The question of the possession of property, I read somewhere lately, has now become a religious question. On the other hand, the religious people assert that the possession of property can never be a religious question, because in his religious soul a man is indifferent to property either way. I only care about property, money, possessions of any sort, when I have no religion in me. As soon as real religion enters, out goes my interest in the things of this world.
This, I consider, is hard lines on a man; since I must spend the best part of my day earning my living and acquiring a modicum of possession, I must acknowledge myself a religionless wretch most of my time: or else I must be a possessionless beggar and a parasite on industrious men.
There is something wrong with the arrangement. Work is supposed to be sacred, wages are slightly contemptible and mundane, and a savings bank account is distinctly irreligious, as far as pure religion goes. Where are we, quite?
No getting away from it, there is something rather mean about saving money. But still more fatal is the disaster of having no money at all, when you need it.
The trouble about this property business, money, possessions, is that we are most of us exceedingly and excruciatingly bored by it. Our fathers got a great thrill out of making money, building their own houses, providing for their old age and laying by something for their children. Children inherit their father’s leavings; they never inherit their father’s and mother’s thrill; never more than the tail end of it: a point to which parents are consistently blind. If my father was thrilled by saving up, I shall be thrilled by blowing my last shilling. If my father gave all he had to the poor, I shall quite enjoy making things pleasant for my own little self. If my father wasted, I shall probably economize. Unless, of course, my father was a jolly waster.
But fathers for the last fifty years have been saving up, building their own houses, acquiring neat little properties, leaving small inheritances to their children, and preaching the sanctity of work. And they have pretty well worn it all out. The young don’t believe in the sanctity of work, they are bored by the thought of saving up for their children. If they do build themselves a little house, they are tired of it in ten minutes. They want a car to run around in, and money to spend; but possessions, as possessions, are simply a bore to them. What’s the fun owning things, anyway, unless you can do something with them?
So that the young are approaching the religious indifference to property, out of sheer boredom.
But being bored by property doesn’t solve the problem. Because, no matter how bored you may be, you’ve got to live, and to do so you have to earn a living, and you have to own a certain amount of property. If you have wife and children, the earning and the property are a serious matter. So, many young men today drive themselves along in work and business, feeling a distinct inner boredom with it all, and bemoaning a thankless existence.
What’s to be done about it? Why, nothing, all in a hurry. The thing to do is to face the situation. A young man today says to himself: I’m bored! I’m bored by making money slowly and meagrely, I’m bored at the thought of owning my own little bit. Why haven’t I a maiden aunt who’ll die and leave me a thousand a year? Why can’t I marry a rich wife? Why doesn’t somebody set me up for life? Why...?
This seems to be peculiarly the attitude of the young Englishman. He truly doesn’t want much, it’s not riches he’s after. All he wants, he says, is independence. By which he means, not real independence at all, but freedom from the bore of having to make a living.
To make a living was to our fathers and grandfathers an adventure; to us it is no more an adventure, it is a bore. And the situation is serious. Because, after all, it is change in feelings which makes changes in the world.
When it says in The Times: The question of the possession of property has now become a religious question — it does not mean that the question whether I shall own my little six-roomed house or not has become a religious question. It is a vague hint at national ownership. It is becoming a religious question with us now, whether the nation or whether private individuals shall own the land and the industries. This is what is hinted at.
And perhaps national or private ownership is indeed becoming a religious question. But if so, like the question of a man and his own little house, it is becoming religious not because of our passionate interest in it, but because of our deadly indifference. Religion must be indifferent to the question of ownership, and we are, au fond, indifferent. Most men are inwardly utterly bored by the problem of individual ownership or national ownership; and therefore, at this point, they are inwardly utterly religious.
Ownership altogether has lost its point, its vitality. We are bored by ownership, public or private, national or individual. Even though we may hang on like grim death to what we’ve got, if somebody wants to snatch it — and the instinct is perfectly normal and healthy — still, for all that, we are inwardly bored by the whole business of ownership. And the sooner we realize it, the better. It saves us from the bogey of Bolshevism.
If we could come to a fair unanimity on this point — the point that ownership is boring, making money is boring, earning a living is a bore — then we could wriggle out of a lot of the boredom. Take the land, for example. Nobody really wants it, when it comes to the point. Neither does anybody really want the coal mines. Even the nation doesn’t want them. The men of the nation are fed stiff with mines and land and wages.
Why not hand it all over to the women? To the women of Britain! The modern excessive need of money is a female need. Why not hand over to the women the means of making the money which they, the women, mostly need? Men must admit themselves flummoxed. If we handed over to the women the means of making money, perhaps there might be a big drop in the feminine need of money. Which, after all, is the straight road to salvation.