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4 MYTHS ABOUT FINANCIAL SECURITY

...continued from page 8

My daughter, a card-carrying member of Oxfam, helps host
what the international confederation calls a Hunger Banquet
at her college every year.

Upon arrival, each guest draws a random ticket assignment to
And I’m not talking just metaphysically. Vast a particular “seat” at the world’s economic
quantities of food, energy, and other re- table. Fifty-six percent (representing those
sources go to waste every day. Yes, half the WHEN WE GIVE UP who live in dire poverty) sit on the floor and
world is starving, but the other half throws OUR STORY THAT get maybe a handful of rice and dirty water.
away more than enough to feed them. The 42 percent who represent the middle
There is more than enough to go around. IT’S AN EVERY- class might get a sandwich and a card table.
MAN-FOR-HIMSELF The remaining 2 percent get white table-
Even more abundant than the material WORLD, WE NOTICE cloths, china, and a feast fit for a king.
world is the spiritual world: the creations
of the human mind—songs, stories, films, THAT HUMAN The purpose of the banquet is to open our
ideas . . . all the stuff we call intellectual COOPERATION eyes to the fact that economic disparity and
property. Once we take off the blinders, IS THE NORM location, income, and available resources
throw overboard the story we’ve been sold, depend a lot on randomness and dumb luck.
we can see how truly abundant the world
really is. But what ends up happening (and this is
where our notions of the world get seriously threatened) at
3. THAT WE’RE SEPARATE. these Hunger Banquets that Oxfam has staged in dozens of
countries is that the 2 percent, when faced head-on with the
The current financial system is based on the idea each of us is 56 percent sitting on the floor, end up sharing their gnocchi,
an isolated fragment, disconnected from each other and frnat- asparagus, and artichokes in pesto cream sauce.
ure. It operates under the false assumption that what happens
to someone over in Africa has no bearing on you or me. It’s Given the chance, people consistently do the right thing. This
based on the idea that we can pollute this river over there or is what’s true. This is what our inner impulses instruct us to
extract that ore down there without affecting ourselves. do.
Any Economics 101 professor will tell you that maximizing Once we let go of our ridiculous notions of “the way the world
self-interest is normal, that competition is in your DNA. But works,” we get ample proof that there’s absolutely no need
when we give up our cultural story that it’s a dog-eat-dog, to protect ourselves from each other, from nature’s cruelty, or
every-man-for-himself world, we can’t help but notice that from our own inner impulses.
human cooperation is actually the norm. People love to help
each other. Ask for directions if you don’t believe me. People 4. THAT OUR PURPOSE IN LIFE IS TO VALUE
will fall all over themselves to help. I would argue that giving THINGS THAT JUST DON’T MATTER.
to your fellow man is a human need.
The economic system, as it currently reigns, encourages us to
Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside magazine, told me this go against our highest nature. It encourages us to seek money
story when we were in Namibia a few years ago: above all else. It creates a hierarchy that certain people are
better than others. It tells us that having more stuff makes us
While walking to the Swakopmund Convention Center for happier. It teaches us to hoard resources, to value a big car
a presentation he was giving to the Adventure Travel Trade more than, say, an old-growth forest. Anyone who has ever
Association, he asked a local, balancing a basket on her head, spent time in an old-growth forest can tell you there’s a lot
for the quickest route. more satisfaction to be found under a 2,000-year-old redwood
than in the Lincoln MKX Matthew McConaughey drives around
Noticing this stranger was on foot, she asked him, “What time in TV commercials.
do you need to be there?” When he told her, she immediately
pivoted and said, “C’mon. Let’s go back for my car. Otherwise,
you’ll never make it.” This is who we really are, lovers of life
just waiting for the chance to help. ...continued on page 31

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