PhonyProsperity
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Snow at Akabane Bridge in Shiba (Shiba Akabane no yuki),
from the series “Famous Places in the Eastern Capital (Toto meisho)”
(c. 1843/47)
"… this will most likely get really ugly before we recover our Prosperity again."
When a political party or ideology takes the US Presidency, it carries a few scant obligations to the American people and, indeed, to the people of the world. As the long-standing designated elephant in the room, the US economy exerts a uniquely influential gravity. This alone implies great responsibility, since so many other struggling economies rely on its stability. These factors and others have historically encouraged a certain moderation. It’s one thing to be powerful enough to do whatever you want, but quite another to be wise enough to restrain that discretionary power to better ensure overall welfare. Economies cannot afford to have many enemies. Few headlines scream what radical initiative a President chose not to choose. Properly managed, an economy should not be featured in many front-page, above-the-fold stories. The discussion of economics should remain dismal enough to nudge it well off the front page of everything, save an occasional Wall Street Journal.
Our incumbent was never anybody’s slave to wisdom or tradition.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 08/20/2026
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Kuwana: The Post Station at Tomita (Kuwana, Tomita tachiba no zu),
from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi),”
also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)
(c. 1837/42)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived on the occasion of my seventy-fifth birthday. They kept arriving through a week that ranged from the tardy but welcome return of shearling slippers to the hardest installment yet written, from the philosophical breakthrough of Easements to the birthday meditation of ProsperityPasting, from the liturgical frame of OrdinaryTime to the coinage of another new term: Amsperity. The series turned sixty-one installments old this week. The slippers arrived three days early and felt like a shipment of gold bullion. The birthday arrived on schedule and felt like OrdinaryTime at its finest.
Thank you for following along!
Amsperity
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Sparrows and Camellia in Snow
(c. 1831-33)
"Who, besides such conglomerates, benefits?"
We believe ourselves to be much more skilled at producing and retaining Prosperity than we have generally proven to be in practice. In practice, we have a long history of back-and-forth vacillations. We label these “business cycles” and consider them evidence of nothing more worrisome than The Normals, but these downturns do real damage. Were we more skilled or even professionals at producing and maintaining Prosperity, we might well have eliminated by now the disparities between haves and have-nots. It seems that some subgroup of haves always tries to nudge above their station to take a monopolist’s position in something that might thrive only through egalitarianism. Oh, the nudgers tend to equate egalitarianism with something dreadfully dangerous like communism or socialism, while committing what might be recognized as acts of antisocialism. These purposefully cruel and awfully unusual acts reliably undermine the general welfare and thereby Prosperity, for the myopic purpose of lining their own pockets. Our Prosperity frequently fails us, but usually only because we fail ourselves first.
We seem to be rank amateurs when it comes to producing and preserving our Prosperity.
OrdinaryTime
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Twilight Moon at Ryōgoku Bridge
(Not Dated)
"May we soon live in OrdinaryTimes again, Amen!"
Prosperity thrives during OrdinaryTimes. The Ecumenical Calendar divides each year into ferial and festal times, Ordinary days and designated extraordinary ones. It seems sometimes, especially to naive Americans traveling in Italy, that every blessed day has in some way been designated extraordinary on their calender, especially when you were expecting to find a bank or post office open for business only to find it’s the Feast Day of Saint Someoneorother, so whatever service you thought you needed would be unavailable until the following Monday, assuming, often wrongly, that that following Monday isn’t also designated a Day of Holy Obligation to Saint Somebodyelse. Regular life thrives on ordinary days, and, outside of Italy proper, celebrates infrequently. Imagine the difficulty of holding down a regular job while decked out every day in the appropriate garb for properly acknowledging the influence and holiness of good old Saint Martyrdom. Christmas occurs just once each year for good reasons.
When I began this Prosperity Series, I asked myself where Prosperity had suddenly gone, because it seemed to me to have gone missing.
ProsperityPasting
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Small View of Yedo
(1817–58)
"…the very definition of success, and therefore curiously eternal."
I am fondly recalling a Prosperity I never really knew on the occasion of the eve of my seventy-fifth birthday. I have no clue how I managed to survive to such an overripe age, other than to echo that ancient advice that insisted the only way to actually achieve anything must inevitably be one day at a time. My life, then, might only be properly characterized as a series of days, no two all that different, until, over time, great differences emerged. I experienced very few catastrophies, which might be the primary reason I can still sit here fondly recollecting. Even my most wanting periods seem downright prosperous in some senses. When I was foraging for sustenance, I still had my youth, an often underappreciated form of Prosperity that everybody’s certain to lose. As I’ve aged, I have retained many memories, another form that Prosperity assumes, as tangible as air, if not more so some days.
I was born into a world that no longer exists.
Easements
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Asakusa Rice Fields and Torinomachi Festival
(Asakusa tanbo Torinomachi mode),
from the series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)”
(1857)
"…battling each other's spare realities with the jawbones of asses."
Prosperity resolves none of the primary existential human dilemmas, though it does seem to deliver a few Easements. No, not permissions to trespass across another’s property, but the largely psychological sense that one can afford to take one's ease. Freed from the constant pressure otherwise necessary for mere survival, a hierarchy of needs emerges. Higher order urges can take over once Prosperity seemingly resolves the barer necessities, even if only temporarily. I do not believe these higher-order interests are unavailable to the Pre-Prosperous or even the pauper; they just seem more conveniently accessible once simple survival no longer dominates existence. Many artists have flourished while living in icy garrets. Prosperity can reassure without necessarily resolving any of the inescapable human frailties associated with disease or even death. Prosperity cannot prevent that pirate from visiting, or even the odd thief in the night, but it can cast a convincing enough shadow to allow other interests to temporarily dominate one’s consciousness. It opens space without really resolving much.
We humans seem remarkable for how distractible we’ve always been.
Seeking
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri),
from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road
(Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido
(c.1833/34)
"Finding it might forfeit its prize."
Prosperity doesn’t necessarily breed complacency. As a colleague confided to me, “I believe that most who are prosperous become quickly committed to the belief in being entitled and are driven to fear that someone will take away their prosperity. Of course, as with most beliefs, this is unprovable.” Nor does Prosperity necessarily breed defensiveness. The Prosperous might remain less than perfectly free to choose what to do, whatever their motive. I propose that Prosperity alone might hardly influence choice. The heart still wants whatever the heart wants, though it might be that Prosperity renders some of those wants to seem more achievable than poverty might, for instance. Prosperity might open possibilities without necessarily guaranteeing achieving anything. In my personal experience, Prosperity encouraged me into Seeking what had previously seemed out of my reach. This, too, qualifies as belief, and as such, proves nothing conclusively, other than accurately representing my personal experience.
The Muse might be a better example, for she’s definitely a seeker.
Slippers
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Sojo Henjo,
from the series “One Hundred Satirical Poems (Kyoka neboke hyakushu)”
(19th century)
"Prosperity returns on the littest cats' feet, too, leaving familiar footprints."
Prosperities come and go with some regularity. The Prosperity I enjoy this morning seems unique, different than any previous one, and I could probably say this about any morning, any Prosperity, were I paying close enough attention to discern any differences. I’m mostly not paying all that close of attention because, like you, I have ten thousand distractions vying for my narrow awareness, and I am not always the most perceptive person on the planet. My Prosperities seem far too easy to take for granted. I rarely celebrate them, even though each and every one, if enumerated, should qualify for at least a participation trophy for showing up. They mostly find me unaware and unappreciative of just how deep down fortunate I surely must be. If this does not constitute a crime, I’m innocent. Otherwise, I’m certainly guilty as sin and fully worthy of some sort of punishment.
I started this series, fifty-some mornings ago, noticing that our Prosperity seemed to have gone missing.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 08/13/2026
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
The Whirlpools in Naruto Strait, Awa Province (Awa Naruto no fukei)
(1857)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as the series moved from civic urgency into personal witness and domestic intimacy. The writing ranged from the philosophical resignation of Quarter to the genuinely felt depth of Charity, from the Hubrisimiliation of a faucet set screw to the autobiography of Initiation, from the Believing that powered an Amazon open house to the Motleys that constitute the reliable indicators of Prosperity’s presence. The Muse fixed the faucet from her wheelchair. The open-house protestor who swore he wouldn’t go inside eventually shuffled in anyway, but asked nobody any hard questions when faced with the opportunity. The wardrobe mistress's responsibilities still seem bottomless. The series found this week that Prosperity’s most reliable indicators are rarely the ones anyone would choose to display.
Thank you for following along!
Motleys
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Badger,
from the series “Mirror of Stone Rubbings of Views of the Provinces”
(Kohon meihitsu ishizuri kagami)
(Not Dated)
"Motleys might be the most reliable indicator of Prosperity's presence."
Prosperity seems to attract collections of things. The Muse collects Franciscan Appleware crockery, a pattern that began almost on a whim when I started fondly reminiscing about my mother’s Aunt Stella’s collection that I lost in my second divorce. I have a small collection of D-handled shovels that I maintain for no good reason other than that I favor them above the straight-handled kind. Our linen closet holds no linen, but exists more as an archive of our changing tastes in sheets and towels over the last thirty years. I have a friend who claims to own dozens of Tony Bahama tropical print shirts, bought to cheer himself up or on whims. I have a closetful of shirts distinguished by their very similarity; most are long-sleeved blue chambray. I tend to wear the same-looking clothes every day, with little actual variety. The Muse, on the other hand, has dozens of similar-looking “tops”, in a variety of colors, and a similar range of choices of pants and shorts. Her collection of clothes hardly qualifies as a collection, given the Motley range of styles and colors therein.
While The Muse recovers from her broken ankles, I have been trying to fulfill the role of wardrobe mistress since she can’t access her dresser or closet.
Believing
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
A Lion Training a Cub
(c. 1832/34)
"…the first sweet or savory taste of a Prosperity finally emerging."
As The Muse and I prepared to attend the long-awaited Amazon Web Services Open House, a fresh anti-data center Reel appeared in my Facebook feed. I have been observing the opposition making public fools of themselves since they started protesting. They have performed every derivative activity with which generations of protestors before them had undermined their arguments. They misrepresented with the usual vengeance. They seemed to love to take information out of context, as if the state with the oldest and most mature environmental agency in the country could be equated to states with numbingly more primitive permitting standards and practices. Washington ain’t Virginia. They also characterized Amazon Web Services, arguably among the most environmentally engaged corporations on the planet, with data to prove it, as inveterate liars. Their message to not trust Amazon came across as “Don’t Trust Us,” instead. The latest message seemed to properly encapsulate their entire campaign. It said that they were going to attend the open house, but not go inside, and ask hard questions, but the spokesperson promised not to believe a word they received in response.
Their campaign came into full focus in that instant, or a few moments later, after I’d recovered from my stunned silence.
Initiation
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Tea Kettle,
section of a sheet from the series “Mirror of Stone Rubbings of Views of the Provinces”
(Kohon meihitsu ishizuri kagami)
(Not Dated)
"I became Prosperous the day I realized that I could choose, and did."
The question eventually enters the conversation: How does one become Prosperous? The more common answers seem to omit something significant, focusing as they usually do on the obvious. But I’ve come to believe that Prosperity might be more like a guild than an individual achievement, and that there must probably be a multitude of ways to achieve this status, none by birthright. Being raised in a Prosperous family rarely prepares anybody to actually achieve Prosperity, for it seems to take more than mere familiarity to meaningfully succeed at it. Ten thousand subtleties influence this particular achievement. It apparently cannot be bestowed or inherited, for one might well inherit wealth or social position, but maintaining such a place with requisite grace qualifies as more of an art form, and not a necessarily easy one for some to come by. Prosperity seems an exacting designation, one requiring some maturity and dedication, hence the nagging question that eventually slips into the conversation: How does one become Prosperous?
My first marriage was not a promising one Prosperity-wise.
Hubrisimiliation
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Dragons Among Clouds
(1844)
"…humiliated into a begrudging silence again."
Prosperity has a way of attracting possessions. If one’s not extremely careful and cautious, these can accumulate to become suffocating. Short of outright hoarding, possessions can come to possess us, and they inevitably become harsh taskmasters. Among their most onerous expectations lie the necessary periodic maintenance. Nothing about achieving Prosperity prepares anybody for what becomes necessary to maintain their resulting possessions in something approaching original operating order. Even the kitchen faucet requires some infrequent maintenance, its very infrequency rendering this essentially impossible for the merely Prosperous to successfully accomplish. Still, a kind of hubris can overtake the Prosperous, the sort that temporarily convinces them that, if only due to their Prosperity, they might be capable of successfully engaging in DIY-ing, Doing It Yourselfing. They probably aren’t.
The primary reason we will never have household nukes generating our residential energy lies in this first principle of Prosperity, that the Prosperous tend to get these preposterous notions that possession somehow bestows the ability to maintain, when it might at best inflict that obligation.
Charity
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
A Golden Pheasant amid Snow-Covered Bamboo on a Steep Hillside
(c. 1840)
"Charity always begins at home, but it rarely ends anywhere near there."
Charity begins at home, but it never ends there. Charity seems to be the consistent means by which the Prosperous attempt to share their good fortune, however modest. This seems to be the ironclad principle universally practiced among the Prosperous. Some insist that they’re just giving back, but regardless of the underlying motive, the Prosperous give. They give “of” their time as well as their treasure. Each holds a few charities as well-deserved, and they act to preserve their missions. Some of these claim to be Christian, but increasingly, it seems, secular organizations have entered the charity business, and not for profit, though I suppose there are those charities who are in it for the money. These milk the government for subsidies, then spend less than they’re subsidized to provide their services, or they extract hefty handling charges that do more than reinvest in the advertised mission. But even the charlatans sing the same tunes in the same keys. Real or pretend, they extend assistance to the “less fortunate.”
A Prosperous person’s chosen charities are in many ways their identity.
Quarter
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Oystercatchers
(c. 1833/34)
"Hold your Prosperity lightly lest it break you when it slips out of your hands."
Prosperity definitely has its privileges, but practical limits seem to exist on how many and where. It can certainly provide the means to afford a relatively comfortable, if not necessarily carefree life, though not everything necessary to achieve and maintain that end can be inherited or purchased, or, indeed, possessed. The Prosperous remain vulnerable to most of the usual suspects. Hunger might only rarely cast a shadow across its porch, but misfortune shows no friends or natural enemies, and offers Quarter to pretty much nobody. Prosperity was never a guarantee of any happily-ever-after storylines. It might even amplify the sense of devastation at a loss, since the Prosperous do seem to possess more to lose than others. The Pre-Prosperous might not miss what they never acknowledged they possessed. The Prosperous miss their losses. They cost.
Practicing Prosperity tries to teach the Prosperous to hold their good fortune gently.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 08/06/2026
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
No. 32: Seba,
from the series “Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido
(Kisokaido rokujukyu tsugi no uchi)”
(c. 1835/38)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as the series found its philosophical center and then tested it against civic reality. The writing ranged from the tentative conclusions of Classifying to the identity function of EnoughIsEnough, from the legal and economic argument of Moritoria to the behavioral portrait of CheapShots, from the panoramic civic lament of Anti-Prosperity to the warmly domestic homecoming of City-State. The series stood before the County Commission this week, delivering the sole anti-moratorium argument against a curious flood of anti-data center support. It also returned home to find Prosperity waiting, as it always has, in the Villa Vatta Schmaltz.
Thank you for following along!
City-State
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Hamamatsu, from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi),”
also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)
(c. 1837/42)
"I'm certain that anywhere I find Prosperity lurking fully qualifies as my home and castle while I'm there."
I think of Prosperity the way I think of an Italian City-State, a kind of autonomy, an anchor, an identity. In the same way that a person’s home, however humble, represents their castle, Prosperity serves as both the source and expression of cultural social standing. Each family in my neighborhood, a blessedly mixed configuration almost entirely unlike any gated community, inhabits their unique castle. Each, as they say, gets to be the asshole in their castle, holding an independence rare among the Pre-Prosperous. Even the very wealthy, who might live in actual castles, seem to be more owned by their relatively palatial palaces than inhabiting them. My neighborhood includes owner-occupied places next to rentals, older homes with more recent construction tucked in between on what was most certainly once the larger places’ original properties. The orderliness here does not seem overwhelming. It’s certainly not enforced by anything other than each inhabitant’s sense of civic decency. I, for instance, feel guilty if I miss mowing my lawn for a few days after it really should have been mowed, for this clutter seems an offense to the neighborhood’s tranquil sense of its own Prosperity.
For a few years, one neighbor, who lived just to the left of my castle, left his place derelict.
Anti-Prosperity
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
A Cuckoo Against the Moon
(c. 1843/46)
"…what's to become of our once prominent Prosperity after we've managed to Anti- every alternative out of the realm of existential possibility?"
It seems to have become fashionable to oppose virtually any proposition. I blame the radical conservative MAGA movement for basing their politics entirely on opposition and thereby encouraging what might have always been a passion seething beneath the surface of the appearance of respectability. They opposed progress because it seemed to upset their overly delicate sensibilities. They encouraged long-discarded theories and practices in lieu of embracing modernity, which they at least pretended to believe represented evil incarnate. From there, it was a short portage to a place where any decency could be easily and convincingly opposed as either woke, whatever that was, or stupid, which never really qualified as an argument. They were opposed, whatever it was, and supportive of little other than the usual vacuous dribble: free enterprise, America (first, last, and always), and tariffs. They opposed more than the usual suspects, but some fresh villains, too: freedom of speech, which apparently emboldens enemies, free trade, which reportedly renders us all paupers, and justice, which always seemed to them to hold the wrong criminals responsible.
As absurd as their anti-everything platform might have seemed, their tactics rubbed off on even the most dedicated of their opposition.
CheapShot
Marsden Hartley
Dogtown, Gloucester
(1934-36)
"Some days, this responsibility's easier to fulfill than on others."
I encountered a Pre-Prosperous person yesterday. She was explaining how she’d delivered what I instantly recognized to be a CheapShot to a potential benefactor. Why would anyone ever consider committing such a crime? That answer must be above my pay grade, though I can imagine a nearly infinite number of justifications my Pre-Prosperous friend might offer if asked. She would doubtless consider her gift a fair trade, repayment for a previously committed trespass or, more likely, a prepayment for a yet-to-be-committed but threatened-in-her-mind wrong. She always seems to be striving to keep an invisible scale balanced. She’s the auditor, the accountant, and eternal bookkeeper seeking only fairness, but exclusively from her perspective. She seemed to have been outclassed but was unaware of the imbalance, except, of course, to sense an imbalance favoring her. It didn’t. Everywhere she goes, she seems to encounter the same damned situation. People don’t seem to respect her. They often disappoint. Go figure! Isn’t this precisely the behavior we’ve come to expect from the Pre-Prosperous?
Many forms of Pre-Prosperity exist, though I dare say that they might be classifiable along the lines of the seven deadly sins, with many ancillary less deadly categories for the less seriously afflicted.
Moritoria
Martino di Bartolomeo
Saint Benedict Presenting his Rule to Benedictine and Cistercian Monks
in a Historiated Initial “O” from a Choirbook
(1394/95)
"…Moritoria are not regulatory achievements and do not deserve to be mistaken for them."
The Washington State Democratic Party approved a platform plank at their recent state convention that calls for a one-year moratorium on all data center construction in the state. I considered this plank extremely self-contradictory and a clear threat to Prosperity, especially since the party didn’t also immediately declare itself Internet Free and revert to operating as it did in the nineteen-sixties, before the intertubes connected everyone and everything. Apparently, some political consulting firm, trolling around for hot issues Democratic candidates could coalesce voters on, advised that an anti-data center perspective could attract otherwise indifferent voters to the cause, whatever that was. Data centers have become the favorite whipping boys of pretty nearly everybody, even though reliable sources suggest that most of the economic activity in the nation over the past few years has stemmed in some way from data center development. Those who insist that we must mature by despising our family of origin might easily explain this data center revulsion as a normal stage of emotional development, roughly akin to turning fifteen years old. It feels as contentious.
Prominent among the proposals for what to do about data centers stands the idea that they might be discouraged by municipalities simply declaring Moratoria on their development.
EnoughIsEnough
Mihata Jōryū
Peeking Boy
(1830s)
"Those who more than occasionally experience Enough have already won whatever race they once ran."
Contrary to the popular idiom, Enough is not always Enough, not for everyone. For some, Enough never was nor ever will be Enough, as I detailed in my NextWorld Story, Enough, from February 2025, which described the world emerging after we foolishly elected our current incumbent, a series that has proven to have been remarkably prescient. Prosperity seems to accompany that pleasing sense of enoughness. Whether that sense predates Prosperity or results from achieving it, I lack adequate data to say. I do sense, though, that the Prosperous well understand the theory as well as the practice of Enough to the point of exemplifying this odd little identity function. For them. Enough fully qualifies as Enough, always. The prosperous know satiation, and so actively seek to avoid it. The merely rich or simply wealthy seem to lose accessibility to their off switch. Like sharks, they live unloved, unsatisfiable and unrequited. To not know Enough means you can never stop swimming.
The Prosperous therefore experience love as well as attraction, though not usually to the point of obsession.
Classifying
Russell Lee,
United States. Farm Security Administration
Classifying pecan meats. Pecan shelling plant. San Antonio, Texas
(1939)
"…I must be the source of all the Prosperities inevitably surrounding me."
This is not just a game. I have been considering Prosperity, mine as well as ours, for just over forty days and nights now, a suitably Biblical time span, and I am drawing two tentative conclusions, since I can’t seem to decide anything conclusively, nor should I. The first, which I have previously already heavily hinted at, must be that Prosperity only exists as a plural rather than a singular entity. Sanity insists that it always be understood as a multitude rather than as a singular state. It exists only in array. This translates into an understanding that no Prosperity ever stands alone. When I spot a Prosperity, this means that more must be lurking nearby. Prosperity seems to exclusively travels in flocks, herds, schools, or pairs, never “batch.”
The second tentative conclusion I simply must draw from my inquiry so far might seem as if I’m somehow cheating, and truth told, I might be cheating if Hoyle is judging.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/30/2026
Kamisaka Sekka
Moonlit Scene with Hut and Flowers,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
This week's Prosperity dispatches arrived as The Muse settled into her dining room recovery center, and I slipped into the familiar role of Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. The writing ranged from the slow cruise of InPassing to the firmware-induced disaster of PitchingCodes, from the radical egalitarianism of H-e-a-l-i-n-g to the civic act of Choosers, from the miraculous appearance of Angeli to the philosophical reframe of PreProsperous. The series discovered this week that broken ankles attract angels, that H-e-a-l-i-n-g keeps its own counsel, and that the billionaire class remains stubbornly PreProsperous. The Muse is already removing her own boot unaided. The Angeli are settling in for a productive engagement.
Thank you for following along!
PreProsperous
Myochin School
Japanese, active late 19th century
Articulated Dragon
(c. 1880)
"With successes like that, who really requires failure?"
You might have noticed the very wealthy, the billionaire class, reliably behaving preposterously. This behavior highlights a key dichotomy between wealth and Prosperity. While wealth requires control of vast financial resources, Prosperity doesn’t, or doesn’t necessarily require great wealth. It might be easier, stealing this metaphor from the Bible, for any run-of-the-mill camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for the extremely wealthy to ever experience Prosperity, or so their public behavior suggests. Prosperity seems to be mostly mindset, and only partly contingent on possessing anything resembling excess wealth.
Just look at what the very wealthy tend to do when encountering a budget, for instance.
Angeli
Kamisaka Sekka
Kesa
(late Edo period (1789–1868), early 19th century)
"I ascribe that recovery to the presence of Angeli…"
As for angels, they seem the most mysterious presences. They are said to exist without much in the way of physical evidence. They’ve received ample literary mention over the centuries without leaving foot or fingerprints. They might most often appear when really needed, bringing with them some form of salvation. Their biggest gig was the night Jesus was said to have been born, rousing shepherds and encouraging otherwise skeptical wisemen. They managed a physical presence in that mythical manger, and glory really shone around, according to eyewitness testimony. Otherwise, they regularly appear in statuary and classical paintings, inevitably wearing halos. Popes and potentates have traditionally insisted that their decorators employ Angeli to lend a sense of divine association. Generally speaking, the more terrible the king, the more they relied upon Angeli images to sanctify their tyranny.
An early twenty-first-century person might never encounter an angel, even in passing.
Choosers
Kamisaka Sekka
Cranes
(Late 19th, Early 20th Century)
“Autocracy only ever works after The People have convinced themselves they’re beggars rather than Choosers.”
Beggars can’t be Choosers, or so my mother insisted. She implied that if you’re not Prosperous, you’re relegated to having to take whatever’s left over after the Choosers have satisfied themselves. This notion seems the opposite of self-determination, that bedrock principle this Democracy was founded upon. This seems the belief of the dedicated second-class citizen, who, all E Pluribus Unum aside, understands the position they inhabit in polite society and won’t raise a fuss at a little inequity between friends or fellow citizens. It defines complacency to know the rules were set up against your own best interests and to support them anyway as a self-sacrificial civic responsibility. Beggars can’t be choosers. That’s just the way life is.
The Prosperous, though, do get to choose.
H-e-a-l-i-n-g
Kamisaka Sekka
Mt. Fuji
(1920s-30s)
"Out of many, one: Pluribus Unum, dammit!"
Healing might be the most egalitarian activity humans ever engage in. It knows no privilege or favor. It moves exclusively at one seemingly inexorable pace regardless of anybody’s relative Prosperity. It keeps its own counsel that everyone must accept and that they just get to guess at. The doctors and therapists predicted six to eight weeks before The Muse’s broken ankles might be fit for use again, but that projection was tempered with a terribly deliberate ‘more or less’ neither of us missed. Someone suggested that acupuncture might shorten that time by a week or more, but, honestly, why bother? Healing wasn’t supposed to be either a race or a competition. There’s nothing to be won if one heals faster or slower than the average, which trends toward the inexorable. There might be something worth learning either way, though.
Healing belongs in that class of human activities of which no human can ever become the master.
PitchingCodes
Kamisaka Sekka
A Walk Around the Paddy Fields,
from the series “A World of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"…another snake satisfyingly gnawing on its own tail."
Prosperity attracts an ever-increasing number of so-called smart stuff. Smart® being a designation rather than a definition. So-called Smart® stuff sure seems stupid sometimes, in the same way that Artificial Intelligence intends to be interpreted with the emphasis on the Artificial part. What passes for Artificial Intelligence® barely registers as clever in practice, but the shady art of branding demands that capabilities always be inflated. Smart® cars were just tiny. Smart® phones weren’t really phones at all. Smart (no ®) people just seem self-aggrandizing, for they sure seem just as stupid as the rest of us put together in practice. So it always was and, as near as I can tell, so it will probably always be.
Our new Smart® irrigation system controller, trademarked “Irrigreen”, failed us during our recent absence.
InPassing
Kamisaka Sekka
All Kinds of Butterflies, Vol. 1
Publisher: Unsōdō
(February 1908)
"… might it just slip by unaware that it was ever anywhere special?"
Washington Highway 28 up and out of East Wenatchee, Washington, in the direction of Quincy, terrifies me. It’s a standard sixty-per-hour two-lane that climbs up through orchards and precipitous views, with a few passing lanes to drain off the race car drivers’ frustrations when they find themselves behind drivers like me, freely exercising their Prosperities. I feel the sensation of the highway tilting at odd angles, as if trying to shake me off one of those impressive cliffs overlooking Crescent Bar or The Gorge Amphitheater and into the Columbia River far below. I drive this road slow, continually feeling as if I’m oversteering. I accumulate a line of Speed Racers behind me who seem dissatisfied with my frantic-feeling forty-five.
I understand that for many, even vacation driving amounts to just another segment in a never-ending race car race.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/23/2026
Kamisaka Sekka
All Kinds of Things, Vol. 1
(April 1903)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived through the most consequential week of the series so far. The writing ranged from the self-knowledge of Stingy to the book signing revelation of Discovering, from the fragility of Damnocles to The Muse’s literal BreakPoint on an uneven Wenatchee curb, from the WrestlingAngels who populated an impossibly long afternoon of hospital logistics to the Ghostlies haunting a smoky, uncertain present. The sword of Damnocles fell this week — not as metaphor but as fact. The series has been preparing for exactly this moment for thirty-three installments.
Thank you for following along!
Ghostlies
Kamisaka Sekka
Longevity Dance
(1910s-20s)
"…after a period of swirling smoke obscuring past along with potential."
Wenatchee, Washington, the self-proclaimed Apple Capitol of the World, turned out to provide the perfect backdrop for The Muse’s fell swoop and resulting Prosperity transformation. It was ungodly hot there that week, with forest and range fires encircling and intermittent strong winds relentlessly pumping obscuring smoke. The surrounding foothills, brutal barren mountains to my eye, faded in and out of focus, in and out of apparent presence, appearing mostly ghostly rather than in any way substantial. I had previously spent no time in the area, so it served as a near-perfect blank canvas upon which to represent whatever I might imagine about our future and present. Following The Muse’s BreakPoint, I imagined plenty but of little substance. Our accustomed Prosperities had abandoned us there in this curiously welcoming wasteland, opening us to suggestions of replacements.
Our imaginations were encumbered by all we had experienced before.
WrestlingAngels
Kamisaka Sekka
Lion dancer
(1920s)
"…an inevitable side effect of switching out former Prosperities for some cranky new fresh ones, of WrestlingAngels."
Fresh Prosperities do not necessarily quietly surrender themselves into existence. The process more closely resembles WrestlingAngels, for while they might eventually surrender, they rarely do so quietly. Fresh Prosperities might be said to be inherently noisy, fussy, as if equal parts impatient and impertinent, aching more to be conquered than accepted. Perhaps they are chartered under a variant of the No Free Lunches Rule, which seems to insist upon satisfying some twisted notion of worthiness before acquiescing into any acceptances. Those who insist that they somehow deserve any Prosperity seem ready and waiting for some form of rude awakening, for, like angels themselves, Prosperities are nobody’s pushovers, and might well insist upon disturbing conditions, not the least of which includes accepting the budding realization that Prosperities get to choose who wins and who loses them. Since not a single beneficiary in the history of this universe so far, ever once deserved their eventual Prosperity, every angel’s insistence upon deciding for can prove to feel at least alarming, often worse.
When The Muse managed to break both ankles in one literal fell swoop, the resulting BreakPoint left a formerly stable Prosperity gasping.
BreakPoint
Kamisaka Sekka
Noh Scene: Hagoromo
(1920s-30s)
"…might some surprising Prosperity settle in for the duration of even this?"
That Sword of Damnocles works in seemingly inexorable ways. Each Prosperity, as I’ve already proposed, stretches only into finite if indefinite space. Each inevitably ends. This nature encourages the convection that inspires fresh Prosperities to emerge from within an often deep sense of catastrophe or loss. The most important things happen at the least convenient times. This homily has been an article of faith underlying all of my many Prosperities over at least the last three decades, and, upon more careful reflection, most probably for much longer. I believe that at any moment, an event could occur that could utterly upend every expected trajectory, opening previously unimaginable possibilities. Yesterday, The Muse quite literally stumbled into one.
She was exiting a bus after taking a tour of another Port’s properties as a part of a scheduled Port Commissioner gathering.
Damnocles
Kamisaka Sekka
Samurai
(1920s)
"Most of them must be lost in use."
We, natives of the Inland Pacific Northwest, were blessed with some of the most beautiful wild country in the world. Since we were the last part of this continent settled, we have also been the last despoiled, though our scenery’s eventual demise seems certain. Through recent summers, wildfires have become more common, and each burn turns its victim into a generational eyesore. Indeed, its virginity will never be restored. Burn woodland covered in many-centuries-old forest, and you’re left with a ghost. No one now alive will see that parcel recovered. Neither will their grandchildren.
In our valley, wheat fires seem by far the most common, and while they destroy, the crop was likely insured, and the land will be returned to productive use the following year with fresh potash fertilizing whatever’s planted.
Discovering
Kamisaka Sekka
Fishing Village,
from the series “A World of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"I suspect the Quantum plane recognized my presence, as did I."
Once I started Discovering my Prosperities, my discoveries began to expand in earnest. The exercise was apparently not merely a matter of Discovering another Prosperity, but of stumbling upon others, many others. Having only started Discovering these additional Prosperities, I lack sufficient sample size to declare the potential I might have plugged into, but this series appears limitless from here. An unknown number of undiscovered Prosperities seems to stand before me now. I cannot see into any future, but this unknown certainly feels as if it’s infinite from here. Infinite could mean the equivalent of unknown. I need not necessarily interpret it as being an unimaginably large number. A single unknowable will do, but the potential seems much greater than any finite number, even though I could not possibly know how many additional Prosperities might be necessary to maintain this sense of infinite potential. I might estimate as many as an odd billion or so.
My point in even mentioning this phenomenon might be to merely highlight the accompanying feeling.
Stingy
Kamisaka Sekka
Plovers Flying Across a River above Snow-Laden Reeds (Fuyu no Kawa),
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1878)
"…especially when in the presence of behaviors that just irk the crap out of us."
Prosperity might encourage generosity, but not automatically, never inexorably. Some seem to respond to it by suddenly turning inexplicably Stingy, as if the very presence of plenty prefaced a threatening shortage. This response does not seem at all uncommon and almost seems expected sometimes. I learned to respect others’ apparent Prosperity, to tiptoe around its perimeter with extreme care without assuming an overflowing cup inside. Those in the finest houses seemed more likely to stiff me when I went collecting for their newspaper subscription, often short of “change,” and expecting me to return to get paid. Those who lived in more ramshackle houses tended to be more generous. I was never really moved to wonder why, if only because I didn’t really want to understand. I figured I was witnessing some psychological syndrome manifesting, and that I might be better off not knowing the details behind it, lest it be contagious and spread by sharing poisoning knowledge of it.
Stingy might be an extreme form of self-protection, and, as with many of the more common forms of self-protection, it seems, at root, self-destructive.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/16/2026
Jules Bastien-Lepage
Mower Honing a Scythe
(1878)
This week's Prosperity dispatches arrived in a week that ranged from the moral architecture of ResponsibleFor to the liberating grace of Freely, from the Fleeting Prosperity of Portland's lost most recent golden years to the non-Mammon discovery of an ancestor's homestead patent, from the faith-based initiative of MakingSpace to the fish tacos and wildfire of Bounty. The road trip that found Evan and Sara Parker Wallace's eighty acres in Umatilla County — and nearly stranded us inside an evacuation zone — produced this week's essential installment. Prosperity simultaneously means Bounty and danger. Lightning doesn't need to strike in the same place twice to leave an indelible mark.
Thank you for following along!
Bounty
Jules Breton
The Song of the Lark
(1884)
"Lightning doesn't need to strike in the same place twice to leave an indelible mark."
By Mid-July, the Sweet Onion harvest is about over. My own modest patch needs pulling. We eat fresh this time of year, with Sockeye Salmon and the ever-present Steelhead readily available. The Muse’s cucumber crop seems happier than we’ve ever seen one, thanks to her new drip irrigation system. The fig bush has almost become a tree, continually splashed by the backyard pond fountain. It groans under the presence of an unprecedented number of rapidly ripening fruits. These are a reassuring green with the most alluring pink flesh inside. I decide that we’ll have fish tacos for supper and buy a bag of small, freshly made Masa tortillas for the purpose. A grilled eggplant, slices thoroughly saturated with olive oil before I set them on the top grill rack, completes the menu.
The salsa seems similar to what I’ve concocted before, with only the precise contents different.
MakingSpace
Kamisaka Sekka
All Kinds of Things
Color woodblock printed book
Publisher: Unsōdōexpand_less
(Vol. 3, April 1903)
"…I will need to make some space for a miracle to occur."
Aging must be the process by which I successively outgrow stuff. Yesterday, I finally culled three pairs of jeans I once believed that I might one day fit into again. Yesterday, inexplicably, I finally acceded to the should-have-been-easier truth that I wouldn’t be fitting into them again. I set them aside. Suddenly, my pants drawer had more than enough space for my remaining wardrobe. The Muse mentioned that she probably had a few things to add to my collection destined for the Goodwill, and all was just a little better with our world, or at least, finally threatened to be better. I had retained some prior Prosperity which had been steadfastly preventing fresh Prosperities from entering. Even if I wasn’t itching to acquire any Prosperity, those remnants had rendered my present more cluttered than Prosperous feeling. I had probably been demonstrating some principle to myself then.
Often, I finally figure out something I had been trying for ages to get myself to understand.
Mammon
Kamisaka Sekka
The Six Immortal Poets,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"Might this realization have been my purpose in beginning this inquiry in the first place?"
The word Prosperity immediately conjures up visions of money wealth, often, by logical extension, also images of stuff that requires money wealth to acquire. The Prosperous do, often, possess lots of stuff, more than what the struggling seem to acquire. Indeed, the lust for stuff that can only be acquired with money often proves to be the undoing of those who struggle to achieve Prosperity, as if they necessarily need money to achieve what might pass for it. Such convictions might be common to members of any acquisitive society such as ours, for aren’t we hammered with messages designed to convince us that we must acquire or suffer horrible consequences? Heaven forbid that we ever find ourselves falling ever further behind Those Damned Joneses!
But the array of stuff that might be acquired by money, and, indeed, money itself, including credit, covers perhaps the most infinitesimal part of what Prosperity might fully entail.
Fleeting
Kamisaka Sekka
Oxherd Flutist,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"Prosperity seemed to come so easily then. Now, it seems Fleeting. "
A quick trip over to Portland never fails to remind me just how Fleeting Prosperity can seem. Indeed, all history seems like a mere flash of memory along that more-than-familiar route. We pass places I fondly remember from my own pre-history, forever transformed by what came and went alongside me. It seems that much of my life occurred along that two-hundred-forty-five-mile route: good, bad, and even a little of the ugly, for those, like me, who were raised in the Inland Northwest were never quite able to completely separate ourselves from the sea. We more or less routinely traversed the barren Columbia Plateau to enter the Cascade fairy land and on into country that seemed endlessly green. Everything seemed so clean there, the brown, barren Earth replaced by cooling rains and a soothing rainforest. It seemed downright British over there.
I later lived in Portland, moving there in the year this country turned 200.
Freely
Kamisaka Sekka
Seven Gods of Good Fortune
(1920s)
"… liberating everyone involved."
Prosperity increases the possibility of simply giving stuff away. Once I’d accumulated plenty, I occasionally exceeded my ability to properly appreciate and maintain some of my previously precious possessions. What I had seen as essentials sometimes became more like burdens. An occasional yard sale balanced this scale, where my Prosperity translated into an ability to make somebody a really great deal on something they needed much more than I did. The Muse and I eventually abandoned the usual pretext for conducting such sales and dispensed with putting price tags on anything, explaining to anyone who stopped to browse that everything was going for the same low price: Free! Not even that price guaranteed that everything found a new home, but we completely eliminated the commercial hassle usually associated with such undertakings. When we relocated from Maryland to Colorado, we gave away the larder refrigerator and the hide-a-bed in the basement mother-in-law rooms. We felt instantly lighter when we passed those burdens into somebody else’s delighted care.
Yesterday, I finally managed to give away a patio table that had been gathering grime in what was originally intended as a flowerbed beneath the sideyard's enormous Snowball hedge.
ResponsibleFor
Kamisaka Sekka
Moon over Musashino,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"…vulnerable to every odd pebble inadvertantly flying around."
Responsibilities shift when Prosperity appears. Before, the arc of responsibility might have extended no further than one’s self, if even that far. Afterward, it inevitably becomes ever more expansive and more inclusive, often extending far beyond personal home and hearth. Those unprepared for this shift might feel put upon when it happens. When did they suddenly become responsible for everybody else? The worst might even curse their new dependents, wondering why they can’t stand on their own damned hind legs and fully support themselves for a change. These are useless questions bordering on deflections, for if successfully deployed, they might lead the newly prosperous into preposterous positions, undefendable under any condition. This has absolutely nothing to do with religious conviction, but plays into principles included even in the decidedly feral Laws of the Jungle. One need not embrace communism to comprehend to whom and to what one must be ResponsibleFor.
At root, it’s simply self-preservation to help support one’s civilization, each of which inexorably includes both owners and renters, along with a few apparent deadbeats incapable of even supporting themselves.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/09/2026
Kamisaka Sekka
Courtiers’ Carriages,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived on the Fourth of July and kept arriving through a week that ranged from political fury to philosophical depth to barefoot mourning. The writing moved from the Phreedom of the incumbent’s Mount Rushmore performance to the elusive nature of the Promising, from the composter’s quiet testimony in TheHeap to the expanding universe of Affording, from the NoThings that populate our lives to the SymbolicProsperity found on bookshelves and in the soles of absent barefoot shoes. The series found its most intimate register this week. The foundation holds.
Thank you for following along!
SymbolicProsperity
Kamisaka Sekka
Willow and Cherry Branches,
from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"…they bear the weight of my very identity, my Prosperity."
Prosperity seems to depend upon some symbolism to properly manifest. It can’t exist without this. Neither island nor isthmus, it must carry some close association with a seemingly unrelated entity, as if inextricably married to it. For me, the symbol that fully embodied my growing Prosperity was found on my bookshelves. Once upon a time, in my penniless youth, I owned few books. I seemed to accumulate them, though, each a treasure in its own way. I considered each a keepsake. Nothing seemed to better symbolize my standing in my own eyes and in my community than that line of books, later that line of bookshelves I proudly maintained. I separated fiction from the others and sorted each by author, with a shelf or two in the basement, more or less randomly, holding gardening and travel books. Those were not for show. The others most decidedly were.
No better gauge of my Prosperity ever existed, or, indeed, still exists today.
NoThings
Kamisaka Sekka
Hydrangeas, from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)
"Later, it becomes the imperative."
Many who seek Prosperity find themselves frustrated by its apparent elusiveness. One might start such a search with some clear notion of what they’ll find, but then their clarity of intention seems to somehow prevent discovery, as what seemed straightforward when planning became decidedly crooked in execution. Some abandon the effort, convinced that the game was somehow rigged against their favor. Others redouble their effort and quickly redouble their frustration. Some eventually stumble into something perhaps only distantly resembling whatever it was that they’d previously so clearly envisioned, and call that good enough, if only because it isn’t a complete disappointment. Success in this context has often proved difficult, if not impossible. Some seem fortunate enough to stumble into something more or less acceptable as their Prosperity without expending their entire youth in the effort. Others conclude that Prosperity wasn’t really made for somebody like them. However the search resolves, the indifferent world seems unimpressed with either failure or success.
The chief difficulty might be that Prosperity belongs to a curious class of things that do not really qualify as things.
Affording
Edward Calvert
Ideal Pastoral Life
(1845)
"It threatens the notion that anyone might be an island unto themselves…"
Having grown up in a family with five kids, I learned early and often what we could not afford. I developed a mindset, a sort of radar capable of discerning whether or not I could afford something by coming into proximity with it, or by just imagining it. I could mostly tell by looking. I constructed a partitioned world, one composed of stuff I could afford and one with stuff I couldn’t. The world I could not afford initially seemed alluring and vast. The one I believed I could afford seemed dank and narrow in comparison. Over time, I learned how to want what I could afford, and, over even more time, grew snobbish about what I felt I could not afford. I first felt excluded before I came to feel somehow special because of my limitations. I experienced few disappointments or discouragements because I came to not want what I so obviously couldn’t have, anyway. Rather than grow up with anything like a vast sense of possibility, I inherited more of a certainty. I never really wanted whatever my circumstances denied me, or whatever my mindset denied myself.
Prosperity never seemed achievable, so it fell well within the territory denied me.
TheHeap
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Souvenir of Tuscany
(1845)
"If that's not an accurate portrait of Prosperity, I suppose nothing is, or could be, either."
When I look for external evidence of my Prosperity, I migrate toward what might appear to be a remote and under-appreciated corner of the yard. I do not dwell on the fine front porch we so recently remodeled or the lawn and gardens, though these certainly do seem to exude Prosperity’s usual and expected context markers. No, I head back behind the garage, beneath where the ornamental Elderberry bush is busily out-growing its assigned space, where my compost heap stands. Of all the improvements The Muse and I have made in the quarter century since we bought this place, my composter stands as the one of which I’m proudest. I swell with appreciation and, yes, pride every time my eye drifts across its now slightly deteriorating frame. I cut those boards. I fastened them together. The chicken wire that originally separated its compartments long ago corroded away, replaced by jute coffee bags until the Red Wiggler composting worms had their way with them. Now, the three sections get by with nothing more than seasonal boards separating them when I’m introducing autumn’s chopped leaves or summer’s apricot culls.
The rest of the yard holds clear evidence of that composter’s existence.
Promising
Nan Lurie
Promised land
(1941 - 1942)
Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York
"Who knows where such mustard seeds come from, anyway?"
Some significant portion of Prosperity never exists in any present. The future might prove to be the most significant element of it. Certainly, some Prosperity usually exists in a prosperous present, and much of it might remain as fond memories of some past Prosperity, but neither warm recollections nor present relations with it thrive without warm anticipation of upcoming Prosperity. Prosperity seems to require some sense of continuity. The disparity between a strong, felt present sense of Prosperity and its actual existence probably lies largely in that sensed future, for a sensation that the future will not contain adequate Prosperity seems plenty and enough to smother any present sense of possessing it. Prosperity was never actually an asset, but usually more an anticipation, anyway.
No contract seems capable of providing this sense of impending, either.
Phreedom
Unknown Egyptian Artist:
Amulet of a Rooster
(Byzantine Period: 4th–7th century)
"Hip, hip, hooray!"
For me, the 4th of July has always been a most regrettable holiday. It seems to encourage that distasteful style of jingoism (there’s a tasteful style?) that has so often manifested during the worst moments of our now long shared history. Rather than gathering together to regret all the regrettable wars we have fought, including the one for independence from the British crown, we trot out the War of 1812 Overture, complete with a Marine Corps howitzer battery, and pretend to blow the living shit out of our living history, followed by an over-long fireworks display that scares the living daylights out of pets and actual veterans, who well understand that freedom isn’t just a handy holiday catchphrase, but a concept that means something so much more than war. It means a kind of Prosperity that cannot be purchased or leased, and that cannot be used as an offensive weapon. It stands for an unshakeable conviction to live without permission, to be a responsible member of a genuinely pluralistic society. To live and god damn let live without favor or prejudice.
Our incumbent, who now shows clear signs of Frontotemporal Dementia on top of his pre-existing, lifelong narcissistic personality disorder difficulties, delivered a speech last night in a lame attempt to rewrite history as something other than what every living soul should have already known actually happened.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 07/02/2026
Salvator Rosa
Sleeping Boy
(17th century)
This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived while I picked up a too-long-absent 1967 Martin D-18 guitar after SetTheory—does anybody remember that series from the Fall of 2022?—revealed itself as world-class prose as I listened to it in an AI-powered app (ElevenReader) that convincingly delivered it in Laurence Olivier’s voice. My Prosperity writing ranged from the abstract economy of Real_Work to the myth-making surrounding industrial development in Mythed, from the long economic betrayal of Posterity to the prosperous paradox of Profligacy, from the philosophical reframe of Foundational to the blushing self-awareness of Embarrassment. This series found its philosophical foundation this week.
Thank you for following along!
Embarrassment
Pieter Claesz:
Still Life
(1625)
"As Mark Twain long ago insisted,
Humans are the only animal that blush, or need to."
Prosperity neither appreciates nor requires great wealth. Beyond some uncertain point, wealth becomes more of a burden than an asset, what’s popularly referred to as “An Embarrassment” of riches. This classification includes Scrooge McDuck’s gold coin-filled swimming pool and Midas’ freshly gilded daughter. Any overt display of plenty might quietly qualify: The tacky golden toilet. The personal Jumbo jet. The twelve-car garage. These embarrass because they seem to deflect otherwise perfectly decent assets out of useful circulation. In this world, too often inhibited by absences, taking useful assets out of circulation seems like an extreme example of The Sin of Self-Importance, the most easily avoidable sin on the books. These suggest some lack of discipline, a deeply-rooted emotional problem, perhaps an untreated mommy fixation, something no amount of wealth or show could ever help anyone recover from. An illness.
I suspect that the wealthiest somehow lose their essential gag reflex.
Foundational
Unknown Egyptian Artist of the Ptolemaic Period
Statue of Horus
(332–30 BCE)
"Prosperity won't necessarily make anything easy, but it might render pretty much everything easier."
I began this series by classifying Prosperity as probably the goal, the attainment of which might serve as at least a prominent sub-theme of this work, if not the underlying purpose. In the week and a half since I started this effort, though, my perspective has shifted. What if Prosperity doesn’t qualify as an endpoint objective? Perhaps it works better if I consider it to be Foundational, table stakes in a larger, more dynamic puzzle. Would anyone be satisfied with a static and stable Prosperity, or would achieving it not open up otherwise unimaginable possibilities? Abraham Maslow long ago proposed what he labeled a Hierarchy of Needs. In it, he imagined human needs arrayed from lower to higher. He speculated that before satisfying the lower-order needs, the higher-order ones might remain out of reach. For instance, nobody seriously pursues enlightenment on an empty stomach, or so he insisted. In practice, of course, enlightenment might be best pursued on an empty stomach, and something else must propel a novice to chase after higher forms of consciousness. But what if—and I’m not insisting, like Maslow did, that this must be the case—what if I’m better off imagining Prosperity as being one of those lower-order needs as opposed to being of the highest order? What might happen then?
Prosperity becomes more a context than a purpose.
Profligacy
Salvator Rosa:
The Fall of the Giants
(1663)
"His adolescent attitude could ruin more than himself this time."
Something about Prosperity despises Profligacy. Prosperity seems curiously thrifty, even though it contains plenty. Of course, plenty remains a relative term. Some seem to thrive on a penny while others require vast sums to ever feel adequately supported. The apparent paradox that a thrifty Prosperity carries says much. Some self-discipline seems a necessary element if any Prosperity is to be achieved, let alone maintained. Those who would mortgage the farm on a whim either never gain Prosperity, or “mysteriously” lose it when they least expect it. A similar paradox accompanies every freedom, for none can be practiced as if absolute without somehow ruining its spirit. Each freedom seems to require a thrifty attitude in practice lest a resulting latitude overwhelm through unregulated practice. Brandy was meant for sipping, not chugging.
It seems common that the road to Profligacy usually appears as an opportunity.
Posterity
Robert Dighton:
The Paintress of Maccaroni's
(1770)
"May we choose to choose more wisely this time."
Prosperity cannot be accurately measured in any present sense. Current conditions can only hint at prospects. Because Prosperity must be relational, it cannot be possessed by a person or a time period, though history often misleadingly associates it with specific people and times. A prosperous person possesses a promising future, not merely a temporarily rewarding present. They might accumulate wealth, but not only for themself. They interpret freedom and liberty as associated with family, community, and nation, rather than merely governing an individual’s unbounded choices and personal portfolio. Prosperity might be ninety percent aspiration. It provides the motivation to continue creating, for reaching across space and time, beyond mere space and time. Prosperity manifests in opportunity. Not born-with-a-silver-spoon advantage, but the ability to take reasonable chances, investment rather than raw speculation.
I came of economic age during the infamous Reagan Devolution, where our country’s Prosperity was mortgaged for considerably less than a handful of magic beans.
Mythed
Sebald Beham:
Haman Recognizes his Fate
(1548)
"…constrained by law to consider facts rather than myths."
As a Port Commissioner, The Muse has been charged with promoting economic development in this county. Her elected position pays a modest stipend, something well South of the most modest minimum wage, plus expenses, for which she works seven days each week. She’s often up after midnight, studying some opportunity. Fortunately, she’s an information and data magnet, never happier than when she’s researching some issue. She’s especially skilled at separating opportunities from the myths often accompanying them. She insists upon more than merely due diligence, and she knows the tricks that reliably separate facts from popular fictions. Her constituents aren’t always so demanding, for they sometimes fall prey to the many myths surrounding essentially every economic development opportunity.
Probably nothing has been more damaging to Prosperity than the mythology surrounding industrial property development.
Real_Work
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
The Return of the Prodigal Son
(1668)
"…regardless of what any economist insists."
Most people in this country no longer engage in what our forebears would readily recognize as Real_Work. Real_Work once involved physical labor and was amenable to unambiguous measurement. An hour of labor created a certain indisputable volume of finished product. That product sold at a discernible price, enabling a clear assessment of the contribution a given laborer’s actions added to the ultimate value. High-value commodities reliably produced Prosperity, all other calculations being relatively simple. Almost nobody engages in this sort of labor/Prosperity trading anymore. We mostly work in teams today, sharing tasks and contributing rather than owning our own effort. Determining the value added requires layers of assumptions, none of which involves a finitely observable action. Time-and-motion studies long ago became meaningless measures of efficiency or effectiveness. Productivity has become an imaginary entity; Prosperity, an elusive objective.
Further, we seem to have grown some prejudices about what constitutes Real_Work.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 06/25/2026
Workshop of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Haman Recognizes his Fate
(1648-1665
This week’s writing marked a transition. The EndDays series concluded with its Preface, appropriately written last, after I had confirmed that the butler did it again. Then, on Sunday morning, the Prosperity series began. Five installments in, Prosperity already has its question, its necessary preconditions, its defining choice, and its primary obstacle. The writing ranged from the statistical indictment of MostProsperous to the personal philosophy of Plenty, from the Veblen-inflected Conspicuous Consumption argument of Waste to the unavoidable Responsibilities Prosperity imposes, and finally to the future-phobia of Anxiety that keeps Prosperity perpetually just out of reach. EndDays ended. Prosperity began. The practice continues.
Thank you for following along!
Anxiety
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
The Denial of Peter
(1660)
"They gladly flee backward into cowboy times when only a few pesky Comanche stood between them and promised Prosperity."
We fear more than we revere Prosperity. Oh, we’re all for decency when it proves convenient, but we have grown to distrust and deep-down fear our future, whatever it once was. We have seen more than enough Faster, Better, Cheaper® promotions to understand that they always propose much more than they ever deliver. Not one of us has ever experienced an upgrade that didn’t perform worse than all its predecessors combined. So, we have become future-phobic, anxious about our prospects. We might be nostalgia addicts, aching for some fantasy Good Old Days. Whatever new days might promise, we ain’t buying, or if forced to buy, we ain’t believin’ for a minute. I swear that every billionaire made his money with some new and improved bait-and-switch tactic. We expect to be cheated, and we even get even by cheating ourselves whenever given less than half a chance. Our Anxiety has come to define us and our age.
Given a decent opportunity, we’ll set about making up excuses why we can’t possibly agree to Prosperity’s terms and conditions.
Responsibilities
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
(1659)
"I'm still not all that careful."
My mother often warned me to be careful what I wished for. She never extrapolated her warning into specifics, but I still caught her gist. She was saying that there’s just no escaping some uncertain load of externalities, whatever the activity. Youthful boredom could easily drive me into some activity that might cost me more than I’d ever bargained for. In the face of that boredom, I might agree to anything without thinking very far into even the more likely outcomes. I could end up with more work than I’d imagined possible as a result of trying to escape some work I knew for certain that I found disagreeable. Her admonishment usually reminded me that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and even breakfast is likely to cost me more than I might have imagined.
Even Prosperity, that emerald city at the end of every rainbow, exacts taxes.
Waste
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law
(1659)
"…what might have been Waste was, in fact, future Prosperity."
If Prosperity relies upon the presence of Plenty, its presence also seems to encourage some uncertain volume of Waste. Before Prosperity, a subsistence existence exists. People somehow survive, perhaps just barely getting by. After Prosperity emerges, some excess enters the survival equation, resources can no longer be characterized as wanting, and the resulting excess might prove defining. If nature abhors vacuums, it seems to despise excesses even more. An excess might be considered wealth, retained earnings, or leftover resources unneeded for present survival. It might also be considered Waste, worthless, since it proved itself unnecessary for sustaining survival. What a person or a society does with their excess determines the quality of their Prosperity, perhaps whether it exists at all.
Thorstein Veblen, a renegade economist who was widely shunned near the end of the nineteenth century, coined a term that best exemplifies the defining character of what I might consider Perverse Prosperity: Conspicuous Consumption.
Plenty
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Portrait of a Young Bachelor
(1634)
"…if Prosperity isn't destined to continually evade one's grasp."
Prosperity must be a relative state, one that depends on many factors to be properly gauged. Some find satisfaction with much less than others, while others’ desires seem essentially insatiable. However measured, Prosperity seems to embody an underlying sense of Plenty, however one might choose (or feel compelled) to define it. When I was twenty, I could fit my worldly possessions in the backseat of a classic Volkswagen Beetle, and I sometimes felt burdened by them. Later in life, I’d need a large moving van to fit my stuff, but I’d still feel as if I might not have quite enough. I have been in active deacquisition mode for several years now, figuring I do not need half the stuff I have acquired, so I feel hesitant to add to my already overburdening collection. This results in some absurd situations, like when I wear threadbare clothes because I cannot quite bear to buy better. If I already feel that I have more than Plenty, I don’t feel moved to pursue any more.
Acceptance seems to accompany Plenty.
MostProsperous
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Retrato de mujer joven (Portrait of young woman)
(1634)
"Are we smart enough to share?"
The United States is not the most prosperous nation in the world, not by a long, long shot! Depending on the referenced index, the US ranks between 15th and 40th, despite its clearly enormous economic scale. It falls far short when it comes to equity. I might characterize Prosperity as a society’s capacity to transform income into social benefit. Our United States clearly wastes much of our income on the social equivalent of candy and gum. We seem to do this for all of the usual, truly terribly good reasons. We say we want to avoid socialism while forking over fortunes to industries that should have long ago become self-sufficient, like our poverty-stricken petroleum industry. Indeed, Texas would be another Mississippi were it not for Federal transfer payments made to industries there that could be profitably making their own ways. We purchase our penury at a personal premium. We each more or less contribute. Those most capable of contributing, by longstanding tradition, contribute a much lower percentage of their income and wealth than do the rest of us. This is not by any means Prosperity in action.
In practice, Prosperity might have little to do with wealth.
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