The Iatrogenics of Money

The Iatrogenics of Money

To understand the outright denial of antifragility in the way we seek wealth, consider that construction laborers seem happier with a ham and cheese baguette than businessmen with a Michelin three-star meal. Food tastes so much better after exertion. The Romans had a strange relation to wealth: anything that “softens” or “mollifies” was seen negatively. Their reputation for decadence is a bit overdone—history likes the lurid; they disliked comfort and understood its side effects. The same with the Semites, split between desert tribes and city dwellers, with city dwellers harboring a certain cross-generational nostalgia for their roots and their original culture; so there is the culture of the desert, full of poetry, chivalry, contemplation, rough episodes, and frugality, plotted against the cities’ comfort, which is associated with physical and moral decay, gossip, and decadence. The city dweller repairs to the desert for purification, as Christ did for forty days in the Judean desert, or Saint Mark in the Egyptian desert, starting a tradition of such asceticism. There was at some point an epidemic of monasticism in the Levant, perhaps the most impressive being Saint Simeon, who spent forty years on top of a column in Northern Syria. The Arabs kept the tradition, shedding possessions to go to silent, barren, empty spaces. And of course, with mandatory fasting, on which a bit later.

Note that medical iatrogenics is the result of wealth and sophistication rather than poverty and artlessness, and of course the product of partial knowledge rather than ignorance. So this idea of shedding possessions to go to the desert can be quite potent as a via negativa–style subtractive strategy. Few have considered that money has its own iatrogenics, and that separating some people from their fortune would simplify their lives and bring great benefits in the form of healthy stressors. So being poorer might not be completely devoid of benefits if one does it right. We need modern civilization for many things, such as the legal system and emergency room surgery. But just imagine how by the subtractive perspective, via negativa, we can be better off by getting tougher: no sunscreen, no sunglasses if you have brown eyes, no air-conditioning, no orange juice (just water), no smooth surfaces, no soft drinks, no complicated pills, no loud music, no elevator, no juicer, no … I stop.

When I see pictures of my friend the godfather of the Paleo ancestral lifestyle, Art De Vany, who is extremely fit in his seventies (much more than most people thirty years younger than him), and those of the pear-shaped billionaires Rupert Murdoch or Warren Buffett or others in the same age group, I am invariably hit with the following idea. If true wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor (or hobby), good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises, then it is largely subtractive (elimination of iatrogenics).