Some People Are So Poor All They Have Is Money

Now I realise that’s a pretentious statement but bear with me.

Walking through any of the world’s poshest spots — the nightclubs of Dubai, the beach bars of St. Tropez, coffee shops in Double Bay or the chic private members clubs of Mayfair — it’s easy to be dazzled. The sun hits just right, the drinks are cold, the outfits perfect. Life, it would seem, is complete.

But, beneath the surface-level perfection, it makes me wonder if something quieter might be missing.

I say this not as a criticism, but as a genuine question: Have we, in the latter stages of the western capitalist experiment (or at least it seems that way to me) perhaps come to confuse life ‘style’ with actual life?

Billions of people around the world have what we like to patronisingly in the west ‘nothing’ but they are happy. Not swirling napkins and bottle service happy, but content with their place in the world happy. I see smiling faces always when I’m in Africa or Latin America, because they have a sense of belonging, community, purpose, future and togetherness. Whilst in much of western world is the social and cultural malaise we feel when we have nothing but feel lost actually a poverty of these things —  a poverty not of money, but perhaps more of meaning.

We live in a time when money has become both mirror and mask. It is a measure of success and should not be completely disregarded, but it isn’t the only measure of the sum total of the human experience surely! But it appears that it may have become that to cover the absence of those other things that matter so much to us all at a more fundamental level.

You see it most glaringly in the places that pride themselves on wealth. Places that in many ways have become the performative epicentre of the point I’m labouring here. It’s not so much the living, but the reinforcement loop of being seen to be living.

Now don’t get me wrong, this has a place and I’ve been guilty of, and thoroughly enjoyed much of myself, but it seems to be that we’re moving more and faster in that direction in a directly inverse relationship to social cohesion, happiness and the contentment of the average European or American household.

A common refrain today that most experience is that life feels less rooted in place or people than it used to and now maybe it’s more in the broadcast. And that shift — away from community, country, and even self — suggests we may be measuring our wealth on the wrong metric.

Walk through St. Tropez or Los Cabos in August. You’ll see the people — tanned, taut, and exquisitely dressed, jumping off of $100m boats. Conversations about PJ’s, bottles with fireworks, and what beach club has “the best action this year.” Now, again it’s not that fun is bad. Fun is vital, life should be made up of wonderful, interlaced moments. The problem I see is that when all that is left is the fun — when our version of meaning is reduced to where you drank rosé and how many zeros your watch costs — something in our society starts to rot. I’m using these extreme examples to make my point, but you only need to look on any Main Street or High Street any weekend and see that the same tropes playing out.

The same can even be seen even in a more corporate environment, open TikTok or Instagram and you’ll see endless “relocation” influencers selling the dream. “Move to Dubai — this app has all you need!” And what’s in it? Beach bars, restaurants, beach clubs. Is that really it, is that all we need today to build a modern life?

No mention of culture, history, or community that a move to an exciting and dynamic country offers. Just consumption, climate, and cocktails. And it isn’t just lifestyle influencers. The pattern is deeper. If history teaches us anything, it’s that distraction is often the final act of a culture losing its sense of self. If it is then we might just be in as much trouble as the doomsayers predict.

We continue to distil society into its most superficial components. It has come to exist in a way that the aim is at such a narrow part of the spectrum of life that, to quote a good friend, the juice is not worth the squeeze. We sacrifice part of ourselves, as individuals and as a society in the pursuit of something that is ultimately somewhat futile. Is this just a modern iteration of what the Roman poet Juvenal called ‘bread and circuses’; distraction through consumption and entertainment; while the empire rots from the inside. The formula hasn’t changed, just the delivery device. Now the circus is digital and the bread has 2 Michelin stars, but maybe it is a sign that the empire is indeed collapsing.

Around the same time Seneca, wrote: “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” How often do we see that played out now? The craving is endless. A better table. A newer drop. A labubu or a Kelly Bag. Money doesn’t quiet the craving — it feeds it in an insatiable loop. And eventually, it hollows the individual and in turn society out. This to my mind what we are seeing now in real time.

I share this thinking from a place of concern for all of us, not from judgement. I’ve been in those rooms and those parties and I’ve enjoyed some of what money can do. But the most interesting people I’ve met — the truly magnetic ones — aren’t the loudest or the richest – sometimes they are at that’s a pleasant surprise, but invariably not. They’re the ones who’ve kept hold of their curiosity. Who read. Who listen. Who can sit still. Who aren’t performing their lives like an endless audition. They are rich, and they also have a lot of money.

We’re at a strange crossroads, culturally. Technology provides the illusion of connection, but loneliness is rising. Nearly every western household has more objectively than they’ve ever had, but they feel poor and left behind. Our societies have more wealth than ever, but more people feel anxious, empty and adrift. These counterpoints are not coincidental.

In a culture increasingly obsessed with visible markers of status — from net worth to social media metrics — we begin to define our human value on the wrong metrics and in turn our own place within that society. We have become a society that measures our worth by our bank accounts and our follower counts. And it’s driving us all mad, you only need to watch the news to see that playing out.

So no, I’m not anti-money. Money is a tool — powerful and, in the right hands, transformational. It’s built the world around us and that has obviously immensely benefitted so many. But it need not, and perhaps cannot be a winner takes all outcome. When it becomes the goal, not the means — when it replaces character, creativity, and connection — it runs the risk of making us poor people that have a lot of money - and there’s not an app to fix that!