Mining, envy and generational progress

A potpourri...

In 1787 William Wilberforce dedicated his life to the eradication of slavery and the reformation of manners in the United Kingdom. I have set my sights somewhat lower. I will be happy if I can popularize - a little - the remarkable contribution to history and human achievement made by the mining industry. Every significant civilization was powered by the fruits of mining - gold and silver primarily but also copper, tin, iron, and now lithium and a host of rare earth minerals which are actually quite common.

The gold and silver mines of Laurion provided the financing for the Golden Age of Athens. The mines of Spain fed the treasuries of both Carthage and subsequently Rome. Charles V borrowed the money to buy the votes to become the Holy Roman Emperor from the Fugger family who made their wealth from mining assets. Martin Luther’s father was a mining magnate, Cecil Rhodes made his fortune by consolidating the gold mines of South Africa and many of the American Robber Barons became wealthy from their mining assets. William Randolph Hearst inherited the money his father, George, made in the Homestake Mine of South Dakota and the Anaconda copper mine in Butte, Montana. J. P. Morgan, like Cecil Rhodes, made his money financing mining operations and was responsible for the successful development of the Sudbury nickel belt. The entire 28th chapter of the Book of Job is a description of mining. Mining was, is and will forever be a big deal.

Unsurprisingly, the industry attracts some very colourful people who want to become one percenters by making their fortunes in some remote part of the world. Think of the folks who trekked over the Chilkoot Trail to spend all the money they didn’t make in California or Russia, the two previous gold rushes. The Russian nobleman, Count Stroganoff, is known in history for both his culinary creation and for inheriting the fortune his predecessors made mining in the Ural mountains during the reign of Ivan IV.

The most famous geologist/miner in Peru was an Italian adventurer named Raimundi who reputedly said that Peru was un mendigo sentado en un banco de oro - a beggar sitting on a golden bench. My own mid career grab at the brass ring was centered on a small Peruvian community called Igor, named for the son of the Russian immigrant who hoped to make his fortune mining a gold breccia. A fortune was not to be for either of us.

But I did have the distinct pleasure of being the parade marshal for the 2006 version of Igor Daze. The religious holiday was actually called El Festival de Nuestra Senora de las Cuatro Puertas de las Montañas but Igor Daze is a better descriptor of the forty eight hour bacchanal. The day started with the mayor, a local priest, and me leading the dirtiest sheep I had ever seen around the village to consecrate the community. The sheep then became lunch for the onlookers. I remember thinking that we made a most unusual intersection of divergent world views.

My other chore was to judge the Caballo del Paso competition. These competitions, that can last for a week or more, involve judging Peruvian horses that have been trained to trot with a remarkably smooth gait. The Marinera dance portion of the competition is very beautiful to watch and owning such a horse is a mark of significant pride and distinction.

Caballo de Paso Video

So, lucky me. Except that I had no idea how to judge the horses and was very concerned about the unhappiness and potential violence sure to attend my selection. Giving everyone a ribbon would not work. That works in peewee hockey in Canada but it wouldn´t be acceptable to fiercely proud Peruvians who practice concealed carry. For several hours I watched the pageantry, thinking that these horses might be the last things I would see on earth. I finally decided that I would choose the horse with the most elaborate coverings and harness, I would watch the crowd carefully as the selection was announced, and would be prepared to run. As it turned out, the crowd accepted my choice, and I vowed never to put myself in such a position again.

The rest of the festivities produced less stress. I was the starter for the backwards donkey race which required me to count down from three - tres, dos, uno! - whereupon a local policeman would fire his pistol. It took some moments to have him point the gun into the hills rather than straight up as he couldn’t understand my concern about the return path of bullets which go straight up. Out of deference to my parade marshal status, he eventually allowed me to position his arm.

There was another remarkable race which generated a good laugh from my side. The community, at an elevation of 10,000 feet above sea level, was perched on a cliff overlooking the valley. The foot race was down the rocky access road for the eight kilometers that were visible and then back up again. Most of the runners ran with bare feet and a few wore work boots. All of them managed the sixteen kilometers with remarkable alacrity.

When the racers were sent off, everyone ran from the village square to the edge of the cliff to watch the race from above. Following them, I noticed that they all stopped running at a certain point and carefully picked their way forward. The mystery of their perambulation was revealed when I got to the “certain point” and realized that we were running through the village latrine and passage through the dense droppings required considerable care. It was an intense worldview moment - and very funny.

A large potluck dinner ended the festivities and, suffering from nervous exhaustion, I retired to my bunk and fell asleep to the sounds of loud music and alcohol induced fights.

At some point during the day, I had an interesting conversation with another visitor to the community. We discussed some of the interesting religious and cultural aspects of the festival and I voiced some concern that these subsistence agricultural workers might resent the Canadian gringo in their midst. My interlocutor assured me that I was wrong about this and that my presence added some gravitas to their celebration and would be mentioned with pride in the inevitable discussions with friends and relatives from other communities. He made his point by arguing,

“Who are you envious of? Do you resent Bill Gates or Donald Trump? No, of course not. You are envious of the people on your street who get a new car or boat. These people are envious of the neighbour who has a concrete floor or a new goat. It is the same thing.”

I think there is a lot of wisdom in his argument.  It reminded me of an earlier conversation with my aunt about growing up during the Depression.  In the 1920’s my paternal grandfather had earned enough from his farm to build a wooden house and a Dutch barn, buy farm machinery and drive a Ford car.  He lost nothing in the stock market crash of 1929 and did not have enough debt to attract the attention of the banks so was able to keep his land.  In the 1930’s, he went ten years without a crop and his car became a horse drawn “Bennet buggy”.  His children were in patched and re-patched, passed-down clothing.  Meals were fifty variations of oatmeal.  The uninsulated house built up a layer of ice on the inside walls during the winter and wood for the stove was hard to procure.  My aunt listed one morose detail after another of her life and when I expressed sympathy for what she and her siblings had to endure, she said,

“Endure!?  We had a perfectly wonderful childhood and my memories of it are only pleasant ones.”

“But with so little to eat and enjoy, how could it have been wonderful?”

“Because it was the same for everyone and we didn’t know any different.”

Envy is local and if there is no local point of envy, there will be no envy regardless of circumstances. 

I read recently about a poll which suggested that sixty eight percent of parents think their kids will be worse off financially than they are. In other words their intergenerational family progress has stalled out.  In 2017, thirteen percent of adolescents and young adults experienced major depression, an increase of fifty five percent from 2007. Is there a connection?

What is going on?  Is the anxiety and suicide ideation related somehow to envy and a feeling of “coming up short”?  Are kids today mistaking Facebook and Instagram and TicToc for “community” and making incorrect comparisons with a community which is not theirs and probably doesn’t even exist?  Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt make a convincing argument for this position (Rethinking safety culture)

Is it true that parents throughout time have desired that their children improve on their standard of living?  I don’t think there is much evidence for this anywhere in history. I don’t think my grandfather spent much time worrying about my father’s financial performance.  With three sons, he was more concerned with them going to war and not coming home.  My friends from Igor didn’t discuss how their children might make out in life.  They were happy if they made it to adulthood and could help with the potatoes.  I think mine was the first generation to worry about how our kids would make out in life. Perhaps it would have been better to attend to Jesus’ words,

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

My job was to provide them a secure, loving, and happy childhood.  With that they would have the tools to handle the future worries of their day.

Is it possible that the North American materialism of the last fifty years has created a society that is so narcissistic that its ignorant chauvinism will have to be beaten out of it through economic and social hard times before something close to sanity can prevail?  Money cannot be printed without creating inflation.  Economies are created by building things, not by creating ponzi schemes from banking manipulations. Men cannot have babies. Women do not have penises. Windmills and solar panels that provide energy twenty percent of the time cannot replace hydrocarbons or other energy sources that provide power one hundred percent of the time.  Carbon dioxide, with an atmospheric concentration of much less than one percent, is a friend to plants and not a thermostat for the world’s climate. 

Perhaps there is a “broken windows” thing going on. If we can’t get the easy things right then why would our children expect us to provide solutions to the hard things? Confirming the adolescent belief that “my parents are idiots” doesn’t provide much security to those children. And abandoning them to a faux community on TicTok is hardly providing a safe, secure, loving and happy childhood.

It is time we adults grow up.  Too many children are suffering for our stupidity.