Some Thoughts on Wealth, Greed, and the Human Family

I’d like to share a joke my good friend Henry once told me. A wife looked at her recently deceased husband lying in his casket and spoke aloud, “Robert, do you remember the luxury car you promised to buy me and never did? Well, it’s parked in the driveway now! Robert, do you remember that diamond ring you promised to buy me and never did? It’s on my finger now! Robert, do you remember that fur coat you promised to buy me and never did? I’m wearing it now, with nothing under it! And Robert, remember how you insisted that when you die, I should bury you with all of your money? Well, I have written you a cheque, cash it when you get to the other side!”

This joke speaks about avarice, something my wise and beloved Aunt Amy counselled me about. Aunt Amy, an everyday philosopher, used to say, “If life was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live, and the poor would die.” Truer words were never spoken! If one analyzes the number of preventable deaths amongst impoverished black, and other, communities in the USA (for example), the truth becomes obvious. In the country that often prides itself on being the “richest” in the world (here economic wealth, sadly, seems to be the only or primary measure), with no universal healthcare, the best medical care is only given to those who can afford it. We see this reflected in news reports of everyday Americans who are one pay cheque away from catastrophic debt and who are wiped out financially by one healthcare crisis.

To be clear, I am not saying that Canada is perfect! An article in The Guardian from 2023 reported that some 20% of Canadians do not have a primary care physician. Quebec, for instance, has one of the worst healthcare systems in Canada with 28% of the population being without a primary care physician. As my daughter Charmaine (Black Maple Magazine’s editor-in-chief) reported from the front lines for years when she lived in Montreal, this meant racing from clinic to clinic where one was made to wait for hours to be seen by often suspiciously un(der)qualified doctors who did not know your medical history. This too is clearly a recipe for disaster. Or as Charmaine predicted, a recipe for provincial residents to die of completely preventable causes like drug interactions, since patients in these situations were unlikely to be treated by the same doctors (people who had knowledge of their health histories) more than once.

Yet another issue is what “the best” healthcare actually means. Of course, this is typically understood as western-style care based upon treating symptoms with prescription medications which often cause multiple side effects and require – you guessed it – more medications and not diagnosing or rectifying the root causes of illness through inquiries into things like a patient’s diet, exercise, family and medical histories, and lifestyle.

There are 8.2 billion people on the planet, all of us experiencing the gift of human life. We have a duty to protect the planet and each other, and this obligation should not be reliant upon rich people’s ideas of who is worthy of care. Aunt Amy’s maxim was really about greed and the inhumanity that it inspires. If you look around, you can see that many of us in the human family are actively destroying  the planet that is our home, planet earth, which is, at the moment (and despite Elon Musk’s desires) the only home we have. The idea that we can trash it and simply fly off to another one is catastrophically short-sighted and exemplary of the logic of people who are not students of history. How well have human forays into colonization gone thus far? Are we not still cleaning up the mess of Europe’s centuries-long imperial exploits? Surely, the next logical step is not to branch ever outward to other planets with this same imperialist thinking!

As someone who worked in the financial industry for years, I am not against capitalism. But I see no reason why capitalism must conflict with altruism. They are not incompatible. As my daughter Charmaine has aptly noted, American philanthropy puts Canadian philanthropy to shame. Of course, this is in part due to the massive distinction between our much smaller Canadian population (40 million) and America’s very large one (over 340 million), but it is also about an American ethos of giving and a culture of stepping in to rectify government failings and blind spots. Such “emergency funding” was recently announced by the Mellon Foundation in April 2025 as a measure to shore up state arts councils across the USA in the wake of federal cuts.

What we are doing to ourselves and to each other is unsustainable. As a way forward, I’d like to suggest that we use the word L.I.F.E as an acronym. Let the “L” stand for our LOVE of the Creator, each other, and ourselves. Let “I” stand for our INTEREST in our planet and the human family. Let “F” stand for the FAIRNESS through which we engage with each other. And let “E” stand for the EFFORT and ENERGY which should characterize the things that we do.

Many of our current problems are the result of an attention economy which is fueled by our digital age (also known as the information age), a moment in which every little asinine thing is amplified by social media and traditional news. It seems to me that we have lost our way. But since Black Maple Magazine is about critical thought, creative ideas, and innovative solutions, I’d like to suggest a path forward by articulating some steps we can take right now:

• Agree that some science is settled and indisputable (like climate science) and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and other practices that are destroying our planet.
• Make sure our brothers and sisters around the world, those who, for whatever reason, can’t fully provide for themselves, have the shelter, food, and healthcare/medicine that they need to thrive
• Reevaluate and remake our value systems. What do we hold dear and why? What can we do to make life better for each other, the planet, and in turn, ourselves?
• Develop a practice of mindfulness, kindness, and giving to yourself and to others.
• If you have lived long enough you will know from experience that the law of attraction (otherwise known as Karma) is real. So, if for no other reason than self-preservation, we should all be focused on demonstrating love, doing good deeds, and putting enlightened energy into the world. What you put out, really does come back to you, not always immediately and not always from the same source, but it returns.
• Try to see the world through another person’s eyes. In a world where bullying is being modelled in the highest political offices on the planet, it is easy to think that name-calling , pettiness, and aggression is acceptable. It is not! Our children and grandchildren are watching us. As a human who has experienced my life as a black man, I know that I cannot fully understand what it is to be female or a woman. But as a father of daughters, I must do my best to understand what it means to walk in the world as a black woman, for their good and for that of other females.
• It is easy to feel helpless when we identify a problem which seems insurmountable because we do not have the knowledge or the power to change it. But we must remember that there is always someone who has both, and we can assist by assisting them. This means, when we can, we should endeavour to support charitable organizations, non-profits, and other entities that do good in the world.
• As far as I am aware, the expression “you can’t take it with you” is accurate. This means, even if your coffin is lined with one-hundred-dollar bills, they will not be useful to you once you are buried because – you guessed it – you’ll be dead! Therefore, while creating and preserving wealth is good, we must also think about what we do with our wealth and who we can help in this life and after we are long gone.

In this divisive political climate with a myriad of seemingly irresolvable problems, it is easy to throw our hand up, turn away, and play the blame game. But there is another way forward. Together, let’s choose a path of love, light, and endless human possibility  for good.