The Hungry Spirit: New Thinking for a New World Page 11
We are, however, free to adopt our own version of the stipendiary principle in our own lives. My wife and I, since we became self-employed portfolio people, have regularly sat down each year and worked out what we need to live on. Since our standards of comfort and future financial security are quite high so are our levels of ‘enough’. Many would envy them, and they are certainly not monastic. But, regardless of the level, the simple act of doing this removes the temptation to maximize our income by working around the clock and the calendar, which is the dilemma of every self-employed person, because who knows where the next order is coming from. The process has freed up a lot of our time, because once the ‘enough’ is guaranteed, there is no need or desire to spend time on making more than enough.
More activity is, then, only justified if it is valuable for its own sake. One can even give the activity away, for free, without feeling any sense of self-denial. Easy virtue. I now realize, in my own life, how even more free I would be if I could bring myself to set the level of ‘enough’ ever lower each year, and if I could say ‘no’ more often, but the via negativa is a hard road. Market economists might disapprove or disbelieve, but the stipendiary principle does set us free to do what we are meant to do. We don’t have to be hair-shirted about it. An ‘elegant sufficiency’ is a more comfortable concept than a stipend, and still consistent with the doctrine of enough.
It is, of course, easy to say that enough is enough when you quite clearly already have enough. The problem for most people is getting to that stage. A society which adopts the doctrine of enough has to make it a priority to ensure that everyone has a real chance of being able to reach their personal level of enough, so that they can move on. No one can say what that level should be for anyone else. It has to be a personal decision. It need not, however, be related to anyone else. What one person might think was not enough, another might consider more than enough. It depends on a trade-off of risks: the risk of moving on, and, perhaps, of failing, as against the risk of missing out on a new opportunity, a new chance to learn. The lower one can set the level of enough the freer one is to explore something else. It is that freedom which we should want everyone to have.
The Puritan denial of materialism, their philosophy of make do and mend, rather than throw away and buy another, forced them to cultivate the virtues of honesty and thrift, which actually made their societies rich and, in many respects, more equal. We might try their ways again and see what happened. If the philosophy of enough reduced the level of envy in society even by a little, that could not be bad. If it then redirected some of our energies to making and doing rather than mere getting and spending it would be better still.
Recently, I had the unique experience of staying for a week on Norfolk Island. Nothing to do with the English Norfolk, this is a tiny island in the South Pacific, two hours’ flying time from both New Zealand and Australia, with 1,500 inhabitants. It is hard to get there, and, with its cliffs and coral reefs, harder still to land anything there. It is a very self-sufficient little place, proudly independent although an Australian Protectorate, with a modest income from the tourists who fly in on the six or seven flights a week.
With no income tax the island attracts two or three millionaires but, paradoxically, money is of little value because there is nothing much to buy. As a result, theft and burglary have little point. No one locks their doors, cars are hardly needed on an island that is only five miles long and three miles wide, and those cars that do exist are battered boxes on wheels which is all that is required. Status doesn’t carry much weight on an island where everyone knows everyone and where most people are related. People do just enough work to provide the means of existence, because there is not much point in doing more. It is an island where the philosophy of Enough is taken seriously. The climate is fine and warm and the beaches are beautiful. ‘Being’ not ‘getting’ or ‘having’ or even ‘doing’ is what it’s all about. It was bliss for a week.
But, thinking about it, I have to confess that the idea of living there all the time was profoundly disturbing. Without all the conventional measures of success I was not sure that I would know what to do with myself. ‘Being’ could become ‘decaying’. The challenge to grow and develop without any pressures or even opportunities to prove myself might be too difficult. The doctrine of Enough does not mean giving up or renouncing all the activities of this world. It is hard, if not impossible, to ‘be’ without ‘doing’. The doctrine requires that we move on, not that we withdraw, that we recognize when more of something no longer means personal growth. Most of us cling too long to the comfortable and the familiar.
A TASTE OF THE SUBLIME
Life can be a trudge, working to eat and eating to work – for what? I need, we all need, the occasional reminder that the world is an extraordinary place and that people are capable of extraordinary things.
A poverty of aspiration – Ernest Bevin’s criticism of much of Britain after the war – can be fatal to a continuing exploration of all the possibilities in life. Enough can mean full stop, rather than a springboard for something new, unless imagination is stirred, senses aroused, and ideas and questions kindled. Nature at its best, animals in the wild, the starry skies above, said Kant, that stern philosopher; but also man-made things and occasions, the arts in all their forms, festivals and feasts, acts of great generosity and courage, of love and sacrifice – such things can all provide us with a glimpse of excellence and a taste of the sublime. God, said Dame Julian of Norwich, is in everything that is good, and God is in each one of us. If God be another word for The Good, then to find the good in ourselves we need first to look for it in the good things of the world, not least to remind ourselves that there is good out there, and therefore, most likely in ourselves. Sad must be those who never see it.
St Petersburg in winter is a magnificent but uncomfortable place. It is cold, grey, wet and gloomy, or can be in November, which is when I was last there. The Russian people whom I met were likewise grey and gloomy. Capitalism has not had the rejuvenating effect in St Petersburg that it has had in parts of Eastern Europe, and perhaps in some other parts of Russia. There is nothing much in the shops, and few have the wherewithal with which to buy what there is. If I were a St Petersburger in the winter I would be inclined to wonder what life was all about, and whether any of it was worth it.
Until, that is, I went to the Mariinsky Theatre to see the Nutcracker Suite ballet. This theatre is a magnificent place, a green and gold extravaganza – and packed with people. The most expensive tickets, for Russians, were less than £5 (still dear for them) but most were much less. Whole families were there, as were school classes with their teachers, young and old alike, some smart, some shabby, all agog.
The ballet is unashamedly romantic, and the last act a fantasy of a ballet lover’s heaven. Even the most cynical could not help but be stirred by its beauty, particularly when danced traditionally but to perfection by the Kirov School. I went out into the cold night wondering about the contradictions – the poverty and inefficiency outside and the sumptuous excellence inside. Was this the Russian version of bread and circuses, a way to pacify the mob, to make up for all their hardships; or do the Russians see the arts as a glimpse of the transcendent, something that will help us make sense of life, and therefore to be made available to all, as cheaply as possible?
Looking at the rapt faces of the audience that night and watching the crowds of ordinary Russians pouring into the Hermitage the next day, with its unbeatable collection of paintings, I am inclined to the more elevated view. These people weren’t there just to get out of the cold, they were coming to see some things that were near to the sublime and the eternal. If they went away uplifted for a while, or pondering on the real meaning of life, of what endured and what was passing fancy, surely this was no bad thing. If the evening gave them the impulse to rise above their present condition, surely even better.
It will be interesting to see whether the Mariinsky Theatre and the Kirov Ballet survive
when Russia eventually embraces the free market. Put art of this quality into the marketplace, with realistic costs and prices, and it inevitably becomes expensive, a playground for the rich. Too bad, then, if you are poor and can’t get your own taste of truth and beauty from the great theatres, concert halls or museums. The market, one has to conclude, is not always the best guarantee of free choice or democracy.
Yet, paradoxically, for the market to work in the sectors where it does work well, we need to know that there is more to life than marketplace success. Those who struggle unsuccessfully in that marketplace will better tolerate the riches of the successful if they realize that there are some things that money cannot buy. The arts in their many different guises offer some hint of that other, deeper world. Art, said Picasso, blows away the everyday cobwebs from the soul. All should have the chance to taste that breeze. Market economy or not, some things perhaps should not be priced too high, so that they are available to all.
In Italy, three years ago, the workers throughout Tuscany went on strike for a day – in protest at the bomb which destroyed a part of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It is hard to imagine the people of London doing the same, but to the people of Tuscany their art is their heritage, it enriches their everyday life. They are fortunate – they see it all around them every day, in the architecture and sculptures of their cities, in the frescoes which still embellish the walls of their churches. In summer, their towns are full of music. Most of it is there for free.
We speak, in Britain, of education and health care as the entitlements of every citizen in what we would like to think of as our civilized society. In a truly civilized society, that entitlement would include open access to all the things that stir our imaginations. If we can’t put those things in our streets, we should let the people through the doors. It would compensate a little for the inefficiencies that are inevitable in any free enterprise system, and would permit more tolerance, encourage more creativity and release more talent. It might even turn out to be a good market investment for the nation.
Most of all, however, the arts put the rest of our life in perspective. At peak moments they help to move us on, to make the struggle seem worthwhile. That happened for me one summer in Spoleto. Forty years ago, Gian-Carlo Menotti, looking for a small town in which to stage a festival of music and theatre in his native Italy, settled on this beautiful but previously unnoticed place in Southern Umbria. Today, the three weeks of the Spoleto Festival attract distinguished musicians and performers from all over the world, and the little town hums with music and the arts under the summer sun. Conviviality is in the air. It is good to be alive, and to be there.
The climax is the final ‘Concerto in Piazza’, staged in front of the magnificent cathedral, with an audience of some 6,000 seated in the piazza and stretching way up the long flight of steps behind. That year they performed Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, all one and a half hours of it, complete with choir, and trumpeters on the balcony, on a balmy night, with Menotti, now 85, there to introduce it. Magic, of a sort, even if the gold-bedangled part of the audience had clearly come from Rome more to be seen than to listen. But there was, to this listener anyway, a message behind the magic.
Writing about this symphony, Mahler observed that each of us must, at some time, question what it is all for. Is life a scherzo, he asked, to be rattled through as quickly and harmoniously as possible? Or is there more to it? I will answer that question, he said, in the final movement. That movement is an exciting, upsetting and, at the same time, uplifting piece of music. I listened to it once, on my headphones, on a plane coming back to Britain over the Atlantic, as dawn was breaking above the clouds, when nature and the music seemed in complete harmony. It was even more powerful in Spoleto.
Each must make their own interpretation of what Mahler was trying to say in that last movement. For me, it was a declaration that, for all its ups and downs, life was about more than surviving – there could be something glorious about it, it could contribute to a better world. That leaves one with a personal challenge, to do something glorious with one’s life. It is also, I believe, a challenge for every organization and every business that has, in effect, bought large chunks of other people’s lives. It is not enough to offer a scherzo.
The Kirov Ballet and Mahler in Spoleto sound splendidly elitist. They happen to tingle my own imagination more than a pop concert. For each our own. For me, too, a good play in the theatre is a form of highlighter, emphasizing aspects of life which need to be thought about. Others find that different perspective in films or novels. Nor does one have to be rich or privileged to provide others with a hint of greater things, to make something glorious. Alan Bennett, the British playwright, recounts in one of his essays how as a young lad he used to go to the symphony concerts in Leeds and ride home on the tram afterwards along with several of the musicians ‘who would sit there, rather shabby and ordinary, and often with tab ends in their mouths, worlds away from the Delius, Walton and Brahms they had been playing. It was a first lesson to me that . . . ordinary middle-aged men in raincoats can be instruments of the sublime.’
‘Instruments of the Sublime.’ Yes, indeed – ordinary people can always raise the world a notch or two for those around them, creating another sort of feel-good factor. And it doesn’t have to be in concert halls – it can happen in our own families, where life can often mean just getting through the day, or at work, where work can be a boring four-letter word instead of the creative, exciting thing it’s meant to be. And it doesn’t need money. It’s an attitude of mind. Elizabeth, in her work as a portrait photographer, unusually I think, sets out to make portraits that encourage people to feel good about themselves, to show what is best in them. It can change their lives. We can all do something to stimulate someone’s imagination. It is, in fact, I believe, not only our privilege to be an instrument of the sublime, but our responsibility, and it’s a lot more fun than looking at a bank statement and wondering if that is all there is to life.
A SORT OF IMMORTALITY
Unless you believe in reincarnation, it is not given to us humans to see more than one life on this earth, but it is possible to leave some imprint of yourself behind, thus achieving a sort of immortality, although one to be enjoyed by others, not ourselves. It is an idea captured in that most poignant of military memorial inscriptions: ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today.’ Leaving an imprint does not have to be this sacrificial, thank God. Gifts of ourselves take many forms, but they are all unique.
Maybe, I reflected in that piazza in Spoleto, Mahler was hinting that if we are to deserve some sort of immortality, even to contemplate the notion that we have left an indelible mark on time, then we have to aspire to be something special, to change and grow. We live on in others, thereby. For many, the children that they rear are their best legacy, their enduring gift to humanity. For others it is the work they do, or the businesses they create. For some it is the lives they saved or bettered, the kids they taught or the sick they healed. The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.
A headstone in the graveyard that records the millions made by the body buried there impresses none of the passers-by. It is what was done with the millions that counts. The imprint we leave on the world is the only form of temporary immortality of which we can be sure. In the end, that is where we find our true identity. Anything else is only a step upon the ladder. A person who recognizes this will understand that ‘enough’ is an invitation to climb higher on the ladder, and a society which buys into the contribution ethic will use capitalism as its tool and not its purpose.
Some contributions come early in life, some much later. We can take comfort from Degas, who painted his most enchanting portraits after most people’s normal retirement age. These works all came about because he felt a failure. When he hit 60, Degas looked back at his life and work and decided that it amounted to nothing. The vogue for his impressionis
t art seemed to have passed, and now it all seemed to him a flash in the pan, a waste of paint. He turned his back on life and retreated to his dark brown studio, determined to create, at last, something special, not for anyone else to see or buy, just for himself. He died at 83, evicted from his studio, blind, lonely and depressed. Only now can we see, for the first time, the full, glorious fruits of his last twenty years.
You don’t have to be 60 and a temperamental artist to look back at your life and wonder if it wasn’t all chaff in the wind. From time to time I take out my old appointment diaries and wonder who all those people were that I was meeting, what those committees were all about, and what, if anything, we achieved. Nelson Mandela has seen his life’s work fully justified, but he says in his autobiography that he wondered at times, during those dark prison years, whether he might not have done better to have been an ordinary lawyer, at home with his wife and family.
But it is not for us to judge our own life. Nor can we necessarily expect any judgement in our own lifetime. Degas would have been astounded to see the admiring crowds around his late-life pictures. His work inspires us, as does his example. Cathedrals also inspire. It is not only their grandeur or splendour, but the thought that they often took more than fifty years to build. Those who designed them, those who first worked on them, knew for certain that they would never see them finished. They knew only that they were creating something glorious which would stand for centuries, long after their own names had been forgotten. They had their own dream of the sublime and of immortality. We may not need any more cathedrals but we do need cathedral thinkers, people who can think beyond their own lifetimes.