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| Visions & Revisions |
Growing a Great Family
Brett Anderson
02/02/2004
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In most families there is rarely more than one true wealth creator.
Ah, that is a wonderful statement. Here we have a very interesting dichotomy. If we define the wealth
creator as a financial wealth creator, then, yes, there is usually just one. But if
we read the term "wealth" to include
the creation of human and intellectual capital—the values that grow a person who can pursue happiness and be
useful—then the answer is no.
In his biography of John Adams, David McCullough quotes Adams as saying, and I paraphrase, that he had to study war and politics (he being, for the moment, the wealth creator) so that his sons (in 18th- century terms) could study navigation and agriculture and useful business skills, so that in turn his grandsons could study sculpture and music and painting.
In a number of the world’s cultural groups (the Jewish culture being perhaps the most well known, although it is also true in Chinese culture), the role of the person creating the financial wealth is to provide a means for the next generation to be even more useful. In these cases, the persons creating the wealth perceives the growth of wealth in terms of enabling their children to follow skills and careers that will be not only more beneficial to themselves, but also more beneficial to the societies of which they are a part.
So in answer to the question of whether most families have only one financial wealth creator, it may be true, because wealth creation is a calling. It is what that person came into this life to do. But if financial wealth is not the only important wealth that is being created, then we fail to appreciate the multiple profound callings people can have
in terms of their human development and their ability to be useful within the larger society.
Look at the Rockefellers. In the second generation, John D. Rockefeller Jr. not only maintained the great fortune that his father left him, but expanded it and further created, through his interests in philanthropy, enormous wealth for society as a whole. What would New York City be without the Rockefeller gifts? Would Los Angeles be the city it is today without the gifts from J. Paul
Getty and Walt Disney? We have to ask, what is true wealth creation? And I believe it is a question of creativity.
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