The Origin of Avarice

A geologist weaves together ancient history, personal experience from the world's mines, and the haunting story of his elderly uncle's scholarly life in the aftermath of the upheavals of the twentieth century, to reflect on the nature of a world brought to grief by our rapacity, and to offer a poetic glimpse of the way it can be redeemed.

Ever since the Greek and Roman historians speculated on the seemingly ever-growing violence and greed of the world, metal has been to blame. We have gone from a “golden age” of peace and shared plenty, to an “iron age of bloodshed and conquest”—and beyond.

Today, according to geologist Shefa Siegel, we are threatened not by metal, but by its absence. Metal that once lay close enough to the surface of the earth so that primitive miners could more or less chip off what they needed is now so scarce that entire landscapes are pulverized to extract a fine dust of precious, powdered ore. As Siegel writes: “This is what scarcity looks like: not the end of mining, but its endless expansion.”

Having travelled to the semi-legal mines of the Third World, Siegel realizes the heartbreaking ecological and human devastation he witnesses is evidence of a more general cultural failing—a mindless turning-away from what truly matters. Mining and the scarcity that drives it seem to him a symptom of a world marked by blight and bent on self-destruction. Grieving the loss of his beloved uncle, a chainsmoking, elderly Manhattanite who devoted his life to words and ideas after fleeing the horrors of mid-twentieth century Europe, and half-broken by the ugliness of the metallurgical world he is reluctantly a part of, Siegel seeks healing in Italy. In Florence, and on the island of Elba, he encounters the history of European mining, from the Etruscans, through the Romans, to the Fascists of the twentieth century, piecing together a legacy of violence and greed. But he also finds himself in a world of natural beauty, of nourishing culture and music; and, unexpectedly, a redeeming encounter with love.

In a work of far-reaching scholarship and a deep fascination with history and culture, Siegel traces the shift in human perspective from the balanced view of nature held by the Etruscans through to the commodification and exploitation we think of as normal today, and hints at a path out of the madness.