Going for the gold! Thar’s gold in them thar hills! Silver and gold. Puts me in mind of Yukon Cornelius and Neil Young, two characters singing the same words with nearly the opposite sentiment. One craves the raw material itself, placing the highest value on shiny buried treasure. The other likens love—lasting, comforting, generous, forgiving, supportive, sweet, nurturing love—to those oft’ sought after precious metals. “Our kind of love never seems to get old….”

When I picked gold out of the hat for this month, the first thought that came to mind was Midas and his golden touch. So often we use the Midas Touch to describe someone that has a gift for improving a product or situation, for transforming what is worthless into something valuable. But that misses the whole point of the story of Midas. It was only after he was given the ability to turn any object into gold that he realized that the gift was really a curse, for he couldn’t eat or drink, play music, or embrace his family. The things he truly valued were now beyond his reach.

I sometimes wonder if human civilization will ever evolve to the point where we get past the endless quest for gold, where we stop using gold as a calculus for worth or as a gatekeeper for access. Currently, we have in our society a handful of people who collectively own as much as the rest of us combined. We also have people—lots of people—who have way more than they could ever begin to spend, juxtaposed against millions who have virtually nothing. I wonder if other species experience that same phenomenon. Are there squirrels out there who have way more nuts than they could possibly eat next to squirrels with no nuts at all? Do some whales hog all the plankton and krill and leave others to go fish? Plants certainly seem to have a capitalist bent. When a tree falls in the forest, there’s an immediate race to capture the sunlight and nutrients vacated by the fallen. They’re literally climbing over one another to capture those resources. But we’ve also recently come to understand that trees send nutrients to their neighbors via underground networks. They warn each other when insect pests and other threats are in the forest. Some plants also cooperate with neighboring species by sharing water and soil nutrients seasonally, when one or another is better equipped to harvest them. That doesn’t sound like capitalism.

Of course, there are many, many examples of capitalist tendencies in the wild. They don’t call it “dog eat dog” for nothing. Many species will fight to the death over territory and resources. Chimpanzees will do battle over access to the best fig trees. Lions and hyenas are constantly nipping each other over prime hunting territories. Bald eagles along a salmon spawning stream will dive bomb and claw one another over access to the best fishing spots.

So, it’s not unnatural for humans to exhibit the same tendencies. And yet, somehow it feels like maybe we could do better. What would be so bad about a society deciding that no person should be homeless, that everyone should have at least a basic level of comfort—food, clothing, shelter, medicine? No matter what you do or who you are, just for having a human ticket you get these minimum benefits. And what would be the harm in placing an upper limit on how much you can horde? We could make it quite high, high enough that it would still be worth the effort to climb, high enough that people could still aspire to dream and work hard, just not so high that the efforts results in the utter impoverishment of many, many others.

Of course, that kind of talk sends you down the rat hole of trickle-down economics, the argument being that those who accumulate more will share that wealth by creating opportunities for those downstream. But history hasn’t really borne that theory out. Quite the opposite in fact! The trickle that comes from the elite class toward the impoverished class is usually a different kind of golden shower. Let them eat cake! Those who have the gold tend to manipulate the system, changing the rules and referees to advance their interests all the while spinning their success as somehow in the public interest. It’s the golden rule. Never mind the fine print about the side-effects of such and such medication. What’s a little anal leakage among friends?

History is choc-full of examples of the corrupting influence of gold. People will seemingly do anything for it. They will sell anything. They will say anything. They will do anything for … for what exactly. For nourishment? Usually, those in the selling business are selling far beyond their recommended daily nutritional requirements. For shelter? Is it really necessary to have multiple multi-million-dollar residences—the country estate, the urban townhouse, the beach house, the island retreat, the mountain lodge? What goes on in those places when they’re not occupied? Or is the clamor for wealth really about prestige? Now we’re getting to the root. Most of our hunger for gold has little to do with ensuring our physical well-being, rather it’s used to elevate our greedy but eternally insecure egos. We use wealth to measure whether we’ve made it, whether we’ve succeeded, whether we’ve achieved, as if tall stacks of coins add up to a life well spent. It never has. Ask Mr. Scrooge!

Certainly, there have been exceptions. There have been noteworthy examples of stellar individuals who sought to share their good fortune in ways that benefitted countless others. Paul Newman springs immediately to mind. But their numbers are too few to tip the teeter totter away from the bloated fat cats. Usually what has happened in human history when a society becomes so dysfunctional, so grossly out of balance and unfair that it no longer works for the great majority of its citizens, is that those citizens decide to revolt. They rise up! Throw the bums out! Off with their heads! Vive la guillotine! No one wants that kind of bloody, viciously random violence. That kind of chaos only creates a vacuum for some equally despicable despot to fill, and before you know it we’re back where we started. It’s not a long-term solution.

Gold and silver. Silver and gold. What is it that we truly treasure? Love is the only thing that has ever seemed to fit the bill for me. It exists beyond time and circumstance. It can be found in the most unlikely places. It has no color, no religion, no socio-economic status, no party affiliation, no nationality, no bounds. It is the light in the darkness. It is comfort. It is forgiveness. It is reassurance. It is hope. In so many of our songs and stories, we celebrate love. Love will see you through. Love conquers all. Love is all you need. “Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” What if love were the yardstick for human endeavor, for human achievement? How much love has your life engendered? Have you added to the font of love or taken from it? We could and would certainly argue over what those statements might mean, but think of it, a society built on the love standard. “It’s better than silver and gold!”

Is it Love?

Too many people

Driving down a narrow road

Too many choices

Nobody’s fault

Too many voices

Not so many listening

Too many crosses

Lining the walk

 

And it’s…

1 for the money

2 for the show

3 for the pleasure

Tell me what do you treasure?

Is it love?

 

If I had all the answers

And I knew all the clues

As I gazed toward the future

What would I do?

 

Would it be…

1 for the money

2 for the show

3 for the pleasure

Tell me what do you treasure?

Is it love?