A Money Lesson from Matt Weinstein

The TED site has started post­ing the best TED-esque con­tent from else­where on the web. My favourite so far is this one from Matt Wein­stein. In it he describes a money les­son he learned in Antarctica.

I find the way he han­dled this really amaz­ing.  I guess, to keep it all in per­spec­tive, he has been suc­cess­ful enough in his life that a bank­ruptcy won’t destroy him really. And there is a huge dif­fer­ence between this rel­a­tive finan­cial dev­as­ta­tion and the real hor­rors being faced now by the peo­ple of Haiti. Still there’s an impor­tant les­son in this about hav­ing the right per­spec­tive toward money. For Mr Wein­stein money didn’t give him secu­rity. He could only really know he was going to be okay in life if he had a com­mu­nity around him.

An Econ­o­mist I heard lec­ture in Lon­don once told me that cap­i­tal­ist (fis­cally right-wing) ideas  are based on a cer­tain under­stand­ing of suc­cess, whereas social­ist ide­olo­gies are based on an under­stand­ing of fail­ure. It seems depress­ing to say it, but as rich as you might be, fail­ure is an ever-present pos­si­bil­ity. The only real secu­rity is invest­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, giv­ing our time, our money and shar­ing our lives (i.e. shar­ing our mean­ing, our sto­ries).

All that is not given is lost.

P.S. I’m sure all of you have already donated to Haiti relief. (Likely the biggest human­i­tar­ian cri­sis in the past 50 years). But if you haven’t got­ten around to it yet, or you’d like to give some more, I’ve found a great estab­lished char­ity in the coun­try, called Part­ners in Health.