By Compton Greene
It has long been my contention that the true measure of a person is not how they make their money, but how gloriously, extravagantly, and unapologetically they lose it. For what is life, if not a grand stage upon which we are tasked to perform a role that dazzles and distracts? And is not spending lavishly—with flourish and flair—the most captivating performance of all? As Erasmus so aptly wrote, “Pecunia non olet” (money does not stink), though I dare add: it does, however, lose all meaning if spent without style.
To spend lavishly is not merely a vulgar act of overconsumption—it is an art form, requiring vision, discernment, and an unerring ability to imbue even the most mundane purchase with a sense of the sublime. One does not merely purchase a thing; one transforms it into a declaration of self, a monument to taste, and a hymn to one’s own ability to live life as it should be lived: extravagantly.
The Philosophy of Lavishness
Lavish spending is not for the faint of heart or the small of mind. It requires a certain intellectual rigor, an aesthetic sensibility that borders on the spiritual. As Aristotle might have said, had he possessed a decent tailor, “Excess is not merely excess; it is the perfection of form when liberated from utility.”
Consider, if you will, the infamous example of the great 17th-century Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, who once commissioned a ship so outrageously top-heavy with gilded carvings that it sank before leaving the harbor. What a triumph of vision! What a glorious failure! Gustavus understood what so few do today: that greatness lies not in the result but in the audacity of the attempt.
Thus, let us reject the dreary philosophy of moderation. Let the stingy insist on “value for money” and prattle on about practicality. We, the true aesthetes, know that to spend lavishly is to transcend the banal and enter the realm of the poetic.
Why Spend Lavishly? Three Irrefutable Arguments
1. Lavish Spending Is a Statement of Individuality
In an age where everyone is content to order mass-produced trinkets and dress like mannequins in some dystopian department store, the act of spending lavishly is an act of rebellion. To commission a bespoke item—be it a tailored suit, a rare painting, or a bathtub carved from a single block of Carrara marble—is to proclaim, “I am not like you. I am better.”
The poet Lord Byron, himself a connoisseur of the finer things in life, once declared, “There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore,” but I daresay Byron never truly knew rapture until he spent an entire year’s income on a silver tea service he used precisely twice. Such gestures are not mere purchases; they are acts of self-definition.
2. Lavish Spending Elevates the Ordinary to the Extraordinary
Why drink wine when you can drink wine aged in barrels once owned by Napoleon? Why light your home with mere bulbs when Venetian glass chandeliers exist? To spend lavishly is to assert that life’s daily rituals—eating, drinking, sitting—deserve to be enshrined in beauty. As the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau so beautifully illustrated in his fêtes galantes, even a picnic can become an affair of grace and grandeur if only one adds silk cushions and champagne.
3. Lavish Spending Is a Legacy
When one spends lavishly, one is not merely acquiring objects; one is constructing a legacy. It is no accident that the most enduring names in history—Lorenzo de Medici, Louis XIV, and Catherine the Great—are remembered as much for their spending as for their achievements. What are we, after all, if not the artifacts we leave behind?
When future generations rifle through our belongings, let them marvel not at our practicality but at our splendor. Let them gasp at the absurdity of a jewel-encrusted lobster fork or a library filled with books too fine to touch. Let them say, “Here lived a person who understood the value of beauty above all else.”
The Technique of Lavishness
Of course, one must spend lavishly with precision. Careless extravagance is no better than miserliness; to be gaudy is as sinful as to be dull. A true master of lavishness follows these principles:
• Always Choose the Unnecessary Over the Practical: A gold-plated umbrella stand is infinitely preferable to a sturdy plastic one. Why? Because it makes people ask, “Who on earth buys this?” And to that question, you may simply smile.
• Never Explain Your Spending: To justify a lavish purchase is to cheapen it. Let others assume you have secrets they’ll never understand.
• Spend on the Experience, Not Just the Item: A lavish purchase should tell a story. A tablecloth handwoven by monks on a Greek island is not just a tablecloth—it is a conversation starter, a slice of mystique, and possibly a veil for an unanticipated wedding.
In Praise of Pointless Luxuries
Finally, I urge you to embrace the pointless luxury, the item that serves no function other than to delight and bewilder. Proust spent entire afternoons admiring a single porcelain vase. Marie Antoinette kept sheep dressed in ribbons. Michelangelo once purchased marble he had no intention of carving, simply because it was “too beautiful to touch.”
To spend lavishly on the unnecessary is to assert that life is not a series of problems to be solved but a canvas to be adorned.
Conclusion: Spend Lavishly, Live Immortally
I leave you with the words of Horace: “Pulvis et umbra sumus” (we are but dust and shadows). Yet, in the fleeting moments before we return to that dust, we have the power to make ourselves glitter, to shine, to stand apart from the gray masses. To spend lavishly is not merely to purchase—it is to ascend.
So go forth, dear reader, and spend as if the world depends on it. Because, truly, it does.