The Best Things In Life Are Free?

A few days ago, I found myself in an interesting position in the concluding phase of a job interview.

Since I don’t work in Hollywood, the interesting position was not the Missionary position (Ba-dum-bum!!) but one of a more conceptual nature:  I had applied for an internal transfer to a different division in the company I currently work for, and we had reached the final stages of the negotiation process, which involved fighting over money.

Now, even though I’m Lebanese, I hate fighting over money, which is probably the reason that I will go down in history as the only poor Lebanese person in South Africa.  But, my wife and I have big plans for the next few months, so I at least need to put up some form of resistance.  When I was informed by the admittedly sympathetic HR lady (Heretofore abbreviated as ASHL) that the move would be a lateral one in terms of salary – A fancy corporate way of saying:  “We’re not giving you any more money” – I was a bit annoyed, and pointed out that my current role entitles me to a certain amount of incentive-based earning which they are completely disregarding in my new salary.  You can imagine how many fucks ASHL gave about this argument (Hint:  The answer is zero).  We went round and round for a bit, me pointing out that I actually exceeded my target for last year by 3 percent and ASHL pointing out that I’m already earning more than me maximum bracket for the position I’m interviewing for.  Eventually, it boiled down to ASHL telling me, in a very polite way, to take it or leave it.

 (Giant Parenthesis:  I am no big fan of HR people, in general.  I have only ever seen them do anything about anything when it was too late, and in smaller companies like mine they wield less power than they should because there are too many big fish in the small pond that can just override whatever HR says.  This, of course, is one of my sweeping generalizations, and I’m sure there are HR people who are very good at what they do, and make a difference in the lives of the employees they work with.   I just always have a mental image of most HR people sitting around a secret office somewhere, eating caramel popcorn and surfing Pinterest until an alarm goes off because someone did something like saying “You people” without quantifying it, or accidentally brushing a colleagues ass while walking past in a narrow corridor, then they swing into action, abseiling through the ceiling tiles to snatch you away to some sort of retraining camp where you spend six weeks breaking rocks and learning how not to be a sexist.  End Giant Parenthesis)

So, as emasculating as it was, I took it.  The statement I made on the phone to my wife a few minutes later was:  “It doesn’t matter what figure is printed on my payslip if I jump in front of a bus because I hate my job.”  (It should be noted for the record at this point that my wife agreed with this)  But it got me thinking:

I have spent the last 18 months or so working in sales.  In the ambit of this job, I have noticed how quickly and unashamedly certain people will mortgage the things they care about for a quick buck.  The logical conclusion is that they care about money more, which is fine, but bears further exploring as a concept, I think.

Where does the love of money come from, in terms of the whole hunter-gatherer thing?  Putting aside the fact that a certain amount of money is a necessity given that for anyone who isn’t a subsistence farmer, money = food, I think it boils down to the following:

-          Security:  In caveman terms, you need to have secured food, water and shelter not only for today, but for the foreseeable future as well.  This, I think, applies to fiscal matters, too:  I might have enough money to eat now, but if I have more money I know I’m guaranteed to eat tomorrow, as well. 

-          Status:  Status, in caveman terms, means that you are less likely to get fucked with, and therefore less likely to have your neighbour smash your head in with a rock and eat your carcass.  Status symbols in the past were always related to your ability to hunt, thus signifying physical strength and guile.  The guy with the biggest mammoth skull on his porch is obviously the strongest.  In this day and age, where we can just buy the mammoth skull instead of risking death by procuring it the usual way, money becomes a way to tell our neighbours to back the hell off.

-          Reproductive fitness:  Tied into the two points above.  I have plenty of food.  Nobody messes with me.  Hey gorgeous, you wanna have my babies?

How I think this effect has become distorted over the years is because when you’re a caveman, resources are limited.  There are only so many mammoths you can kill without exhausting the population or getting yourself turned into tusk kebab.  In the modern world, with the elimination of the Gold Standard and the invention of digital currency – As well as capitalism’s limitless creativity – money is effectively an infinite resource.  Thus, we just continue accumulating it past the point of it making any sense, in line with the “more is better” philosophy that so thoroughly drives the Meat Machine’s programming.

Bottom Line:  Money has become a proxy for tokens of self-worth.  These tokens are necessary for surviving where your neighbour doesn't.  So, we sniff the stuff out like our lives depended on it because, in a way, they do.

There is, of course, the moral question of how people behave in order to accumulate money.  But morals are flexible, and liable to change depending on how empty your stomach is.  And I also think that people too often confuse morals with opinions, so I choose not to use this forum to comment on how I think all BMW drivers are dicks…  For now, at least. 

Now, go back to your job and earn a buck.