Life and Times – Money is a Bummer

In a conversation I had with my friend Chris, he told me he was in a ‘moral quandary.’ He had been providing free temporary accommodation in his house to George, a former refugee, who he had previously helped to apply for ‘leave to remain’ in the UK and then to find regular employment. All had been going well between them until George went away for a few days and Chris received an email from him asking whether he could see his way to making him a loan of several thousand pounds. The purpose was to enable his wife and child, who were living in his former country, to come and visit him for a short period in accommodation he would find.

Chris asked me what I thought of this. I found it hard to say much, especially as I didn’t know the person in question, so I asked him what were his own feelings. He told me that, much as he wanted to help George and not disappoint him, he felt that this was an ask too far. George might think he (Chris) was well supplied with cash, but the reality was that the kind of loan George was asking for would make a significant impact on his savings and leave him feeling insecure about future unforeseen expenses or emergencies that might arise. George was also making a ‘solemn promise’ to pay the money back on a monthly basis over a period of a year. But though Chris didn’t doubt the sincerity of George’s intentions, he wasn’t convinced he’d be able to manage that.

In fact, the more he’d thought about it, he told me (and he’d thought a lot about it to the extent of losing sleep), the more his outlook veered back and forth. On the one hand he knew about how much George had suffered in his country of origin (a dictatorship), how resilient he’d been and how desperately he wanted to see his wife and child. And so one part of him wanted to say yes, just give him the money and the devil take the hindmost. But, at the other extreme he wondered whether, though he thought he knew George pretty well, he could exclude the possibility of some kind of scam. This had also been the reaction of a couple of other friends he’d talked to about it. Obviously Chris hoped not, but as he put it to me, ‘money is such a bummer’. I said: ‘Yes, true, 100 per cent.’ What he told me he was dreading above all was a face-to-face conversation with George telling him he couldn’t help.

I took Chris’s quandary away with me, almost made it my own and then emailed George suggesting the following. Firstly, since George had made his request by email, he should email him back first of all rather than talk to him in person. Secondly, he should tell George that, whatever he might think, he (Chris) didn’t have much at all in the way of savings and couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t need to call on his funds in short order. Thirdly, he should say he didn’t feel comfortable about George being in the position of having to make a regular reimbursement which he might come to find difficult or impossible. Chris emailed me back to say he’d take that on board and would let me know what happened.

So what did happen? What did Chris do? Well, he sent to George the kind of response I’d suggested but was then in trepidation knowing that, when George got back, there’d still have to be some kind of face-to-face conversation. But when that happened, it was actually George who started it and said he fully understood Chris’s position, that he was sorry and realised he shouldn’t have asked – after all he’d been living with Chris rent-free and that was more than enough. Chris was massively relieved, almost in tears. He told George that he fully understood George’s position too and how difficult things were for him, and he could only thank him for what he’d said. Since then, Chris tells me, they’ve grown a lot closer as friends, and, since it was obvious to him that George had been sincere in his apology, they now understood each other better than ever.

A happy ending? Well sort of. But, at the same time, what better example of two of the many obstacles that the society we live in puts up against humans living lives of comfort, fulfilment and cooperation? The first of these obstacles is the physical barrier known as borders (or frontiers), separating families from one another and separating us all from our fellow human beings who happen, purely by chance, to have been born on a different part of the planet. The second is the noxious effect of money, the ultimate arbiter of how people live, where they live, and, in many cases, whether they live or die. Left to ourselves, most of us would exhibit the natural human tendency to be pro-social and empathetic, as in the case of my friend Chris with his guest George. But how difficult is that made by the system of division into states that capitalism demands and the extraordinary inequality based on the possession of wealth and resources that is its hallmark and that means that, while some individuals control fortunes larger than the economic output of entire countries, other human beings struggle to obtain adequate food, shelter, clean water and healthcare. What stands out clearly is that we need to collectively decide to dispense with this system and replace it with a world of common ownership of all resources and free access to all goods and services. While some may say that such an arrangement is some way off, that does not make it any the less worth striving for.

HOWARD MOSS