Article
Attention
Comment
Economics
1 min read

Budgeting for discontent

The Chancellor can't please everyone, but is contentment possible?

Paul Valler is an executive coach and mentor. He is a former chair of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A woman stands behind a lectern against a blue and red backdrop.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves speaks at a recent event.
HM Treasury.

As the Chancellor Rachel Reeves seeks to raise billions in this Autumn budget, the news media are all over the downsides.  Poor pensioners freezing during winter and businesses complaining of the tax burden are political headlines. Tough choices must be made, but we are rarely happy when it comes to money.  

Economic discontent is ironically a cultural norm in first world countries.  In the west we have become used to what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill – adjusting our expectations to any new benefits and finding ourselves wanting even more, to try to maintain the same level of happiness.  It’s a mentality that dooms us to discontent.   Socrates said, ‘He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.’    

Contentment seems to be a forgotten virtue today, and increasingly elusive in a society striving for happiness through wealth.  Yet being content in life is a more valuable form of wealth than money.  There is something enormously attractive about a tranquil state of mind and heart.  Contentment does not mean passive acquiescence; there is a noble side to being passionately discontented about something that is unjust – especially when we are fighting for others.  William Wilberforce demonstrated that with his campaign for the repeal of laws allowing slavery. 

Our personal challenge is to be content in ourselves, whatever the circumstances. Oscar Wilde said, ‘True contentment is not having everything, but being satisfied with everything you have.’   Practising paying attention to what we do have and being thankful for it.  That attitude of gratitude is a recognised way to lift our mood and strengthen our resilience.  But thankfulness doesn’t solve every problem.  Warm words may help warm hearts, but they don’t heat cold homes.  Although gratitude is proven to improve our wellbeing, it’s not enough to compensate for all the problems of life.  Because here’s the deal; life is tough and then you die, and there are many worse things than economic woes. 

Pain, grief and loss are all too common, and they can test our resilience beyond what feels like our ability to endure.  Chronic physical or mental illness for example; or being permanently disabled.  Or the life-sapping effort to parent children with special needs; or caring for a parent/partner with dementia - especially when it goes on and on.  Sometimes horrible events happen like violent abuse, or the deep grief of relationship breakdown or bereavement.  This level of suffering pushes us to the end of ourselves, to the place where something more than psychological self-help is needed.  What is the secret of contentment then? 

I don’t envy the Chancellor, and I do not trivialise the very real challenges raised by having to make tough economic choices.

This is where the secular and the Christian worldview are radically different. Secular philosophers call people to show their own self-sufficiency and superior reason when enduring suffering.  This can feel principled and stoic, but it lacks empathy and hope. Christianity accepts the reality of our own weakness and insufficiency, recognising that we can’t fix everything ourselves.  Instead of trusting in humanity, we choose to trust God both for this life and the life to come.  And this trust and hope is linked to a deeper form of contentment, which transcends pure rationality. 

Of course, sceptics say this is just psychological comfort from an imaginary friend, and it doesn’t make sense, because surely any good God would not allow us to suffer in the first place.  But any realist must acknowledge that a lot of human suffering comes from the damaging exercise of our own free will.  Wars and slavery are examples.  If God were to override our free will, we would be robbed of the authentic capacity to love, which makes us fully human.  The coexistence of free will, suffering and God is a complex issue. 

The experience of millions of Christ followers is that trusting God is much more than imaginary comfort.  God is real and prayer changes things; the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences can be affected by it.  And prayer changes us.  In our vulnerability, if we choose to trust God something changes, we begin to relax, things become a bit easier to bear.  In fact, the apostle Paul claimed that Christ’s power was perfected in his own weakness.   

Contentment is a strange peace that comes from trusting God in the middle of difficult circumstances.  One of the great old hymns was written by a man who lost his four daughters in an accident at sea, and also lost all his money in a fire.  The refrain says, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’   This isn’t denial or delusion, it is the inner sense of quietness that God can give.   Only an eternal perspective allows for that kind of contentment. 

I don’t envy the Chancellor, and I do not trivialise the very real challenges raised by having to make tough economic choices.  Britain is clearly in a place where some stringent fiscal discipline is needed, and that will inevitably cause some hardship and difficulties.  But in the face of all the discontent that is so freely shared in the news, there is another way to respond.  Instead of complaining about our flawed Government or moaning about our circumstances, we can change our perspective to put our trust in the ultimate Authority.  And in doing so can find a peace that the world cannot give.   Contentment is a treasure beyond the wealth of nations.   

Article
Culture
Digital
Economics
Psychology
6 min read

Do you believe in a coin called hope?

From fiat to faith: the rise of crypto evangelism
 An image show a braclet that has a bitcoin symbol beside a cross, a crescent and a Star of David.

“The bridge from chaos to hope.” This was the rather grandiose language used on social media platform X last summer by one prolific tweeter boasting 4.4 million followers. What they were describing, however, was not a religion or philosophy, nor a social movement or political party, nor a breakthrough in medical technology or a self-help technique. Rather, financier Michael Saylor was talking about the world's biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin. 

Saylor’s profile on X declares that “#Bitcoin is hope.com”. That website contains, among other things, video clips of Saylor talking about how “bitcoin is the manifest destiny for the United States of America”, “bitcoin is economic immortality”, “bitcoin is forever money” and so forth. 

Saylor is in fact just one - albeit a particularly successful one (his net wealth stands at around $10 billion, according to Forbes) - of a number of vocal crypto advocates, trying to explain the huge, transformational impact on society that the cryptocurrency will supposedly have. Their precise arguments can vary, but are often along the following lines: the fiat money system is broken due to manipulation by governments and central banks - for instance through money printing - leaving control of the money supply in the hands of a small group of the rich, while the purchasing power of the general public is eroded; in contrast, bitcoin is incorruptible, not controlled by the government, available to everyone and finite in supply. 

A common thread running through some of the writings and talks of a number of these bitcoin enthusiasts is a quasi-religious language, used to convey bitcoin’s importance. 

Hope.com, for instance, includes a research paper on “The bitcoin reformation”. Its author writes: “It wasn’t until I studied the era around the Protestant Reformation that I felt I’d found a potential blueprint of sufficient scope” to describe what is happening with bitcoin. 

Particularly vocal crypto proponents are known as bitcoin evangelists, while some crypto investors will talk of fellow “bitcoin believers”. They can even drink their coffee from a ‘bitcoin salvation’ mug) (which depicts two winged cherubs holding the cryptocurrency). Non-believing sceptics are termed “no-coiners”. 

Early bitcoin adopter Roger Ver - who has been indicted on fraud and tax charges, which he says are false - is known by the nickname “bitcoin Jesus”. One non-profit decentralised community is named Bitcoin God. 

The precise mix of irony and sincerity being used in such examples is of course debatable and will vary. Nevertheless, among the most fervent crypto investors there appears to be an earnest belief in the transforming power of bitcoin. 

But there may be additional reasons why some of the most fervent proponents instinctively reach for such language. 

“There’s a link with forms of transhumanism - the idea that we’re in the middle of an upgrade of humanity.” 

Dr Roger Bretherton, a clinical psychologist and Seen & Unseen contributor, argues there are elements of tribalism and “the psychology of identity” in some of the most cultic aspects of the crypto world. He sees some similarities there with “old 60s cults of people believing UFOs were going to land in their backyard”, talking about crypto as a cult rather than crypto as a currency.

“People overlap their identity [with a particular movement]. They're saying ‘that's me, that's who I am,’” he said. 

“In periods of uncertainty we seek to find certainty in our groups. We're in an individualistic society.” 

Use of religious language also points to a belief that bitcoin/crypto/blockchain will bring about some form of a radical global change less on the scale of an incremental technological development, and more akin to a transformational religious experience. 

“There's an element of faith and an eschatology attached to crypto: 'this is the new thing that will change the world,'” said Bretherton. 

“There’s a link with forms of transhumanism - the idea that we’re in the middle of an upgrade of humanity - the kingdom of tech is coming. It feels like crypto becomes part of the same narrative. The key question is whether our future lies in technology and power, or in love.” 

For such fervent bitcoin proponents, attempts to rubbish their beliefs are often futile. Indeed, trying to do so may only serve to strengthen the believer’s resolve that they are right. 

“There's a cognitive dissonance,” said Bretherton. “The more ridicule you've had to go through, the more you've given up, the more social difficulty you've gone through - particularly if you've given up a career to pursue crypto - then the stronger your belief. It's the sunk cost fallacy.” 

So far, bitcoin believers have proved the doubters wrong. The price of the coin has gone from less than $20,000 in the wake of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in late 2022 to around $118,000 at the time of writing. Saylor has turned MicroStrategy (now known as Strategy) - the company of which he was CEO in 2020 when he decided to use it to buy and hoard bitcoin - into a $110bn market cap firm that has spawned many copycats.  

But what importance bitcoin eventually assumes in society is still very much an open question. It has not yet become a form of payment for our morning coffee or for buying a house, and maybe it never will. Whether it can really function as “digital gold”, a hedge against inflation or “a bank in cyberspace” (as Saylor calls it) is debatable. But it has already made huge strides, soaring to a market price well above what most people would ever have imagined. In July, US Congress passed a landmark bill regulating stablecoins - a type of cryptocurrency pegged typically to the dollar - in what is being seen as a huge step forward for the industry. 

Nevertheless, it seems likely that some of the wilder claims made about bitcoin may not come to pass. What happens if true believers are left disappointed? 

Bretherton says such belief systems have to subtly change their “metanarrative” as and when they do not deliver on initial promises. 

“It can't make predictions that can be shown to be false,” he said. “If crypto doesn't deliver its promises in the future, it has to find another way that's softer but which lasts. So it either collapses or it finds a way to become more nuanced."  

Whatever importance bitcoin eventually assumes in society, our desire to put our faith in it - or in anything else - reveals something deeper about our human nature. 

In the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes explores humankind’s attempts to find meaning in human lives without God. The main character tries career, pleasure and wealth. But ultimately, they find that these things are just “meaningless”, “vapour” or “chasing after the wind”. 

That search for meaning, for the eternal, is inbuilt in our character. As the book’s author puts it: God has “set eternity in the human heart”.  

We are not designed merely to be born, to live and then to die. Instead, each one of us has been created with an inherent desire to know if there is something eternal out there, and to find out whether we can be part of that story. Crypto cannot offer us that salvation. The only thing or person who can, the author of Ecclesiastes would argue, is the One who put that desire in us in the first place.  

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