Dear friends,

Most people — at least in the US — think of wealth as a source of happiness.  Rich people can, seemingly, get what they want, secure themselves from suffering, and improve the lives of others through their philanthropy.  While this story true in many ways, it is also very incomplete.  The lives of many rich people can be as filled with suffering, stress, alienation, and constrained humanity as the lives of poorer people.

But beyond these individual considerations, I want to highlight the historic role for concentrated wealth, a role often overlooked in popular imagination.  Concentrated wealth has power, and that power inevitably shifts things in the way societies work, for better and/or for worse.

History demonstrates that concentrated wealth plays a significant role in the evolution of societies by being a source of (a) social injustice, (b) distortions of democratic process and/or (c) positive social transformation.

All too often, this evolutionary impact is accompanied by — or even invoked by — tremendous suffering and destruction.  If we want societies to evolve more consciously — that is, with more awareness, compassion, intelligence, wisdom, and collective choice — we might work to minimize the injustice and erosion of democracy (a and b) and maximize positive social transformation (c).

CONCENTRATED ENERGY

The concentrated energy contained in concentrated wealth is like the concentrated energy contained in fossil fuels.  Coal, oil, and natural gas contain the solar energy of ancient sunlight stored for millions of years and then tapped to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions and the globalization of economy, culture and destiny that have totally transformed our world.

Concentrated wealth contains the energy of billions of laborers, thinkers, creators, and players of economic games.  It was born from and feeds the industrial, technological and global revolutions.  It is almost as if the concentrated energy of fossil fuels has been transferred into concentrated wealth to induce further transformation of society.

This immensely powerful energy has the potential to release the forces of conscious evolution at the whole-society level.  As we know, it also has the potential to accelerate the degradation of our earthly home along with the human communities and cultures that live here.  And, of course, it has the potential to become historically irrelevant, to dissipate itself in the pursuit of trivial material pleasures and possessions or in charities that serve only ego, the status quo, or current generations at the expense of future ones.

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