Chris Jepson: Nothing exceeds like excess

People travel for two primary reasons. One is to experience nature, say the Grand Canyon, your rustic cabin retreat in the North Carolina mountains, or during an excursion to New Zealand. The other reason is to experience new cultures. We travel to Europe for example to see its “rich” history, its architecture, its art. Most of us don’t visit France to see how peasants lived in the 18th century; we go to Versailles.

Along the same line, we would visit Russia, not so much to see a replica of a Potemkin village but for the Hermitage of Peter the Great. We go to Egypt to experience the pyramids; Florence, Italy, to take-in Medici’s Uffizi. We’re not so much interested in how the poor of Hampshire, England, lived but go in droves to Highclere Castle (of “Downton Abbey” fame).

I’ve a proposition for you. But for the incredible concentrations of wealth and power over the eons we wouldn’t have many of the artistic and architectural wonders of the world today that we all so readily admire and eagerly enjoy, as well as our spending beaucoup bucks traveling the world to experience.

India’s Taj Mahal was built by the Emperor Shah Jahan as a tribute to his wife. Again, few of us travel to the subcontinent today to see how the impoverished locals exist on subsistence wages. This is my premise: but for the excessive concentration of wealth and power in the hands (and accounts) of the few (men primarily), humanity would be far less enriched.

Consider Mount Vernon— George Washington’s estate — or Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, both built by slave labor for America’s early landed aristocracy, and both incredible tourist destinations today. We are fascinated by the extravagance we humans will indulge ourselves when money and privilege are so concentrated. The Egyptian pyramids were the “whim” of the few. They took decades to build, requiring thousand of workers.

Consider St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Ralph Waldo Emerson described it as, "an ornament of the Earth ... the sublime of the beautiful." That’s right, and built at the behest of unbelievably powerful men with costs unimaginable today. Actually, the cost was extreme (see: Reformation) in that the Catholic Church was draining money out of Europe by selling heavenly indulgences to construct the Basilica. Martin Luther took umbrage and, well, you know the rest of that story. Yet, but for the excess of privileged males (See Pope’s Julius II & Leo X), we wouldn’t have St. Peter’s and its incredible art.

This poses a philosophical conundrum: When a few exploit the many but the end product is beauty of an unimaginable scale, how are we (today) to judge how that artistic accomplishment was/is achieved?

Look at America’s uber-rich today: Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heiress worth by some estimates $25 billion (all inherited wealth) is funding a billion-dollar art museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. No one was exploited (arguably) in the construction of the museum nor in the acquisition of the art, but what is the efficacy of an economic system (U.S.) that accepts/allows the concentration of so much wealth in so few hands. What are the implications for our democracy?

I’m of two minds. On one hand, I truly love, for example, what the egoist Pope Leo X funded, but I have to question at what cost to society for such indulgence?