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Money and success are never all there is
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DEAR editor,
I sense a spiritual emptiness in what Wan Lixin has written, a nagging question, “Is this all there is? Is life nothing more than a pursuit of money and ‘success’?” (Mr Wan’s article titled “Time to reform money-oriented education,” Shanghai Daily, March 22, )
Allowing for the fact that it appears to be part of human nature that we cannot entirely avoid comparing ourselves to others, it is unfortunate when such comparisons include “rankings,” especially when such valuations are almost entirely in the form of economic currency.
This is hardly a new problem for my own country, of course. From its earliest days, travelers to the United States have observed its citizens’ obsession with money and in “achieving success.”
The latter is always defined as rising above one’s ancestors (as well as one’s contemporaries). It is also why every government’s budget shortages routinely translate into cutting funding for the arts and human sciences, for these are considered — at best — peripheral to the essential pursuit of life: money and success.
Thus it is that the most successful commercial society of all time has become truly spiritually impoverished.
It is in this sense that Donald Trump — and his value set as revealed by those he has appointed to office and in his budget — reveals the vast emptiness currently at America’s soul: one is “useful” only to the extent that one “contributes” economically.
The blatant ruthlessness of his budget priorities testifies to the relative “worthlessness” of those who are sick, injured, unemployed or poor. They represent a drag on “the rest of us,” apparently, so in cutting safety net supports for them we not only recognize their lower economic worth but also hasten their exit, representing further gains for those already on top.
Lost values
For many years now, I have been studying the events and thoughts of Western civilization over the last two centuries.
And one of the conclusions I have drawn is that much of the alienation, anger, and hunger for more authoritarian solutions that we see repeatedly surfacing in the West during these years is directly due to the “emptying out” of all other values than those of commerce.
The Enlightenment proclaimed the liberating effects of embracing reason and the scientific method (“just the facts, ma’am!”).
Yet, scant years later, the spreading, out-of-control horror of the French Revolution exposed how weak relying upon human reason really was, as it exposed us as not really being creatures of reason but, rather, as puppets manipulated by inflamed passions and unthinking emotions.
Belief-systems eroded
Which left what for humans to believe in? Ummm, exact formulations were not quickly forthcoming.
Instead, the rapidity of technological innovations roiled even further the stability of traditional societies, further eroding belief-systems and long-established authority figures while upending social roles.
From this mess, one saw both the irregular eruptions of revolutionary violence (such as occurred throughout Europe in 1848) and the intellectual attempts to understand, if not impose, order, such as Marx’s understanding of the dynamics of history and Darwin’s earth-shaking discovery of the process of evolution.
But from the middle of the 19th century, there were also nihilists, anarchists, and revolutionaries.
Among the most seductive were the populist nationalists whose dreams of a once-great past of “their people” coexisted with festering resentment at the “others” in their midst, not just immigrants or outsiders, but the “unworthy,” the “flawed’ or “imperfect.”
Mr Wan’s friend’s son is manifesting signs of his own dis-spiritedness in this world of really hollow values.
I think that marks him as a sensitive boy who, however inarticulately, is likely yearning for greater meaning, promise, and hope in his life than merely “being successful.”
All of our faith-traditions feature great wisdom teachers who told us in what real value and truth lay.
Why do we so stubbornly — and persistently — refuse to take them seriously? What will it take to break through our money-madness in order to recognize song, color, and beauty?
Peace to you!
Greg
Greg Cusack is a retired statesman from the United States.
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