justice and knowledge. Interestingly, though Boethius was Christian, Consolation is definitively not a Christian work.
In the Disney version of this story, Boethius realizes that justice always wins, and then is released from prison and lives a happy life. In the real story, Boethius dies a horrible death. Sources disagree, but he could have either been cut down with swords in front of Theodoric, or beaten to death with a club. The story behind Consolation does not end happily by any means.
But Consolation endures as the premier philosophical work of the end of the Classical period, in particular because the message of the book doesn’t depend on the outcome of Boethius’ life. I am so drawn to Consolation and to the story of Boethius, because his comfort in Philosophy is not rooted in his release or a hope for release. Rather, he takes comfort in knowledge, specifically the understanding of the nature of fortune, success, justice, good, and evil. Personally, I came to Consolation after I had been fired for the first time in my life. It was, and is, a great comfort to explore Boethius’ thoughts as he wrestled with the injustice and defeat that would lead to the end of his life. It is also a really lovely book for any student of ancient philosophy, because you can directly see Boethius put the teachings of Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics into practice and into context. For example, he has a piece about the “Golden Mean,” an idea from Aristotle that I covered in a previous post. Despite the huge impact of Consolation throughout the Middle Ages, I don’t think that Boethius is a widely known philosopher today, but he should be.
Boethius on Wealth
One thing in particular that I appreciate about Boethius and Consolation is that he uses almost mathematical logic to get to his conclusions. His argument builds on itself in a deliberate, accessible way that allows the careful reader to follow his entire argument from beginning to end. I think that’s why his argument on wealth is so captivating to me—he carefully builds a foundation, layer after layer, to eventually reach his conclusion that wealth, and indeed most worldly things that people strive for, have inherent flaws that make them not worthy for tireless pursuit.
Today, many people are struggling with how to relate to wealth and status. Social media has magnified the visibility of our status, our wealth, and our ability to afford certain goods. Just recently, I heard a piece on the radio about how teenage men are driving an increase in high-value cologne sales in their age group, purchasing hundreds of dollars of cologne and posting about it on social media. Likewise, there has also been a phenomenon among young girls spending hundreds on skincare products at places like Sephora. These are of course complicated, multi-dimensional issues, but in one dimension, they stand for the proposition that promoting your own wealth, status, and ability to afford expensive products is a trend. That, of course, is not new—watches, cars, food—so many things have always been a means to show off wealth and status. Now, though, with social media, and in particular Instagram, the ability to demonstrate your wealth to your social circles is stronger and more ever-present than it ever has been. This creates an enormous pressure, not only to keep spending to maintain an already-created social status, but also to keep up with your peers.
Boethius lays out an argument that I believe gets to the hollowness of this cycle and pressure. I can’t fully replicate each layer of his arguments as artfully as he does, but the way that he uses logic to progressively build his case is very persuasive. It is also convincing because Boethius, at the time of writing, has completely lost everything. How he wrestles with it is worth examination to apply to our own lives, especially in times like today where, at the same time as there is ongoing pressure to demonstrate financial ability and flaunt social status, a strikingly small amount of Americans can withstand a $1,000 shock to their bank accounts.
I think it makes sense to demonstrate Boethius’ answer to these problems by pulling three principles gleaned from Consolation. The first principle is that Fortune favors nobody. Good things come and go—that is the nature of all things. People who have much wealth, one day may find they are poor. People who are happy in their health, may one day find themselves sick. It is the very core of fortune that it changes. It is thus folly to put faith, joy, or identity in anything that can change so quickly, because it is essential that these things have the ability to change.
Second, it is not folly to seek happiness in those things that cannot change. In the book, Boethius has a discourse with Philosophy about the pain of having lost friends when he was stripped of his titles and put in prison. Philosophy answers that the “wheel of Fortune,” in taking away his wealth, has shown Boethius his true friends. That is his true wealth, precisely because the love for his friends, and their love for him, does not change when Boethius falls on hard times. Focusing on that provides true security.
Third, and most strongly, you will never have peace when you put your happiness in wealth. We are all accustomed to that feeling that, if I can just get this thing, this new job, this new watch, then I will be satisfied. That want, that desire, is saying to us that happiness lies in the satisfaction of that want. But it is never satisfied. An abridged quote, cleaned up:
Therefore do I first ask thee thyself, who but lately wert living in affluence, amid all that abundance of wealth, was thy mind never troubled in consequence of some wrong done to thee?
Nay, said I, I cannot ever remember a time when my mind was so completely at peace as not to feel the pang of some uneasiness.
Was it not because either something was absent which thou wouldst not have absent, or present which thou wouldst have away? [And] thou didst want the presence of the one, the absence of the other? Wealth, then, cannot make its possessor independent and free from all want, yet this was what it seemed to promise.
Philosophy then goes on to tell Boethius that money can be taken from people against their will, a self-evident conclusion, and it happens all the time. That’s why lawsuits happen, of course, because money can be taken away, not so much just by physical force but all kinds of devices, legal and illegal. It follows that, if it can be taken away, people with wealth need extra means to secure protection to keep their wealth safe. We can envision that in today’s world, that means things like attorneys, bank accounts, IRAs, securities, financial advisors, even real estate. But, if wealth can be taken away against one’s will, and this fact means that one who is wealthy needs more means of protection,
[h]ow in the world, then, can want be driven away by riches? Cannot the rich feel hunger? Cannot they thirst? Are not the limbs of the wealthy sensitive to the winter’s cold? ‘But,’ thou wilt say, ‘the rich have the wherewithal to sate their hunger, the means to get rid of thirst and cold.’ True enough; want can thus be soothed by riches, wholly removed it cannot be. For if this ever-gaping, ever-craving want is glutted by wealth, it needs must be that the want itself which can be so glutted still remains. . . Wherefore, if wealth cannot get rid of want, and makes new wants of its own, how can ye believe that it bestows independence?
These three principles undermine the pursuit of wealth and money, both as a means to tangible goods and to intangible goods. It is in the very nature of wealth itself that it is always subject to change and being taken away. And wealth, by its own nature, only creates more want. It is better, then, to find happiness in what will not change—the love of true friends, the awe of nature, the satisfaction with what one already has. Finding happiness in these things creates a peace that does not rely on uncertainties inherent in the pursuit or obtainment of wealth. As Boethius tells us, strongly, “[l]ook upon the infinitude, the solidity, the swift motion, of the heavens, and for once cease to admire things mean and worthless.”
Going Beyond “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”
I think it’s important to sit with what Boethius says and how he reaches his conclusions, because it goes beyond what we are typically told about money. I really get the pursuit of wealth—me and my fiancée are trying to pay for a wedding now and trying to eventually save for a home, all in a world where a cup of black coffee can now be up to $5 (at least at some spots in Raleigh). I will admit that, when I feel financial pressure, it feels very tempting to try and pursue money at all costs, and to focus only on financial goals. I’m also not writing in a vacuum—I am aware that there is some basic need to have some kind of financial means.
But Boethius is persuasive to me precisely because he gets that and incorporates it into his argument. It isn’t money that’s bad, it’s the relentless pursuit of it and the holding up of money as a means to happiness. It is the belief that money or wealth is a virtue that is dangerous. By its very nature, money does not satisfy, it only creates more desires. So in order to be truly free, you have to find satisfaction in other things, namely nature and the love of true friends.
So I intend to bear this in mind, even when money is difficult, and even in the face of societal and social pressures. Not just that money can’t buy happiness, but that the pursuit of money and wealth is a shifting sand. To give in to the chase for wealth will only cause more pain, either by augmenting old wants and creating new ones, in such case it doesn’t matter whether it’s taken away, or by being taken away and causing misery.