I’m a philosophically liberal Christian, which means that my views on economics can sometimes feel anachronistic. I love capitalism, but I don’t like consumerism. I think everyone should have the legal freedom to neglect their families and work 100 hours per week to make enough money to buy a Learjet — but believe this is likely a destructive personal path. I think there’s nothing wrong with owning a fancy car, but there is something wrong with a society that tells us to buy the fancy car because the status we get from it will finally fill the hole in our hearts.
As such, I thought Sahil Bloom’s New York Times bestseller The 5 Types of Wealth was an absolute godsend.
At heart, Bloom offers a countercultural vision of what it means to live the good life. Instead of focusing purely on the accumulation of money, he argues, we should build a more holistic good life composed of five different types of wealth: time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and financial wealth.
This vision runs contrary to what most of us are taught in many ways, but let’s look at three that I consider to be foundational.
First: in our consumerist society, most of us strive to be always busy. If we are busy, the logic seems to go, then we are in demand; and if we are in demand, then we are important. All of our heroes are always busy; and therefore we should be too.
This logic can lead a lot of us to work hard climbing the corporate ladder while destroying the things that truly matter in our lives. We can end up working late on a Saturday night and letting our marriage suffer. We can spend 12 hours per day sitting in our cubicle until we find that our weight has ballooned and that even walking up the stairs leaves us exhausted. We can run around like a chicken with our head cut off, forever bouncing from task to task but never scratching the surface of what we were put on this earth to actually accomplish.
Bloom explains this with the metaphor of the red queen, a character in Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking Glass. In one scene, the red queen and heroine Alice run as fast as they can, just to stay in the same place. Bloom suggests that that’s what a lot of us are doing. We’re sprinting day and night at the office, without ever feeling like we’re getting anywhere.
Instead of continuing this mad dash, Bloom recommends that we take a step back and reclaim control of our time. He quotes the Stoic philosopher Seneca: “We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” Or as Bloom puts it: “You know how important your time is, yet you ignore its passage and engage in low-value activities that pull you away from the things that really matter.”
Bloom recommends that we be strategic with our time. Part of this means spending more time on our purpose at work, and less time putting out fires. For instance, he recommends that we follow the example of President Eisenhower and focus on the work that’s important, rather than letting ourselves get sucked into work that’s urgent but that won’t actually move the needle. But Bloom’s solution goes beyond accomplishing more in our careers. He also recommends that we step off the consumerist treadmill and devote more time to the things that truly matter. Make time for more dates with our spouse. Spend time with our kids. Make time to read, and meditate, and to think deeply about life. He himself quit a high-powered corporate career and moved across the country to spend more time with his aging parents, which he says was one of the best decisions he ever made.
Along with always being busy, our consumerist society is status-obsessed. We buy Rolexes and luxury vacations, not because we want them but because we think that they’ll impress others. Bloom tells the story of a wealthy man who rented a yacht for his friends and family for a week. He was really excited to see their faces when they stepped on the yacht and realized how successful he was. Then, one of his friends looked at the bigger yacht nearby and remarked that whoever owned that must be really successful, which killed the whole mood and left the man feeling “deflated.”
Instead of trying to earn status through material possessions, Bloom recommends that we earn status through character. He recommends that we invest in the things that money can’t buy, but which are more meaningful for this fact: being a kind and caring friend, being a supportive spouse, being a present and thoughtful parent. By doing these things, he suggests, we can earn the approval of people whose approval actually means something. By building character, we can fill the hole in our hearts that a luxury car or a rented yacht never can.
Finally, much of our society is selfish in the extreme. Bloom points out that we are obsessed with networking; that is, with trying to convince others to do things for us. We strive to convince other people that we are interesting. When someone else is talking, a lot of times we aren’t really listening; instead, we’re just waiting for our chance to speak (a regrettable habit he calls Level One listening).
Bloom’s message is to do the opposite. Don’t network to try to get things out of other people. Instead, focus on adding value to the lives of those around you. Don’t strive to be interesting; instead, strive to be interested. When other people are talking, listen to them sincerely and try to learn from them (what he calls Level Two listening).
I’ve always thought that markets need two prerequisites to function well. First, they need a legal framework in which the government (generally) steps back and lets free people come together to buy and sell and trade. But second, they need a people inculcated with sufficient moral virtue that we do good things with our economic freedom. If we all work 100 hours per week chasing money and status while letting our relationships and physical health go to hell, then we’re not building any kind of society worth living in — no matter how large our national GPD grows.
I think of Bloom’s work as an essential submission in developing (or perhaps reinforcing) the latter prerequisite. Instead of just using our freedom to chase money and cheap status, he says, we should invest it in the kinds of wealth that will make us truly happy. As Bloom explains, “Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else.”