Why We Hate Cheap Things
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About this ebook
- A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO ECONOMICS
- EXPLORES IDEAS ABOUT MONEY, WORTH, AND WEALTH through a philosophical lens.
- A REFRESHING REMINDER TO APPRECIATING WHAT WE HAVE rather than coveting what we don't.
- ILLUSTRATED with full color images throughout.
The School of Life
The School of Life is a groundbreaking enterprise which offers good ideas for everyday living. Founded in 2008, The School of Life runs a diverse range of programmes and services which address questions of personal fulfilment and how to lead a better life. Drawing insights from philosophy, psychology, literature, the visual arts and sciences, The School of Life offers evening classes, weekends, conversation meals and other events that explore issues relating to big themes such as Love,Work, Play, Self, Family and Community.
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A good read to understand why we chase after money
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Why We Hate Cheap Things - The School of Life
I
Why We Hate Cheap Things
We don’t think we hate cheap things, but we frequently behave as if we do. Consider the pineapple. Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was the first European to be delighted by the physical grandeur and vibrant sweetness of the pineapple, which is native to South America but had reached the Caribbean by the time he arrived there. The first time Europeans encountered pineapples was in November 1493, in a Carib village on the island of Guadeloupe. Columbus’s crew spotted the fruit next to a pot of stewing human limbs. The outside reminded them of a pine cone; the interior pulp of an apple.
However, pineapples proved difficult to transport and costly to cultivate. For a long time only royalty could afford to eat them. Russia’s Catherine the Great was a huge fan, as was England’s Charles II. A single fruit in the seventeenth century sold for today’s equivalent of £5,000. The pineapple was such a status symbol that, if they could obtain one, people would keep it for display until it rotted and fell apart. In the mid-eighteenth century, at the height of the pineapple craze, whole aristocratic evenings were structured around the ritual display of these fruits. Poems were written in their honour. Savouring a tiny sliver could be the high point of a year.
IllustrationThe South Towers of St Paul’s Cathedral, built 1711.
IllustrationThe Dunmore Pineapple, built 1761.
Christopher Wren had no hesitation in topping the South Towers of St Paul’s with this evidently divine fruit. The pineapple was so exciting and so loved that John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore, built a temple on his Scottish estate in its honour.
Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, two things changed. Large-scale commercial pineapple plantations were established in Hawaii, and there were huge advances in steamship technology. Consequently, production and transport costs plummeted and, unwittingly, transformed the psychology of pineapple eating. Today, you can buy a pineapple for around £1.50. The fruit still tastes the same. But now the pineapple is one of the world’s least glamorous fruits. It is rarely served at smart dinner parties and it would never be carved on the top of a major civic building.
The pineapple itself has not changed; only our attitude to it has. Contemplation of the history of the pineapple suggests a curious overlap between love and economics: when we have to pay a lot for something nice, we appreciate it to the full. Yet