Keeping Score

My maternal grandfather was a selfish man. He was also an accomplished businessman who, by most measures, was extraordinarily wealthy. I can’t help but admire his resolve: though he started from abject poverty and never had the opportunity at a serious education, he managed, in his lifetime, to create nothing less than an IT empire.

The company he began was — at one point — one of the most robust suppliers of semiconductors in the world. And it all started when he was a teenager, walking the streets of Taipei until his feet bled, begging one Japanese supplier after the next to buy his ideas. They rejected him time and time again, but he refused to give up. Eventually, he compelled them to give him a chance.

The fear of scarcity built in this man a lust for power. He went on to have seven children (and some others via secret marriages), all of whom he intentionally pit into competition with each other, conflating access to his fortune with the purchase of his affection. His strategy relied on monetizing ties with those closest to him. But so what? Money was just a way of keeping score.

Anteros, the god of selfless, philanthropic love, in Piccadilly Circus

Though he was an incredibly healthy man in his 20′s, he experimented with drugs that made his body temporarily superhuman — capable of doing business whenever, wherever. He eventually developed tremors that became Parkinson’s disease, but that did not stop him. To him, the cost was more than worth the reward. “Make as much as you can. For as long as you can. Whoever has the most when he dies, WINS.”

My grandfather died in 2002 and was buried on Christmas Day. At the end of his life, he committed his soul to God to allay the demons that tortured him. My father recalls that they buried him with his favorite watch, pen, and palm pilot. These were his best friends, so to speak, and they went to the grave with him.

My parents have told me that I remind them of him. They say that I can be cold, calculating, and analytical — rejecting sentimentality as inefficient and capable of great accomplishment through sheer force of will. Though there will always be parts of my personality that recall his, I have dedicated my life to fighting his beliefs that life is about accumulation and that avarice is the key to success.

Lanterns in Chinatown, commemorating the Mid-Autumn Festival

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandfather over the last several weeks. In the graphic design elective I’m taking, we’ve been asked to examine the idea of “wealth” from whatever angle we want to take. The first brief asks us to look at the idea of “currency” and to design our own. This has inspired me to think deeply about what it is I value.

In all honesty, I’ve had a difficult relationship with money for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I saw my parents amass a fortune only to lose it overnight. While I am deeply aware of the danger of attaching too much meaning to material wealth, I can’t shake the fear that I will not be able to support my family with the career I’ve chosen.

Ever since I took a class back at Princeton with Viviana Zelizer on the role of money in social life, I have been obsessed with the idea that our society’s understanding of money is deeply flawed. Most people believe that money is inherently evil and that it necessarily corrupts intimate relationships. We tell ourselves that love can’t be bought, but the truth is that we use money to reinforce social ties all the time: we invite friends out for drinks, we take prospective soul mates out on dates, and we buy gifts for our spouses in an effort to show our affection.

Côte’s amazing eggs florentine, my favorite luxury meal

Gary Alan Fine gives a particularly instructive example in his review of Zelizer’s work: “Of all of the economic transactions that we accept without thought, obtaining the services of a babysitter is among the most startling. Parents transfer their most valuable financial asset (their home) and their most precious emotional asset (their child) to the care of – what? – a 12 year old. And then they typically pay this caregiver – what? – less than minimum wage.”

Though we aren’t always aware of it, money represents a social agent that forms interpersonal relationships and establishes intimate connections. It can also tear people apart: my uncle once sued my grandfather for rights to a piece of jointly-owned real estate. In a way, then, I think that the redesign of currency has more to do with reconfiguring what our society values than it does with selecting what figurehead appears on the bill — a process by which people come to understand themselves as masters of money instead of slaves to it.

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from the Thames

In many ways, I am discovering that my project in the Helen Hamlyn Centre is largely geared around framing the conversation about older people’s sexuality in terms of a broader discussion on intimacy as a basic human need. Instead of pretending that older people don’t have sex or mocking older adults’ sexuality via abhorrent mediums like “granny porn,” I’m interested in the idea that intimacy is itself a form of currency that we exchange in order to sustain a sense of self-worth. Everyone wants to be held and loved — to be somebody else’s world entire.

But our tendency is to hide sexuality and desire behind a cloak of secrecy and shame. In the age of the Internet, it’s become so easy to relegate sex to anonymous online outlets like Craigslist and X-rated chat rooms. I’ve spent the last couple of days making a poster that comments on the sense of entrapment and vulnerability that I think underlies Craigslist personal ads, thousands of which are posted everyday by lonely people across the world. I almost never post in-progress designs on this blog, but I think I need to stop being so precious with my work, so here goes.

Poster on currency for the Communication Art & Design Course

I’ve struggled a lot with loneliness here in London. It’s been incredibly difficult adjusting to the overwhelming sense of absence that has accompanied my move away from Princeton. I had proven my worth there and had friends that made me feel loved and purposeful. I deeply miss one person, in particular, who was able to make me feel safe and necessary.

Over the past several weeks, however, I have started to draw confidence and courage from a new-found belief that emotional ties do not necessarily weaken with time and distance. Relationships may change, but they don’t necessarily dissolve. Human connection unites us more powerfully than we know.

Utlimately, then, I reject the notion that I have to be cold and uncompromising in my approach to life in order to be successful. My grandfather was exemplary at garnering a financial fortune, but I wonder if he was ever truly satisfied with his work or even paused to question what it was all worth. While I grapple daily with anxieties about money and self-worth, I am finding that I am mostly content with the life I am leading. I spend every day in the company of talented people who believe intensely in their work. They are helping me understand that self-honesty is a prerequisite of true wealth.

Wonderful new friends, Joe and Mike, dressed for Halloween

I admire my grandfather’s conviction to his life’s mission. He cared intensely about success and sought self-perfection in the way he understood it. He refused to let fear and doubt stand in the way of his personal ambitions, and he made sure his children never lacked for food and shelter. And yet, I can’t help thinking that — in his heart of hearts — he never fully escaped the desperation and impoverishment of his youth.

Three years ago, a wise Indian man left me with a message I’ll never forget: judge your work on the quality of the effort rather than on the end result. Life is about what you do and not where it gets you. I think I am only just now beginning to understand what it is he meant.