Having to clear my late father's home recently it became very apparent how the material focus of economics is wrong. What he had mattered for little in the end. The memories he left did. So why does economics get this so terribly wrong?
This is the transcript:
How are we remembered? I think that's a really important question.
I ask it because I very recently had to clear out the property, the home, that my father and my stepmother shared for many years. My own mother died a long time ago, more than 40 years ago. And it was, I think, unsurprising to say, an emotional thing to have to go through.
That's partly because, of course, it was about my father and my stepmother, who I've known for a very long time, and having to invade their space in a sense to actually decide what to keep and what to throw away. And, of course, the vast majority of it was thrown away.
But it was more than that. It was about the memories of them going right back, and learning even things about him and my mother, which I didn't know.
For example, he had his school report book, and he wasn't quite the perfect angel that he might have presented to us that he was.
So, there were interesting aspects to this whole process.
But at the end of it, I reflected on, what are we remembered for? And two things stood out for me. One was the fact that he was obviously a very popular man. There were lots and lots of photographs of him in his various work and then voluntary roles that he'd undertaken in retirement.
He was clearly able to command friendships, loyalty perhaps from staff, and was liked. And that was good. I liked that, a lot, because it said something about him.
The other thing, of course, was the fact that I mentioned the photographs because they brought back memories. Memories of who he was to us as children, as adults, as a grandparent and everything else. I'm not going to run through those, they're very personal and that's not the point of this video.
The point of this video is to discuss how are we remembered. And at the end of the day all of the physical possessions that he had were frankly not very much really, didn't come to much, weren't valued by us, were going to charity shops for recycling, or frankly, in many cases, to the tip. Lots and lots of their memorabilia. It's not going to be wanted by anyone.
Big photo albums of cruises they took in retirement, frankly, are meaningless. But pictures of them with their family and friends that we knew, they count.
The other thing, I suppose, is the relationships beyond that. A few people are lucky enough to leave a legacy which lives beyond them through ideas.
But in all of this, the point I'm making is that material possessions are never going to be what somebody is remembered for. It's what they did, who they influenced, how they got on with people, whether they were liked, whether their family appreciated them, whether they left good memories. Those are the things that seem to matter at the end of the day. And for my father and my stepmother, the end of the day has arrived.
I just think it's worth remembering that when we look at economics. Because economics focuses upon our material well-being above all else. It talks about consumption and our desire to maximize the well-being that's around that. And it's terribly insular in its attitudes towards the individual and that they, in the neoclassical view, are the focus of the person's own concern about themselves.
I have to say that wasn't true of my father. He did seem to live a life of service. But that isn't built into that economics.
So, why not, is my question. Do we have an economics that truly understands what matters, when clearly what matters, when it comes down to it, is all about us, our relationships, and how we treated people? And yet economics puts no value on that at all.
It was a poignant lesson from a difficult point in time. I don't think there's anybody who has to go through this process who would ever find it easy. And if you're going through it, I wish you well with it.
But it made me think. And that's important, because it told me yet again, that what we have in our economics textbooks is frankly nonsense. Because it teaches us nothing. Because they teach us about things that supposedly have value, but which, at the end of the day, have none.
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Because it can be measured ‘objectively’.
Education in my final years in teaching, became obsessed with ‘progression’ as measured by test and other assessment scores. IMHO it was so politicians (including those in education management ) could pose as achieving results and ‘turning round’ schools. A lot was lost along the way.
Not all that can be measured counts, and many things which can’t be measured do count. Such as politeness, curiosity, tolerance, open mindedness, knowledge of unexamined learning. I encounter a number of well qualified young people who don’t know anything. OTOH I spoke to a former student last week, now 40 and high earner in the gaming industry and having lived abroad, who throughly agrees with me. There is hope for the future.
Bread and honey was the old Cockney slang for money. Man does not live by bread alone but also by our values. We cannot afford to forget that.
The inevitable event is coming for us all. What legacy will we leave?
Once again you bring to mind Robert Kennedy’s insightful words:
“gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Agreed. Thanks.
My father died 18 years ago and I no longer have anything that he owned. I do have lots of memories. Mainly of laughter while watching various 70s comedies and at Monty Python & the Holy Grail at the cinema when it was first released. Laughter was very important to him, much to my mother’s chagrin.
‘Things’ have a place in living, a house, a car, a TV, but they are not life. Life is to be shared. We can share it with a spouse, a partner, family, friends, animals. We can’t share it with things, with objects, with money. At least, not if we want happiness. I suspect those that fill their life with things want control as a substitue for happiness.
My experience of grief is that it changes as time passes: from pain, to acceptance, to fondness. But no two paths are alike. I wish you well as you grieve for your father.
Thanks
And I like your wisdom about this
sounds a bit like Kuber Ross and her stages of grief.
There are other models such as that of William Worden where they talk about the ‘work of grief’. It varies for extroverts and introverts and for individuals for none of us are just or or the other. But it has to be done. If denied if doesn’t go away but will return when we suffer another loss-which is inevitable. Suffering is part of the human condition.
However, grief is also the price we pay for love.
The last is true
This is a hard one.
I know people who pay for cruises saying that they think that they are creating memories.
What strikes me is that they are also usually getting away from something – usually, work. What if we made work more bearable?
And not all families are the same – some are dysfunctional and memories are more painful. What if we worked harder to help families to get through social and economic problems more?
The point that emerges for me from your post is that the market simply offers ‘escapism’. Now it has gone from cruises and holidays to looking at space and or the deep sea ocean.
Maybe we should be asking why we want to ‘escape’ all the time?
I think the answers would be very revealing.
I can think of nothing much worse than a cruise
Partly because I want to face reality, not fakery
Snap!
In the UK we have an economic policy, admittedly not dissimilar to much of the world, that puts most of us in a precarious position that if we did anything with our productive time other than work for our current incomes or more then we would be ruined. That’s becoming more true for successive generations as it becomes harder and harder to put enough aside to be stable.
It would be great to have a legacy, to live for ourselves and to do something meaningful. But we have a government that saw fit to let people speculate in the property market and then rewarded them with low taxes so we cannot. I have a mortgage to pay; my children will have extortionate rents. Our consumption will continue to fall as do our means but we will remain plugged in to an economic system that leaves us precarious.
And that masters degree that I always wanted to do, in something really meaningful, will yet again have to wait, as will that career change to serve ordinary people rather than millionaires.
AndrewW wrote: “It would be great to have a legacy, to live for ourselves and to do something meaningful.” Many years ago I witnessed a good friend of mine, a wonderfully talented musician, John McLevy, demonstrating the value of legacy over wealth. He and other musician pals were in London pub after a long day in recording studios. Standing next to them was a group of City types. The musicians were having fun together telling gags and spinning yarns, while the City types were discussing financial/ economic matters. One of the City men said “you guys are having a great time; what is it you do”? John’s reply was perfect: he said “we make people happy.” Cue stunned silence. End of.
Great story
That video has got me thinking about what matters across generations. Thank you.
Economics struggles, it seems, to account for anything that can’t be traded.
The wealth of an individual, family, community or country might sensibly be measured in terms of the quality of its relationships, its health and the freedoms it has. Financial wherewithal does help provide freedom, and material wealth can facilitate better health.
As for legacy, can that be simplified to the resources we provide the next generation during this lifetime? Everything from education to the environment and the climate.
Much to agree with
What amazed me when my father died was the number of people he had worked with who turned up to the funeral although he had been retired over 20 years by then and had been infirm for over 5 years.
Back in 2014 my employers did something on their website, my family in WW1 and my oldest son with the help f my brother produced something on my Paternal Grandfathers service – my son had to do something on two people who served in WW1 so chose him & Adolf Hitler. It provided my Grandfather, in my view anyway, with some sort of immortality in that he was remembered for his service then.
Funnily enough one of my earliest memories are on a ‘cruise’ Hotwells Pontoon (Bristol) to Clevedon on the White Funnel Fleet paddle steamer Bristol Queen with my father, my oldest sons have the paddle steamer ‘bug’ thanks to him so his influence lives on.
Thanks for sharing, John – and a geat story
Some “stuff” matters (but I am sneaking an ‘off-thread’ version of “stuff”, I confess).
We are not allowed to mention Brexit, because ,,,,,, because the government, and the two inadequate political parties that have been in power, or are now in power since Brexit don’t like being reminded that Brexit is all a completely irrecoverable economic and international catastrophe (let me spell this out, the only champagne parties celebrating Brexit in 2016 outside Johnson in Downing Street, and Farage, presumably in some pub), was Putin in the Kremlin. But Brexit has not just cost us 4% of GDP (every year, and growing as we effectively flatline); it is costing us in all kinds of ways; like this –
“Sir Keir Starmer has come under pressure to publish the true costs of Brexit after a minister confirmed Britain has spent £24bn alone withdrawing from the EU – with a further £6.4bn still to pay.” (Independent).
That will be in addition to the £22Bn. or is it now £40Bn shortfall? We have, unquestionably the most profoundly unprofessional, feckless, constitutionally inadequate political class in the whole developed world.
https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/sites/default/files/siteimages/my_familys_ww1_story_-_john_boxall.pdf
In case anyones interested
GSK were kind enough to provide some information on him, it seems he wasnt THE Company Secretary but worked in the Company Secretarys department
Possessions, things, which belonged to our parents may be of no material value, and may indeed end up in a tip. Most of the stuff we cleared out of our parents’ home went that way. However, they are a wellspring of memories, in a way that photographs don’t quite capture. A photo is literally a snapshot of a moment frozen in time, which might not spur us to remember much except that moment; whereas an object loved by our parents and present throughout our childhood holds a wealth of memories. It is our memories which give us substance. Our memories are who we are. We see that all too clearly when dementia robs us of someone we love by removing their memory. That “premature bereavement” removes the person we knew.
I’m sorry you’re going through this, Richard. Grief is not a linear process; it doubles back on itself and hits us from behind when we’re not expecting it. Years after losing someone, we can be suddenly overwhelmed with grief on finding some small item which takes us right back. About five years after my father died, I came across his watch. I was immediately lost in a storm of tears.
I don’t know how we got to the point where economics trumps human wellbeing. We can talk about neoliberalism and capitalism and free markets until we’re blue in the face; but those are just words. The concepts behind those words are the real issue, along with the people who have forged those concepts into the only reality with which we are presented. We now live in that reality. I keep hoping it will change, but it hasn’t yet, and only a massive shock will produce the necessary tectonic shift.
“Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
………………………………..
“Here were decent, godless people.
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls”
TS Eliot. “Choruses from The Rock”
Thanks
We kept one very obvious thing from their living room – a coffee table. Why? Because conversations were held around it.
Agreed, Hannah. Many people misunderstand the ‘stages of grief’ as a linear process. Worse, they (or is it employers?) seek to put a timescale on grieving by suggesting “you should be over that by now”. There’s no time frame, no limit, but of course the rest of our own life goes on.
It appears old economics can’t model much of real human lived experience.
You’re right, Ian. Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages can only really be an overview of the process. They do not define individual responses. There is no set timescale for the process of grieving.
Your comment about “employers” is pertinent – a few years ago, psychiatrists decided that if disabling grief went on for longer than a month, it should be classed as major depression and antidepressants should be prescribed. Cue outrage!
Now, thank goodness, that is not the case; although “prolonged grief disorder” is now in the DSM, timescales, such as they are, have become considerably longer.
That was absurd…
Read Richard E Grant in the Observer this weekend
“what we have in our economics textbooks is frankly nonsense.”
It took me multiple business start ups and failures to realise after some years away from selling up. It took me your site to realise I didn’t ‘make’ my Money , I just found different ways of ‘earning’ what was created magically.
From there to realising that economics is just a pseudo science neoreligion , using capitalism/AntiCapitalism as credos- to determine the fate of human slaves by their owner masters is all it is.
Who and how many of the slaves and how frugally the many should live according to the few and their high priest economist holymen – their Truth from the Gods of Economics – it must be believed!
Here is the latest example I have come across today :
‘Klaus Schwab’s advisor, World Economic Forum expert Harari on the need to get rid of excess people on the planet:
“The Industrial Revolution created a new class of urban proletariat. Now we are seeing the creation of a new, mass class of useless people. As computers get better and better at more and more things, there is a distinct possibility that computers will outperform us at most tasks and make humans unnecessary .
And then the great political and economic question of the 21st century will be: what do we need people for? Or at least, what do we need so many people for?
At the moment, the best we can do is keep them happy with drugs and computer games.”
@DDGeopolitics ‘
If that does not make anyone nauseous and angry I fear for their children.
I am not sure he thought that was true
I think he was pointing out the apparent logic of AI
But someone no doubt does think this