Encounter with a Rich Man

    Jesus watched the rich man retreat when he told him to distribute his wealth among the poor, challenging him: “How shall those with riches enter the Kingdom?"

       Indeed, how shall they?

     But in another time and tone Jesus says: “The poor you have always with you, but me you do not.”       

     That gives another twist to the matter, for if poverty is eternal, is it not futile to attempt to eradicate it? And if only the Lord or the Lords matter, our attention should be on them, not on that shadow Americans love to denigrate; those they call losers, as if any winner were necessarily just.

     The Chairman of Goldman-Sachs likewise answered for his corporation with religious a profundity:“We are doing the Lord's Work.” he said.

    Of course we can always stop our ears, cross the street to avoid the rich man's perfume, disdain his power, abuse him, or make of him a unsavory caricature; but these are the very things which he often practices upon the poor, whose stolen substance has made him rich. So if we merely malign rich-people, then how can we continue to distinguish poor from rich? Enforcing that indistinct distinction: ah that's the rub! That's the very nature of the game, a sport for those who read The National Enquirer or Romance novels---stimulation for the dull of wit. So do not be fooled by money, money is not power, it is only the wrapping that conceals power. And power, in turn, purports a moral or utilitarian goal; a goal—say, like more power.

      I suggest a simple solution: let us affirm that every sort of distinction exists between men, but no sort of meaningful moral distinction can exist between bank-accounts. Now we are nearer to justice. Now we can discriminate. The poor have always existed, but the rich have not always warred, with government collusion, upon them. Nor, before now, except once in modernity, did the rich simply devour the poor; not by impoverishing them---but by effectively canceling the social contract supposed to bind them.

     Those without qualifications cannot be witnesses. So let us study justice, for justice is, as the Greeks knew---the difficult balance of fire and water, strife with order.

      Americans are famous for their idealism and democratic sentiment. But mere sentiments, like old snow, turn to slush in the spring. If we do not wish to slave for the one-percent so that they may gain even more than the half of our wealth they already control---even as we grow poorer---are we not already in open division, and thus rebellion? Will our government, who claims to represent us, come to our rescue? Perhaps for reasons of their own they will provide something, but on no account, unless it is money given to Bankers, will they provide it in the name of an ideal. An ideal, it appears, is beyond them or us---for even if it existed---it must hew closely to what already exists. This a mysterious, unwritten rule...a uniquely American rule.

      Denmark may give a year-off to new mothers so that they can be with their child; may give six-week vacations by law, may have free higher-education and among the highest qualities-of-life in the world, but that simply does not allow a man worth merely  five-million dollars to become worth five-billion dollars, now does it? If this “American freedom” not “Danish freedom” is the highest social good--- then it follows that we must impoverish the many to empower the few. In that case it is unremarkable that we were indifferent on-lookers when the Egyptian people rebelled against five-thousand years of Pharaohs. We simply yawned and wished them well, turning back to the cash-register.

      No man knows his enemy who does not know himself. Therefore I commend to the reader my unbiased and humble self---at least no less obsessed than my monetary betters---as a faithful observer. If I turn out to be less than accurate, it is only because few occasions have ever presented me with the opportunity of conversing with the cultured and the rich. Though I have little patience for folly, I am at least not able to hold a grudge. As my grandmother once said of my grandfather William Morgan, the good-dresser and diffident night-club muralist: “He had a certain swagger.” Dreamers are always diffident. Once, after sleeping on my native soil of Wales, a man told me: “Well if your name is Will Morgan, you're kin to every farmer in Wales.” Being thus drawn from dreamy Welsh farmers and poets, I feel myself perversely qualified to observe the gentry. It is my rightful inheritance down the centuries. So while we are enjoined by Jesus to:“Judge not lest you be judged”--- this impossible though useful contradiction must be equally translated in its gnomic sense:“Judge and therefore prepare to be Judged”. So bear with me reader, as I sprint over the hot-coals of the dialectic.

      The scene is an outdoor cafe. You may imagine Paris, say Montmarte, in early spring. Pedestrians and students are swaying their slender legs to music. It's hard to tell whether people have work to which they are hurrying, or from which they have escaped--- to enjoy the frail veins the of the new leaves and the tentative light. There is a hint here of the American South, a region whose underbelly, touching on the Gulf of Mexico, conceals not Bankers and their miseries, but subtle Creoles whose sculpted-jaws and pink-lips blow the horns of salvation, those which the financiers cannot hear because they link hell with heaven. For the heaven of Bankers is bereft of pain or excess. It is a purely mental world.

      Mr. B, bearing a coffee-table book of the paintings of John Singer Sergeant, sits down at an adjacent table. He is dressed in a loose shirt and corduroys. His gaze, from a large face, is trenchant but not unfriendly. After a few moments he asks me if the literary reading is over. I tell him that it is, and that the author, a well-known American Composer and friend of Jack Kerouac, had only three people, one of which was me, for his audience. He seems to grasp the significance of my words, but in a way opposite to what I intended to convey. I nevertheless make myself somewhat accessible to the stranger.

     “My son is learning Latin. I was looking for a copy of Virgil to give him. Did you know that the comic- strip “Little Abner” is based around Virgil? That's what my son says. Remember Pappy Yokum and Daisy Mae? Little Abner named his son “Honest Abe”. He's a classical-satire hero. Al Capp, you know, was the author. He walked into the set when John Lennon and Yoko Ono did their famous bed-sit for Love and Peace. That was just a publicity-stunt, a piece of self-advertising...”

      I'm briefly too startled to speak. What a mind full of junk, I think. I pause then ask: “Do you like Sergeant’s paintings?”

      “I'm just looking at them. I contribute to the local museum...” he says, apologetically.

      “What's your profession?”

      “I'm a physician. I work off and on...”

      “Yours?”

       I am careful to make no claim: “I write a lot.”

    “You might remember that Al Capp was a good friend of Nixon...”

      “No...I didn't know that,” I state indifferently.

   “Moonbeam McSwine was a temptress who loved pigs, remember?”

      “I didn't ever read comics...”

   But the gentlemen seems grimly determined to prove that I belong to him, that I belong to our generation, whatever that is...

     “Little Abner is the son, see, like Daniel Boone or Ethan Allan or Andrew Jackson...” he twists his thick neck.

     “Oh.”

     Silence. A long pause.

    “I'm reading Marx, not old comics” I venture quietly.

      He waits a while, studying me.

     A cold stare, a blankness in the big face. The large eyes roll. “I suppose you're trying to impress the young with your faddishness?” he finally says.

     Up to now I was mildly entertained by this naif, now I begin to see the lay of the land, and an active dislike becomes possible. Intolerance, that I can tolerate, but smug ignorance is too much for me. I steel myself and say politely but firmly: “Most of the young today strike me as politically conservative. They don't yet understand that they grew up in a “backlash”: against nothing. As for Marx I take him very seriously. I think your friend Al Capp, however reactionary he might have been with John Lennon back in the Seventies, would be reading Marx today. Marx's work concerns Capitalism, not Communism, however conceived. In fact--- in a world where the labor of an average worker over twenty years is now equal to what a financier makes in one hour---everybody should be reading Marx. So Al Capp, if he were around, would be doing that---because he was from the war generation and basically honest, as people from our generation, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, are not. Her own philosophy is profound: “Play by the rules and you'll rise”she says. The French call that “Arrivisme”, mere climbing. Only people who have a lot of money, or no concern for labor or the environment fail to read Marx. That's not because Marx has answers for everything---but because he tries to analyze how Capitalism works. No educated person can avoid reading Marx. About the Seventies, I think the turn inward toward Spiritualism was, in retrospect, a disaster, because it led to smugness, which obviated the need to deal with real-conditions, and that led to the New Age pretext, like the marketing of “Spiritualism” and “Spiritual Products”, from seminars to food...some good has come of those things, but not enough to justify not reforming our entire economic system.”

      The Doctor looks at me as from a great distance: his front is wrinkled like Moby Dick's brow, and  just as inscrutable. His face is woven with child-like affront.

     “I come from an old pioneer family. We were Catholics going all the way back. We've always known that society wasn't perfect and we struggled to overcame prejudice in the South, even changed our name. I'm a Doctor. You might think me rich, but though my friends are millionaires, I'm still a little short; but soon perhaps I will join them...anyway, nothing you've said speaks to me. A man is rewarded according to what he does. I belong to the 3% who pay all the taxes in this country today. Forty per-cent of all jobs in the US depend on government spending so forty-percent of us should be thankful to the rich for their jobs. I'm a patron of the Arts, and since it is the top one-percent who support the Arts--- you and everyone else should be grateful for our support. Letting the rich keep some of the tremendous wealth they create is a fair exchange. Communism never works because the average person is a lazy, avaricious lout. The Russians rejected it because they'd rather have even a lousy chance of becoming rich, than no chance at all. Fame, which you, and others like you, are always seeking, even if you keep it secret, is your equivalent of money, so you're no different, even though you pretend to be. In any case, the young will despise you for you beliefs as soon as they figure you out, which they will. Then they will bury you under their money! Ha! The Moralists! All quacks and idealists, and dangerous too, none of them practical...besides, the fact is that the surest predictor of people's politics IS their economic status. The Census Bureau proved it by asking people. Classes migrate to that party that is supposed to represent their interests, the Democrats for the poor, the Republicans for the wealthy. Politics is class-war...always has been, and always will be---”

      I stare down at the seed-pods, like tiny green-caterpillars, strewn on the metal table. Their species is unknown to me, but they seem identical to the green worms that drop from the trees and crawl down my neck. I sweep them aside. Mr. B looks comfortable, his face appearing larger than his body as he fixes his large eyes at me. I hardly know how to address such cynicism.

      “You speak of something you call “Communism” without saying what you mean. We've fought wars and committed atrocities around the world in order to strangle that undefined phantom, but no one knows what is meant by the word, it's a catch-all. Your pioneer ancestors were probably more effective Communists in their pioneer communities than the Russians ever were. But people say Russia was “Communist”, when it was not---their system was Statism---but why be precise with mere words? Maybe “Communism” is just one of the potential employments of human freedom, but since it is the word we fear we also fear any interest in the idea behind the word---so we don't want to investigate what it means. This is nonsense to you, because you insist on measuring the outside world by your own life-span and by that alone, just like those classic equivocators of the expedient--- Bill and Hillary Clinton. Nothing else matters but your satisfactions, that is all that counts. If we're indebted to the rich for our jobs--- then let's call that system by its proper name---which is “Feudalism”, not “Capitalism”. Adam Smith defines Capitalism as a system where independent tradesman, craftsman, shop-owners, farmers, hunters all trade in free-markets. People arrive in that market not looking to become a serf, but already doing something, already freely exercising their native talent and bringing their wares to market. They don't require a monarch to give them a stipend, a Lord to give them a stake, or a foreign nation to bomb for profit. I don't care if the rich feel they need a lot of stuff; it's fine with me if they need to indulge their delusions; but they can do that only so far as it does not injure democratic society. I simply ask them not to be so greedy as to stand in the way of my own, or others mere economic existence. But so far it isn't working out that way-- their greed and share of the wealth just keeps rising. You can read the figures and the charts as well as I can. Five to ten million Russians have died since 1990, since Russia gave up on “Statism”, what you incorrectly call “Communism”. That's more soldiers than died in the Second World War when Hitler tried to enslave them. Financial power has proved far more deadly than Tyranny.”

      “You malign the Clintons, whom I admire” Mr. B glowers at me in shock.

     I am speechless. Ten million Russians may have died due to the privatization, the Czarazation and Mafia-zation of Russia, but if I suggest that two shallow-ambition machines whose God is mere expediency are a greater catastrophe than revolution, and if I actually offer some proof, that only merits a glower! I hope that it will soon be time for this gentlemen to leave for the Golf-Course...

       We both pause.

     “I suppose your image of a wealthy person is one who haunts the Golf-Course but you're wrong. I actively support the Arts. Its a lot of work, with little thanks---”

       I flush at his accurate reading of my thoughts.

     “Well the Arts do not require much money, what they really demand is time, peace, and place. And those commodities have been made deliberately scarce today by the powerful. Patrons fantasize that they help to create Art, but it is Artists who undertake that work, and they pay for it, often with their health or lives. If you really want to cultivate the Arts then simply de-cultivate the War-machine. Until you shut them off, you won't create Art---you'll only manufacture Kitsch, like that recent statue of Martin Luther King on the National Mall, the one where he looks like a brooding Confucius. Like Blake says: “Art cannot be carried on where there is any notion of money.”

      Doctor B now simply stares at me in disbelief.

     “It's pretty clear to me that not having any money yourself, and being a complete failure, has led you to believe that money itself is the enemy. That's juvenile and perverted. Money is neutral, it can do great good. That's what I use mine for...”

      I pause.

   “It's true that...I've learned to live with little of the stuff. Having little of it has granted me more concentration...on the essentials...I think.”

      “And of course you've always got the coming worker's paradise to look forward to...”

      Now it is my turn to glower.

      “Of course you must characterize. Anyone who thinks qualifies as a deluded idealist. I may be an idealist, but I am not deluded. Certainly not as deluded as someone who thinks all civilization reduces only to economic warfare, and can never be anything more. If that is true then the Greeks never studied the heavens and biology, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment never happened, Galileo and Shakespeare are figments of our imagination, and  democracy the greatest delusion of all. Perhaps it is a delusion, in the sense that reality is always a delusion when viewed from any one time and place.”

      “Say what you like, I admire Bill and Hillary Clinton. They are professionals, steady, and can be trusted.”

      “In other words, like all the Neo-Liberals, they believe in nothing but themselves.”

      The Doctor's face turns slowly purple.

     “Listen to me you little sewer-rat. I know Millionaires! I'm close to being one myself! These people are brilliant and unfathomably hard-working! They don't even stop to enjoy their wealth like the rest of us do. They don't even think like we do! They always see money as the opportunity to make more money; and they work work work; they are always working! They love the game and they play it well, very well. They don't even bother to visit many of their homes! They are above being materialistic or showing off their success. They no longer require validation or need it, from anyone!...Evolution can't be turned-off in mid-stream. Society has evolved to derive benefits from these strangely...gifted people. There is only one reason to try to stifle these geniuses: ENVY, PURE ENVY, and that's what you are full of, just like Marx was full of COMMON ENVY. He hated wealthy Christians because he knew he could never become one, no matter what he did, never, never could he, a Jew, become one of them! He never could grasp that Religion has nothing to do with it. If there had been as many Jewish Capitalists in Marx's day as there are now, then Marxism would be called something else...

       I push my chair back from the table. Manners can only carry you so far in the presence of your betters.
     No one likes to be insulted, but because I do believe in noblesse oblige, I steady myself. The truly noble must uphold objectivity and sensibility, in spite of vulgarity. It is above them to reproach even an inferior---for the whole idea is to reveal who really possesses nobility, and is therefore an aristocrat, regardless of wealth. 
        "Only a hair-brain would believe in that Communist trash. Nothing could be deader than Communism," he feigns a sort of leer.
          "The word simply means doing some things together. Ideas don't die, people do."     

       But the still unsaid restrains me from leaving. I pause, unsure what to do.

     “Before you go you might remember that I told you I was a Doctor. I am a Doctor, but I am a Psychiatrist, not a Medical Doctor. If you care to hear me out, I'd like to offer you a free diagnosis.”

      I mumble something, too startled to speak, but can't make myself get up. I feel like a trapped animal. I keep hearing his unbelievable words flashing in my brain: “They are brilliant and unfathomably hard-working.”

        “But you said...” I start---

       “Now just shut-up and listen. There are geniuses on this earth. They are real. They do not exist in our condition, and they should not. We need them, but they do not need us. The crumbs from their table can feed the poor and everyone else---for eternity. It is only shame and envy that would stop these supermen from being what they already are--- the advocates...and saviors of humanity.

      I am diagnosing you as an Anal Retentive, the sufferer of poor toilet-training. Every word you have said to me, as well as your pretense of putting words to paper, confirms that you suffer from a severe Anal Complex. Good taste prevents me adding other details which you can easily add for yourself. I'd advise you to seek professional help.”

      After a few moments I look up at the turgid face and say:

   “I believe you said...that you were a Catholic, or your family was...well, I want to ask you this: Was not Jesus Christ the most successful person in the world, and simultaneously, the most reviled and wronged? Is that not so for those who call him Lord? Was not Jesus Christ a Jew? Is this not meant to teach us humility?

      My interlocutor stonily stares at me as if I were an object of contempt, and the more contemptuous the longer I remain. His hard glance seems to say: this doesn't matter, nothing matters...

      It is a long moment before he replies.

      “You may love the man of sorrows, but I love the Liberator of the self-enslaved.” he murmurs.

      “Are they not one and the same?” I rise. 

      “They are not---”

      Without another word I stride away. 

    "When the world no longer believes that he exists, then you will know that the devil has won," writes Baudelaire.

      Silver and saffron clouds, like those which churn above the steep roofs of Paris, flee above the Spring trees.

Will Morgan