Last month, a crypto entrepreneur bought a banana taped to a wall — a conceptual art piece by Maurizio Cattlean — at a Sotheby’s art auction for $6.2 million including auction-house fees and subsequently ate it.

At a press conference in a Hong Kong hotel where Justin Sun consumed the banana he purchased, he offered attendees each a roll of tape and a banana of their own. Did Sun know he was holding a modern, but degraded version of a potlatch?

On the Northwest coast of North America, for as long as oral tradition records, Indigenous tribes have held potlatch ceremonies where the community comes together to watch the host destroy some of his accumulated wealth and also give it away.

Precious oil was burned, valued ornaments were broken, and gifts of food and household items were distributed. Anthropologists saw potlatches as a way to redistribute wealth and also as a form of conspicuous consumption. After all, how rich must I be to be able to set a boatload of heating oil on fire?

These events also reflect an understanding that a community is at risk for disruptive actions when some people are accumulating wealth and others have little. Recognizing the high achievers, at the same time that everyone is able to eat, fosters social cohesion and strength.

We might want to give this practice some thought.

In the dominant American culture, where we are suspicious about redistribution, we certainly like to display the bounty of our wealth, even when it is modest. We did it with our elaborate Thanksgiving feasts with family and will do it again as we overspend on Christmas presents. You can say “consumer culture,” but I will also point out that there is an almost universal human desire to demonstrate our achievements and worth by obviously and publicly spending money. And in these popular traditions, we are also sharing, which makes them lovely.

Comedian,’ a conceptual art piece by Maurizio Cattlean was estimated to fetch between $1 million and $1.5 million back in October when Sotheby’s announced the Nov. 20 date of ‘The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction’ in New York. (Courtesy of Sotheby’s)

The most status, however, seems to accrue to those who can literally afford to be wasteful. The competition to build the largest yacht that will be fully staffed but barely used, the need to own homes that will be staffed but not visited in every vacation spot on Earth. Assorted $50,000 pocketbooks and a half-million-dollar car to tool around the neighborhood. These are not actions taken out of need, or even from a desire to have the best made or best performing items. They signal to the community that someone is so rich they can, basically, set their money on fire.

The artist of the taped banana titled his work “Comedian,” and has said that it is a commentary on the absurdity of the art world. Ridiculous it may very well be, but the art world has become an additional way to practice an ancient tradition of displaying wealth. Buying art might seem like an investment that will yield a return, but let’s be real. A banana is not going to appreciate. It is going to rot. Might as well enjoy the snack. If Cattalan meant to reveal the nature of many of these purchases, he did a very good job.

However, Sun’s public consumption of his multimillion-dollar fruit is not at all the same as a community leader both wasting and sharing his wealth. It is trivializing the full meaning of potlatch to display your ability to waste but skip the part about sharing. In some ways it is pretty emblematic of our culture. That we care less for community cohesion, and we worry less about the potential danger of hoarding wealth when others are suffering.

True, Sun did offer attendees their own bananas. It would have been more in the spirit of the potlatch if he had distributed something useful, like cash.

Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on Facebook and X.

A number of Jewish Americans are now suggesting that they will vote for Donald Trump because the Biden administration is insufficiently supportive of Israel, and not concerned enough about antisemitism.

Arab Americans, in some number, are saying publicly that they will not vote for a second term for the Biden administration, in order to rebuke them for their support of Israel.

Billionaires generally are endorsing Trump for President, apparently fearing the current administration is too liberal and will increase financial burdens on the wealthy.

Many on the American left wing will not endorse voting for Biden/Harris in 2024 as this administration will not sufficiently burden the wealthy.

Much as it pains me to agree with Rhode Island’s anchorman, Gene Valicenti, we are living in a time when people want what they want, exactly when and how they want it (as he regularly says on his morning radio show). And when the demands are nonnegotiable, and contradictory, there appears to be no way forward.

I am not minimizing the goals and concerns of any of the above groups. On the whole, they all have articulated positions on the issues that have considerable appeal, and urgency, for like-minded individuals. And all can argue that what is important from their perspective is also good for the country.

But I will not pretend I do not understand the complexity of trying to govern a country as diverse in opinion, needs, and affiliations as is the United States of America. Especially in a time of so much conflict in the world at large, and within our web of alliances and international relationships.

If we are polarized as a nation, which may or may not be as profound as reporting seems to indicate, one way it is being expressed is in political decisions based on concerns not for the country as a whole, but for the issues most central to our closest affinities. Because we are not able to clearly define what we share as Americans in any cohesive way, we are freed to focus on the needs of our own group rather than the national good.

There has been quite a lot written about our loss of social cohesion and sense of common citizenship, and what it might look like to begin to bring it back. Perhaps it would look like more education, a national service requirement, some kind of shared, inspirational goal (preferably not a war). But these are deliberate processes, and we cannot pause time, and slow the process of the international conflicts, elections, and policy decisions that would all benefit from our having some sense of common goals.

Both political parties suffer from this phenomenon, but our current Democratic President, because he cannot ignore his diverse constituency as he runs for a second term, suffers the most. And this fractiousness is giving explicit or tacit approval to a second Trump term. That’s even though Trump’s expressed goals are flatly autocratic, and potentially theocratic, as laid out explicitly in Project 2025 and in his campaign speeches. Even now that he is a convicted felon.

What Trump is offering us, is something that appears to some to be a solution to our disunity — the removal from the body politic of the diversity of opinions, and of people. He suggests he will stop much of the immigration to the United States, and deport many who are here based on their ethnicity and/or political expressions. He will remove from power those who disagree with him, and clamp down on protest and free speech. He will make us “one,” not by uniting us, but by limiting who we are. I am convinced that, on some level, this is his appeal.

The problem of course is that if America has ever been a great nation, ever been exceptional, it is because of our acceptance of diversity. And it’s because of the scope of brilliance, enterprise, and culture that has been included in that embrace. An embrace that began at the very beginning, and most completely, here in Rhode Island in 1636.

We may have a lot of work to do to fulfill even our original promise. Solutions may seem elusive and difficult, but we cannot get there on a path of repression and exclusion that gives the lie to our founding values. It would deform us, like amputating needed limbs, in addition to being horribly, morally wrong.

Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on Facebook and X.