Crisis?

Don’t know how it is round where you live but in these parts seems like you can’t open a newspaper or flick on the wireless without somebody going on about the so-called ‘financial crisis’. To be honest, it’s getting on my tits. Number one, can they not think of anything more useful to talk about? And, number two, where is this damned financial crisis anyway? ‘Cos when I look around me all I see is prosperity: people living in luxury, buying things they don’t need to, and splashing the cash left right and centre. Our society is state of the art and growing more and more fancy by the day: the government says there’s no dosh but then works on massively expensive projects like the London Crossrail and the upcoming high speed train link to Birmingham. Leeds is lovely and getting lovelier all the time: the town centre is practically a celebration of wealth, consumerist pilgrims paying alms and worshipping at their churches daily, in their tens of thousands. It certainly don’t look like no crisis to me.
    Here’s what I think a financial crisis looks like: people unable to buy food; no food in the shops anyway; desperation on the streets; tens of thousands losing their houses and made homeless; grim unhappiness and starvation and revolution. Think 1980s Romania; 1780s France; The Grapes of Wrath.
    And here’s what Britain looks like today: people without jobs buying LCD TVs; students driving nearly new cars and paying £1.30 for a litre of petrol; pubs and restaurants filled to bursting; people taking taxis everywhere; tons and tons of food thrown into the garbage; shopping sprees and overflowing wardrobes; obesity; foreign holidays and even your average Joe able to fly overseas several times a year if he feels like it; obscenely fancy phones and needless gadgets.
    Crisis? What crisis?
    And, also: we’ve never had it so good.

I’m supposing now that some people will be up in arms at that. They’ll point to job losses and debt and government cutbacks and things like that. Maybe, I’ll concede, all that stuff is real and it has affected some people’s lives for the worse: I’ll be honest and say I’m mostly ignorant in this matter. Still, to see how people live and shop you might perhaps forgive me if I don’t buy into it wholesale: consumerism seems unabated to me, and I hardly think “growth of only 0.1%” constitutes anything to worry about. Why grow anyway? Why not just stay the same? Nothing wrong with that. And, indeed, why not boom and bust, or feast and famine? ‘Tis sort of the way it’s always been. But I guess we like to think we’re beyond that.
    Students – of which I am one – are up in arms about tuition fee rises. I can’t say I have any sympathy. My general feeling on students is that they’re mostly in it for the party anyway – adolescents freed from home and responsibility on a jolly and a bender. I do tell myself that’s probably not true of the majority – but certainly in Leeds that’s the impression a great many of them give, and, alas, it’s the noisy few that tend to define the whole. What I see is 20-year-olds driving cars I could only dream of; big and regular nights out, which must cost a pretty penny; students forever jumping into taxis when I can’t say it’s occurred to me to take a taxi in years; and piles and piles of new clothes and bags and shoes and toys. No wonder they’ve got massive debts when they leave: but that’s hardly the system’s fault. When I did my BA I lived simply, worked a part-time job, left my student loan and overdraft untouched, and qualified debt-free with savings in the bank. The same, no doubt, will happen this time. But that’s because I’m older, smarter, and have taken responsibility for my finances. My dad instilled into me the idea that debt was prison and I’ve taken that to heart. I owe no man or institution and because of that I’m free. Any time I hear a news report talking up the average student debt – no doubt exaggerated for their headline figure – I feel pretty sure I know where it’s gone.
    Getting old, aren’t I? When my solution to the world’s problems is grow up and get a job. ;-)
    The other problem with students – getting slightly off topic here – is that they’ve somehow come to take this university education – and that it should be free – for granted. Sure, once upon a time we actually paid people to go to university and didn’t charge them fees but, thing is, they were the select few: they were the best and brightest minds and they were there because we believed it benefited us to further their education. Then things changed, and everybody started to go. Didn’t matter if you were smart or if you had anything to offer, you just went. You think that’s harsh? Well as a spyer on others’ essays, and a former teacher, I’ll tell you for a fact that some university students – doing quite well in their grades, mind – are producing work at about the level of a bright fourteen-year-old. One thing that surprised me about university work was how easy it was, how little effort it required. There’s no doubt been a dumbing down. And not that I went to Oxford or Cambridge – but I do know quite a few people that did, and I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in what I’ve just said (‘cept, of course, their backgrounds). We all say these days that a degree means nothing but I wonder if we really mean it. Because, fact is, we should.
    What that’s led to, of course, is a massive increase in what it costs the government and tax-payer to keep these students in education, and out of that has arisen the need for some contribution from the students themselves. But – surprise, surprise – they don’t like it: well who does like being told they’ve got to pay more money for something they used to get for free? So they get upset and say it should be like the good old days when students could have their jollies and leave the nest of academia debt-free – but what they don’t understand is that things were very different then, and the vast majority of those protesting tuition fees wouldn’t have been there in the first place. You can’t have it both ways: it’s either a state-funded institute for the brightest and the best, or it’s a come one, come all glorified extended sixth-form and postponement of what some like to call “the real world” which you’re forced to pay for yourself. The university system is too huge not to charge user fees. There is no third option.
     (I type that knowing full well that there’s always a third option: that’s something I believe in strongly. Also, that the third option is usually the right one. I also type all this slightly ashamed and afraid, deeply aware of how little I know about any of this, and of how it’s all just mad opinion based on a shallow understanding of the world and its systems. I know I ought to do more research and maybe form a balanced judgement but truth is I’m really not that interested: I like the way I think and I can find plenty of things in the world to support that opinion – every time I see a bunch of fancy-dressed students acting like arses as they stumble from pub to taxi, for example, I feel justified in everything I’ve just said. I know that’s not very nice and probably shallow and judgemental – but to all that I say: oh well. Honestly, I’ve got better things to do than try and understand fully the madness and complexity of the world in which we live: spouting off about stuff like this, for one. I guess that’s some sort of explanation, apology, and defence – and yet it won’t change a thing. Sorry about that – and back to the spouting.)
    So that’s students – and everybody else? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know that many people. I know my dad and I know he’s always talking about how little money he’s got, how times are tough and business is bad – but then he’s also got about sixteen grand in cash in the bank, maybe about the same in his own personal stock of guitars, a flat that’s fully paid for, and a debt-free business that provides for his every need, at which he works only a couple of days a week. Point being, all this is also – and perhaps mainly – a matter of perspective. He feels poor when he’s actually far from it. And some far wealthier people probably feel poor too, even though they’ve perhaps millions. What’s the ideal sum to live on? Generally, probably, about 30% more than you’ve already got, no matter what your income. This is all about satisfaction and perception: and no amount of financial tweaking is going to alter that, because if you’ve got a mentality that always wants more, you’ll never have enough. Seems to me like that’s the consciousness of our civilisation – as illustrated by the obsession with an economy – whatever that is – that doesn’t grow as much as you’d like it to, therefore constituting a crisis. But what if we suddenly decided enough was enough? What if we looked at our full fridges and fancy gadgetry and relatively free lives and said, wow, you know what? Compared to 99% of the people who have ever lived – and I’m including kings and queens and rulers of vast empires here – we’re living in unbelievable luxury. There’s a big chunk of this world lives a whole family to a single room. There’s a big chunk of this world that subsists and gets by day-to-day – that has what they need – food, shelter, water, security, clothing – if they’re lucky – and no more than that. And the weird thing is, they may actually exceed us in possessing the thing that matters most. Yup: happiness. It’s a cliché because it’s true.
    So are we in a crisis of finance or a crisis of perspective? Can any nation truly claim to be facing economic meltdown when one of the most pressing questions faced by a huge percentage of its citizens is whether to buy a new iPhone? When every weekend hundreds of thousands of people spend considerable amounts of money watching men with almost unimaginable wealth kick a ball around a field of grass? When we’ve still the required billions to fund military missions to far off places that have nothing to do with the defence of our land? Here are the signs of a financial crisis: when there’s not enough in the coffers to build a missile or submarine, even when you’re under attack; when the football stadiums stand half-empty because the die-hards can’t afford their match ticket; when being in 24-hour contact with everyone in the entire globe and playing ‘hungry pigeons’ (or whatever it’s called) is set aside for the want of a decent meal; when all this excess money that we simply waste on things we don’t need simply isn’t there anymore. Then we’ll know things are starting to get serious. But until then, we really are living like kings and queens.

I’m lucky. I chose the simple life and I’ve found the simple life suits me just fine. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke or do drugs and that saves me a fortune in work and/or debt. I live in a modest but adequate flat and, all in – my rent, my bills, my food and my hobbies – my living costs are about fifty-five pounds per week. As you can imagine, it doesn’t take much to raise that sort of money. But, like I say, I’m lucky: all the other things that so many other people seem to require to sustain them don’t have any hold on me. I’ve more than enough clothes and gadgets – sure, I’ve a phone: it cost me £9.95 several years back – and I can’t see a reason for any more. I don’t buy music, I don’t go out – save the occasional meal – and it’s not that I’m denying myself, it’s just that I’ve already pleasure enough in my life and doing all those things – dressing up, going shopping, hitting a pub – would, I feel, only diminish my pleasure rather than add to it. Certainly, I’m happy with my lot, and feel I’ve already more than enough – and truly believe, in my head and in my experience, that enough really is enough. What more could I want? In a word – besides the already-mentioned book deal – nothing.
    Why, then, do I feel that way when so many others apparently don’t? Like I say, I suppose I’m lucky: I sought a state of inner-satisfaction that didn’t depend on outer circumstances and I found it. How did I do that? By letting go of all the fripperies and externals of life and realising, through experience, that I didn’t need them. I took myself to a place of material emptiness and saw that, not only was I still happy, but that I was happier still: being without things was not just possible, it was better – lighter – more free. And, combined with this, I worked hard in my mind, to battle through negative ways of thinking and to come to the source of joy, which is not found in the outside world in any case, but within. Whatever crisis I may have once faced it wasn’t solved by fixing the external world but, purely and simply, by a change of perspective. Is there any reason why the world as a whole couldn’t do that?