Bill Bryson shares some biblical wisdom

I have recently finished reading “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson (see Reading 2009 for a short review).

Here is some thinking from Bill Bryson.

“By the closing years of the 1950s most people – certainly most middle-class people – had pretty much everything they had ever dreamed of, so increasingly there was nothing much to do with their wealth but buy more and bigger versions of things they didn’t truly require: second cars, lawn tractors, double-width fridges, hi-fis with bigger speakers and more knobs to twiddle, extra phones and television, room intercoms, gas grills, kitchen gadgets, snowblowers, you name it.  Having more things of course also meant having more complexity in one’s life, more running costs, more things to look after, more things to clean, more things to break down.  Women increasingly went out to work to help keep the whole enterprise afloat.  Soon millions of people were caught in a spiral in which they worked harder and harder to buy labour-saving devices that they wouldn’t have needed, if they hadn’t been working so hard in the first place.”

“By the 1960’s the average American was producing twice as much as only fifteen years before.  In theory at least, people could now afford to work a four-hour day, or a two-and-a-half day week, or a six-month year and still maintain a standard of living equivalent to that enjoyed by people in 1950 when life was already pretty good – and arguably, in terms of stress and distraction and sense of urgency, in many respects much better.  Instead and most uniquely among developed nations, Americans took none of the productivity gains in additional leisure.  We decided to work and buy and have instead.” p267-268

And now let the Teacher speak:

Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.

As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?

The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,

or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when he has a son
there is nothing left for him.

Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb,
and as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labor
that he can carry in his hand.

This too is a grievous evil:
As a man comes, so he departs,
and what does he gain,
since he toils for the wind?

All his days he eats in darkness,
with great frustration, affliction and anger.

Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God.  He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.

(Ecclesiastes 5:8-20)

~ by John on October 20, 2009.