Hoarder on a Hill

I remember once hearing of an old mythological story about excess, but I do not remember of what culture it comes. My initial instinct was that it had come from the American Indian though it may have been from another ancient culture. The story essentially talks about a person that takes more than they need and goes to live alone on a hill. While the village below suffers from a famine this person lives in excess and does not share their food with the rest of the clan. Even though the food will eventually rot before this person can eat it all.

Those suffering famine and living at the bottom of the hill regard this person as being very ill. He has suffered a mental disorder that is preventing him from acting rationally. Their idea of being a rational human in that culture was putting the needs of the community on par with your own needs. They deemed the behavior of this person as being the definition of insanity in their culture.

We in the West have made a hero out of this story’s wayward hoarder. In our modern American society we celebrate those that hoard wealth and resources. We try to become those people by acquiring as much as we can with little thought as to whether this is really serving us or the society at large. Undoubtedly this mentality has led to innovations over the past two centuries that have turned the landscape into something that would be hardly recognizable to someone from those two centuries past.

We are now starting to have hard data showing us that this narrowly focused effort towards wealth and innovation is coming into conflict with the delicate balance of our ecology. This type of mentality has also never really served society as a whole. This type of ‘progress’ has always relied on exploited labor. This mentality has divided society into the workers and the benefactors of that work.

The vast majority of us sell our effort, time, and know-how to the hoarders on the hill. The hoarders hoard and the workers work. The hoarder lives in such excess that they’ll never be able to spend that wealth in this lifetime, or in some of these cases many lifetimes. Unlike the antagonist from the ancient story summarized above, fiat and digital money does not rot. Somehow this justifies accumulating as much as you can. Even when considering the harsh conditions and diminished quality of life that their greed is causing for those that extract their raw materials, build their products, and distribute them across the globe.

The same person that was considered the insane villain by one culture’s moral norms is the hero of our culture. We certainly live in a much more complicated world and society than the one in which that story took place. When we actually examine this modern phenomena of wealth hoarding, do the values of the current majority actually line up with the values of the ancient culture or that of our modern culture? Sure it is convenient to be able to have anything you want with a single click and a knock on the door the next day, but is that creating a better society or a worse society?

The reality is that we are already too far down that road to ever change. Even if we all one day were definitively shown that our current actions are unsustainable and would eventually lead to climate catastrophe and societal collapse, I’d argue that many of us would simply carry on as we always have. Unable to make a sacrifice even in the face of certain peril.

We talk about making life more ‘Green’, but are unwilling to do what is really necessary. We talk about going ‘Green’ only in terms of making the consumerist culture we currently live in, and is to blame for the problem, operate in the same manner but with more efficient systems. We never speak of dismantling some of those systems or changing the way we operate in the world.

We can’t do those things in the West, and especially in the United States, because our entire system relies on exponential growth. This system of exponential growth cannot exist in a finite system with finite resources. The planet we live on and the delicate balance that planet struggles to maintain being that finite system. Even with more efficient systems for generating energy we will still eventually run up against the limitations of the planet. The materials needed for collecting and storing energy aren’t easily available nor are they easily disposed of or recycled once their utility and functionality has ceased.

There are precious metals and toxic elements needed to create a ‘Green’ system. Especially a ‘Green’ system that would function with the same level of reliability as the current fossil fuel system. These systems still create problems when it comes to the depletion of precious metals from the earth. Usually this extraction is done with exploitative tactics. We also don’t have systems for the disposal of toxic waste materials from storage and collection apparatuses required for a large-scale ‘Green’ revolution.

The unspoken dream of this ‘Green’ revolution is that it will allow us to continue to operate like the Hoarder on the Hill. We won’t have to confront our reliance on insatiable consumption. We will still be able to buy whatever we want with a click or a short drive. We’ll still be able to express ourselves only through the products that we buy. The system of consumption with which all this is based will still result in ecological collapse because it is reliant on extraction, consumption, and disposal.

So far I’ve only been speaking of Americans, because that is where I live and what I am most familiar with. However, the trend of American consumerism is catching on across the world. If we think we have problems from a few hundred million Americans, and a few hundred million Europeans, succumbing and fully subscribing to the excesses of a consumerist culture then wait until it really catches on in India and China. These places that have supplied our consumerist desires are now getting a taste themselves and turning into consumerist societies. The balance of the planet can barely handle a few hundred million, what happens when we get to a few billion?

The Hoarders on the Hill are already finding their next hill. This is why the hoarders on the tallest hill are racing into outer-space. They are looking for a place to escape once the rot of the system they are benefiting from finally gets to a breaking point. That breaking point either being an inhabitable planet or a society that fully devolves into chaos once the treats run out.

That all seems quite bleak, but I believe that there is still hope. As individuals we can make better choices. We can choose a mentality of abundance as opposed to the false mentality of scarcity that the marketers and advertisers want us to believe. We can be satisfied with what we have, and find fulfillment in strengthening and appreciating the bonds we have with our loved ones, our community, and nature.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading and take care of each other.