When the Dust Settles
Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi. None of them esteemed luxury nor praised the rich. What meaningful lesson can we glean from these human monuments?
In our developed societies, luxury is increasingly admired and revered. Why wouldn’t it be? Luxury is beautiful, comfortable, and exquisite...
But on the other hand, luxurious lifestyles are the primary drivers of consumerism, which is the underlying cause of ecological destruction.
Everyone wants more money, naturally, so the richer people are, the more we tend to admire them.
Even if someone is engaging in actions that are wrong or have little positive value for the world at large (which, by the way, is not always easy to determine), if they are rich and glamorous, they receive attention, respect, and unfortunately, even power.
When we examine history, there are lessons that only history can teach us. The most respected messengers across cultures did not esteem luxury, but rather the opposite. Interesting…
Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi — to take just three — are historical monuments precisely for communicating and embodying the opposite: simplicity, humility, and defense of the poor. The greatness of their actions outlived their present moment... by millennia (in the case of Jesus and Buddha).
Short term, we tend to focus on accumulating wealth and living luxuriously, which is nice (don’t get me wrong, I love it too), but long-term, when the dust settles, what’s admirable — and distinctively wise — is something else entirely.
There is a difference between short-term success and long-term wisdom. Let’s see some other examples that illuminate this idea:
In recent Western History, the court adored King Louis XVI until he was executed with the guillotine; the colonists were powerful at their time (at the expense of entire civilizations), but are now remembered as looters and criminals.
Communities admired slave owners for the number of slaves they had at their disposal, but history has shown their true colors.
Although justice has never been served to the degree one might hope, and probably never will be, at least it is clear who was on the weaker side — the destructive side — the dark side in each of these cases.
History has shown us that when the dust settles, what we admire and permit ourselves in the present moment might not be as worthy in the long run.
A message for the leader in every one of us: Jesus and Buddha outrank the name of any rich king or pope that ever lived.
Stay wise,
Eva Sky Wymm