“How much land does a man need?”

As I sat in my favourite café in the run-up to Christmas, leafing through a newspaper (it wasn’t worth reading any further) and sipping my hot chocolate, two men sat down at the next table. Probably businessmen on their lunch break, I assumed, when I noticed their attire – shirt, suit and tie. I bent over my newspaper again. Soon snippets of conversation reached my ears, which I couldn’t ignore but didn’t really understand either.
  It was a colourful mixture of German and English expressions. They were talking about shares, which confirmed my assumption about their professional activities. I also immediately had an association with change management¹: it was used in our schools and education system to turn them upside down. I wondered whether one of the two was a personnel manager or head hunter (as they say in modern German) who subjected applicants to a stressful selection process. Listening to them discuss financial covenants, break-even points, agio, EBIT, balanced scorecards, cross-selling, free cash flow and job enrichment made me go limp.
  I no longer understood anything. They were speaking in banking slang – a language for insiders, in which the two of them spoke tensely and, to my eye, seemed visibly exhausted. Slowly, my thoughts took a different path. What do people with so much money and so much responsibility do? Do they also think about poverty in the world, about their fellow human beings in need, at whose expense others amass their huge fortunes? Or do they simply have a “job” with which they can earn good money? “How much earth does a man need?”², a story by Leo Tolstoy, ran through my mind. I had once read it to my pupils. Wasn’t it also about this topic?

The lure of possessions

In Tolstoy’s story, the older sister, who lives in the city, visits the younger sister, who lives in a village and runs a farm. As they drink tea together, the city dweller begins to boast about the advantages of her life as a merchant’s wife with a spacious flat, beautiful clothes, and the pleasures of the urban environment. Her younger sister feels offended and counters: She praises the advantages of farm life, with which everyday needs can be well and safely met. “Loss is the older brother of gain. It really does happen that someone is rich today and goes begging tomorrow,” she says. That couldn’t happen to them in the countryside because they are at the source of what they need in everyday life.
  Thus, the conversation goes back and forth. The younger sister withstands her older sister’s boasting and patronising remarks surprisingly well with clever retorts. This is in contrast to her husband Pachom, who is lying on the oven and listening to the conversation between the two women. A powerful feeling of jealousy begins to oppress him and he mutters to himself that they really don’t have enough land and that he would like more of it. If he had enough of it, he wouldn’t even fear the devil, he thinks to himself.
  This marks the beginning of a painful journey, because the devil has been sitting behind the stove and has fuelled the farmer’s greed. He wants to tempt Pachom with as much land as he wants, but in doing so, he lures him into his trap.

Driven by greed

The farmer actually starts to think about how he could get more land. He succeeds in doing so with cunning and slyness and with unspeakable behaviour towards his fellow human beings. His wife also supports him in his endeavours. His possessions increase, but his burning feeling of not having enough does not subside. Restless and dissatisfied, he is constantly looking for new ways to enrich himself.
  Eventually, he does what he used to suffer from himself: He takes advantage of the hardship and distress of his neighbours and friends to increase his land holdings, but increasingly lives in strife and conflict with his fellow men, who pay him back for his injustices. Anyone familiar with Tolstoy’s story knows that Pachom leaves his homeland in order to expand his possessions and his land. In the end, his greed costs him his life. And now, how much more land does he need? It’s worth reading the whole story.

 “I would like to earn
as much money as possible …”

All this went through my mind as I listened to the two men. They weren’t “bad” people, but it seemed to me that they were trapped in a gilded cage that they themselves didn’t really realise. Trapped in a gilded cage of a soulless monetary policy in which a thin layer of people – driven by pathological greed, a desire for power, and without decency – profit from the stock market excesses of global money flows at the expense of their fellow human beings. There was no time to think about justice, about the meaning of life, about living together as equals in freedom. Perhaps Tolstoy’s story could be a liberating, thought-provoking, parable for them or others in similar situations.
  Perhaps it would also be good reading for a management seminar at a major bank, an education corporation, or the military-industrial complex? I was reminded of the confessions of John Perkins, a “successful financial advisor” to developing countries, who describes in his biography how, as an economic hit man, he saddled these countries with an unmanageable debt burden through loans from the World Bank or USAID, thereby putting them at the mercy of the political dictates of the USA. One of the roots of the wars that are shaking our world with suffering and misery today!
  But I was also thinking of schoolchildren who expressed the following career aspiration: “One where I can earn a lot of money.” Are such goals supposed to sustain our interpersonal coexistence? And what was on the minds of the two café visitors? Excessive ambition? An overheated desire to be admired?

A psychologically
highly complex process

They too were once children who, as they sought their way in life, acquired their inner attitude toward their fellow human beings, to the world, and to the tasks that life presents today. From a psychological point of view, there is a highly complex emotional process that takes place in every child in interaction with his or her human environment – a process that shapes and later determines a person’s feelings, thoughts, and actions in an individual way.
  Parents and all other caregivers (especially teachers) have a role to play here, as the child needs their nurturing, protective and caring support, embedded in a secure bond, for healthy development. Only then can a child develop genuine relational skills, which are demonstrated by the fact that she can perceive her own concerns in a healthy way, and realise them in a meaningful way, without disregarding the well-being of others.³

Cultural values are not accidental

In this process, a child is also taught the fundamental values of his environment. Today, in particular, it would be important to focus more on these again. In our Western Christian culture, values and ideals such as humanity, community spirit, a sense of responsibility, helpfulness, and the ability to cooperate are fundamental. But the willingness to contribute to the benefit of all through one’s own efforts is also part of this. Just like independence, courage, honesty, tolerance, the will to resolve conflicts without violence and with respect for the dignity of others, is also a learned ideal. These values are by no means accidental or purely historical or economic.
  Every culture and society worth living in is based on these values, which arise from the social nature of human beings and are clearly proven by the results of research in the human sciences. Today, unfortunately, it can be observed that these values are being sacrificed to zeitgeist influences, political strategies, and human arbitrariness – a destructive process that must not be accepted thoughtlessly and indifferently. Imparting and preserving values is one of the foundations of all education. They ensure the continued existence and further development of a humane culture that serves the common good and are an indispensable part of education for peace.⁴

Questions to ponder

What had the two men experienced so far in their lives? How had they settled into their family environment, in their relationship with their parents and siblings, but also later in kindergarten, school, and vocational training? Where and how was the course set in their lives? Who were their role models? Where did they get the compulsion to make a name for themselves in the world of money? Where does the greed for wealth come from that had cost Pachom his life? Both had been actively involved in this process and had thus acquired their view of the world and the role they play in it today.
  I wish for the two men that their children or wives had put Leo Tolstoy's story under the Christmas tree for them. It might have served as an impetus to think about what kind of world they wanted and the responsibilities incumbent on each and every one of us.  •

¹ Change management refers to measures to bring about – top-down – changes in individuals, organisations/institutions (e. g. in schools).
² cf. Tolstoy, Leo. How much land does a man need, translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude; Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
³ cf. Buchholz, Annemarie; Vögeli Erika. “Werte-vermittlung – eine Aufgabe der Persönlichkeitsbildung und der Kulturerhaltung”. (Imparting values – a task of personality development and cultural preservation) In: VPM/MZE (eds.). Mut zur Ethik. Eine Besinnung auf gesellschaftliche Grundnormen und menschliche Grundhaltungen im Individuum.( A reflection on basic social norms and basic human attitudes in the individual) Zürich: Verlag Menschenkenntnis 1993. https://iphg.ch/wertevermittlung-eine-aufgabe-der-persoenlichkeitsbildung-und-der-kulturerhaltung/ (accessed on 27 December 2023)
⁴ op. cit.