I always wondered what my parents meant with the expression “you cannot eat your money”. They valued education to the extent that the ensured that those who wanted it achieved higher degrees, mostly to earn money and exit poverty. My father especially insisted that besides getting an education we each learnt to do something like carpentry, plumbing, making a wall and growing our own food and will not have to depend on the services of other. Among other things, I think he reasoned that one cannot “eat money”. I suspect he also meant we ought to save a lot for hard times. One of my brothers, who could not be bothered with education, a higher degree, or planting anything, often responded to my father with these words: “Sure, you cannot eat it, I can. Hand it over to me.” I am not surprised that he is a very thriving businessman.
He, of course does not earn the six figures salary as a third of a million people in England earn. Some of these embarrassingly rich earners do have a problem with their surplus income. They do not know how to spend their money. So guess what? According to Simon Jenkins [writing in The Guardian, Friday June 15, 2007, p.34] “They eat it, converting the process into a semi-mystical experience”. Their urine only tell part of the story!
My parents would be shocked to know that my brother may have been on to something. Here people are eating their money, but perhaps not the way my parents would have dreamt of. To eat their money, these rich folks have turned a loaf of bread into something mystical: sourdough, ciabatta, sperlonga, chollah, wheat-free or chickpea and a number of other fancy names that they will pay mind-boggling amounts for. Food for these earners, according to Jenkins, has crossed “a conceptual barrier from banality to intellectualism”.
Designer food shops and shelves - the new temples of the rich - combine chemistry, aesthetics, theology and spirituality to bombard shoppers with moral sayings and foods that travel in club class from remote corners of the world (without a thought to the environment) to upstage local varieties and products and to be renamed and purchased at exorbitant prices.
And, it is not only the high cost that is disgusting; it is also the amount that is thrown away occupying landfill spaces, not to mention how many people go hungry everyday while these folks luxuriate in their money. Besides the rich and expensive excretory products that pass out of the body exits, one wonders how many of these folks are happy and less anxious! Here is an opportunity to put a whole new spin on Jesus' comment about what defiles a person and how! So what next for these people who do not know what to do with their surpluses?
He, of course does not earn the six figures salary as a third of a million people in England earn. Some of these embarrassingly rich earners do have a problem with their surplus income. They do not know how to spend their money. So guess what? According to Simon Jenkins [writing in The Guardian, Friday June 15, 2007, p.34] “They eat it, converting the process into a semi-mystical experience”. Their urine only tell part of the story!
My parents would be shocked to know that my brother may have been on to something. Here people are eating their money, but perhaps not the way my parents would have dreamt of. To eat their money, these rich folks have turned a loaf of bread into something mystical: sourdough, ciabatta, sperlonga, chollah, wheat-free or chickpea and a number of other fancy names that they will pay mind-boggling amounts for. Food for these earners, according to Jenkins, has crossed “a conceptual barrier from banality to intellectualism”.
Designer food shops and shelves - the new temples of the rich - combine chemistry, aesthetics, theology and spirituality to bombard shoppers with moral sayings and foods that travel in club class from remote corners of the world (without a thought to the environment) to upstage local varieties and products and to be renamed and purchased at exorbitant prices.
And, it is not only the high cost that is disgusting; it is also the amount that is thrown away occupying landfill spaces, not to mention how many people go hungry everyday while these folks luxuriate in their money. Besides the rich and expensive excretory products that pass out of the body exits, one wonders how many of these folks are happy and less anxious! Here is an opportunity to put a whole new spin on Jesus' comment about what defiles a person and how! So what next for these people who do not know what to do with their surpluses?
Jenkins offers a further thought that "after the soul food will come the soul, after the body the mind". One supermarket "will offer five minutes of oxygen inhalant flown in from the Arctic to raise Green awareness". Another "will hit back with 30 minutes Buddhist chants". And yet another "will invite shoppers to sit under a triangle to feel the vibrations of Omega 3" and what have you. "Whole foods will offer a choice of premade religions with ‘guaranteed happiness' " or instant refund. And do not even mention the "lectures, therapies, analysis, [talk-shows] and book signings” that will follow.
My parents, like billions of others, would continue to find all of this obscenely mind-boggling. My brother, on the other hand, may be thinking of and calculating ways that he can beat all those supermarkets offer with something cheaper from somewhere in Guyana and the Caribbean. In the meantime, I shall delight in my own easily cooked peas and rice, creole fish stew, breadfruit salad and washed down with the unbeatable sorrel drink tempered with a touch of 25 year old El Dorado rum! And my supermarket is the indoor people's market in Birmingham.
My parents, like billions of others, would continue to find all of this obscenely mind-boggling. My brother, on the other hand, may be thinking of and calculating ways that he can beat all those supermarkets offer with something cheaper from somewhere in Guyana and the Caribbean. In the meantime, I shall delight in my own easily cooked peas and rice, creole fish stew, breadfruit salad and washed down with the unbeatable sorrel drink tempered with a touch of 25 year old El Dorado rum! And my supermarket is the indoor people's market in Birmingham.
copyright jagessar
