How much land does a man need?
We know Leo Tolstoy's beautiful short story How much land does a man need?
This is the story of a man who was greedy and was never satisfied with what he had. He craved more and finally died due to his greed.
The story goes like this.
A man named Pahom was a small landowner and a peasant. But he was ambitious. His ambition drove him to acquire more land to increase his prosperity. Yet despite his growing fortune, he remained dissatisfied.
He came to know about a far-off place where land was available cheaply. The Bashkris, a tribal group, were willing to sell their land to anyone willing to buy, but at a fixed rate. And their rate was only 1000 rubles a day!
The rate the Bashkris offered to Pahom to buy their land confused Pahom.
How can somebody sell lands with the unit of a day instead of acres?
It conspired that the Bashkris would sell land to Pahom for one thousand rubble, all the land he could walk in a day. The day starts at dawn when the Sun rises in the east and ends when the Sun sets in the West.
If Pahom cannot return to the spot he started his walk from, when the Sun sets, his thousand rubble would be confiscated. Otherwise, he could buy all the land at 1000 rubble that he can cover, walking during the day.
He started walking and walked the whole day. But he must return to the place from where he began his journey.
In his greed, he walked too far for him to return to the spot he started from before Sunset.
Desperate, he started to run to reach the spot he started from before the Sun went down the horizon.
With lots of effort, thoroughly exhausted, he finally reached where he started at dawn.
But he was so exhausted that on reaching the starting point, he crumpled lifelessly. He died of exhaustion on the spot.
He was buried inside a 6-foot-long hole dug out in the ground on the land for which he gave his life.
The moral: There is no end to human greed, and all a man needs is 6 feet of land where he will be buried when he dies.
Why the story intrigued me
The point Leo Tolstoy wanted to make was simple. That a man does not require much for a happy and fulfilling life. And human greed ultimately destroys man. All the possessions, riches, standing in society, and whatever frills and thrills come with these become zeros when the person dies.
While it is mostly true, I can not fully agree with Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy, after all, was a wealthy aristocrat by birth. His perspective, despite leading a life of a mendicant later in life, was from the upper crust of the society where money and wealth are taken for granted.
This morality is acceptable for a person who has already achieved his minimum requirements in life. He is earning enough to take care of the necessities of his family, keeping his home and hearth warm and his stomach full, yet he wants more. The protagonist is from a peasant, well-to-do background and pines for more despite having enough. When a person has the basic needs fulfilled, the greed for more would destroy him. The risk is not worth it. That is what happened in the story. Human rapaciousness often is like a runaway horse that cannot be controlled. It drags one down the precipice of destruction.
But what happens when the person is so poor that he lives a life of deprivation? When he does not have enough for a happy and fulfilling life. He cannot make two ends meet and take care of his family. Will wanting more be considered greed? Will stretching himself to the fullest to achieve his desired objective is wrong, even if he has to sacrifice his life for it? Or other societal norms? Will the same morality hold water? Is morality universal? Or does it vary according to the situation and class of the person?
It might not be his fault. Despite all his best efforts, society might not allow him to do better. And this is not an outlandish imagination. History bears witness to innumerable epochs when opportunities were monopolies of the wealthy. Even now, we are witnessing a similar lack of opportunities among most of the population. No matter how a particular section of the population tries their best, society does not seem to care. Will the same morality hold in this case? If deprived people pine for better things and push beyond the reasonable, will it be considered greed? Can the action of an individual in a deprived state be judged on the universal benchmark of morality?
It is imperative to relook into all our age-old wisdom and ascertain whether it serves the existing social purpose.
Social injustice around us is impossible to ignore. No matter how one may try. A significant section of the population does not have the privilege of things that we consider ordinary and natural rights - education, health, nutrition, two square meals a day, sanitation, clean drinking water, and safe housing.
In a society where necessities are hard to come by for most and to get them, if one takes desperate means and breaks the conventional moral norms, would it be right to judge that action adversely?
I wonder.
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