Would the Fairies like Elon Musk?

The miser, the individual (usually male) who makes lots of money and make a deliberate choice to keep it all to himself, even if he is never going to use it, is a stock figure in European folk tales and fairy stories. There is also a strong tradition of similar characters in other traditions. In Africa, where sharing with family and community is essential, the one who hoards wealth and refuses to share is among the worst of the social pariahs and comes in for serious hatred and violence, not only in stories. African accusations of witchcraft often revolve around the assumption that wealth is being hoarded inappropriately.

Fairies we are told are particularly vicious to those who hoard and do not share, with many stories about such individuals having their comeuppance and coming to a very nasty end. Among the mythical creatures it is dragons who are perhaps the most commonly associated with hoarding and sitting on their mounds of gold – just think of Tolkien’s Smaug in the Hobbit – although in the stories dwarfs are not far behind. We all know what happens to dragons in the stories from the European tradition.

One of the difficulties we face today with the image of the miser is the fact that in previous centuries the figure has been merged with antisemitic images of Jewish money lenders. The differences between the miser and the Jew have often been blurred. In a society that is, rightly, very conscious of antisemitism it is often difficult to use traditional images of the miser without crossing significant lines. However, it must be noted that the image goes well beyond the Jewish stereotype and the hatred of the miser, as miser, is well ingrained in the folk traditions of Europe and many other parts of the world.

So why do we not see so many stories, or even cartoons and jokes, about misers, and the wealthy in general, within our contemporary society? There are series like White Lotus that pokes gentle fun at the goings on amongst the rich and famous, and other satires of celebrity culture. However, there is little with the real viciousness and anti-hoarding values of the fairy tale tradition. We would almost think that contemporary fairies would be very at home in the six-star hotel, with the latest fashions and all the necessary luxury accessories, including a twenty-four-hour social media presence.

Perhaps! And I would probably speculate that it is social media, over and above all else, that provides the context for our somewhat ambiguous relationship with wealth. Social media both flaunts wealth and the influence it brings (or perhaps the wealth that influence brings) while stoking both our envy/jealousy and our illusions that perhaps, one day, we could also be wealthy, if only we had the right connections or the right number of followers/likes. There is a desire for wealth, a sense that perhaps we could all be wealthy in the right circumstances, even an admiration for wealth (if it appears to have been generated from nothing – which in reality is seldom the case) rather than a social expectation that wealth should be shared and that the wealthy should be brought down a peg or two.

We do admire philanthropy and the first generation of tech billionaires, including Bill Gates and others, have gone out of their way to plough their wealth back into medical research, education and the eradication of malaria across the world. This is admirable and has, to some extent, blunted our critique of the wealthy. A person who spends, who shares their wealth, especially through philanthropy is not, perhaps, thought of as a miser. What of the person who spends their money on space rockets and wacky ideas about sending human beings to Mars. Musk would probably claim that this is philanthropy, for the greater good of humanity. In this sense Musk is not a miser in the traditional sense of the word. But is this really good enough?

In a sense it is not the individual, whether the hoarder of medieval Europe, the dragon sitting on their gold, or the African chief who does not follow custom and share their wealth with the family, who is the ultimate target of the stories about misers and the fairies who despise them. The target is the disparity in wealth and the unwillingness to share. That is still with us, and Musk, and Trump, and all the rest of them, are both examples, and symbols, of such disparity and the corruption and rot that this can lead to. We need new stories, not perhaps about fairies and misers, certainly not perpetuating the anti-Semitic stereotypes, but certainly about the real dangers, the fundamental evils, of disparities of wealth and the unwillingness to share that wealth with society.

Elon Musk, watch out, the fairies are coming…