Aug 13, 2006

The Lure of Money...

“Money Money Money"


The driving force behind all the inventions and advancements taking place

or

the driving force behind many of the wars and the cause of sorrow for millions.



The Glitterati of today’s world. The main attraction.

Well money is certainly the star attraction to date. Every single person wants a king size share of money and many will go to any lengths to procure it. Humanity today has become selfish and greedy. Money has become the driving force of today’s world and it is leading more and more people to ways which ultimately hurt them and the people around them.

We stand up and proudly say that today the world is a civilized place and a much better place than yester year with a larger life span and the luxuries that were unheard of in the ancient days and life becoming more and more comfortable and easier to live. But do people realize that this is not advancement. Money has actually made life more difficult and less worthwhile to live. Everything runs on the exchange of money. Whatever you want to do or own something u have to exchange money whether white money over the table or black money under the table.

The biggest and the most important necessity of all has become nothing but a commodity and ruled by the exchange of money. Yes, I am talking about EDUCATION. It is the most basic and one of the bare necessities required by any person to live a wholesome life but that also is dictated by money. Instead of seats being awarded on merit they are being reserved and awarded on the basis of financial status. People need to realize that if financial status rules this, the quality of education imparted will deteriorate at an alarming rate as people who are not interested in studies will get access to the top colleges and institutions.

From the primary school level and from many years in the past the illegal exchange of money has warranted the allotment of seats to undeserving children who do not want to try hard. Hard work and experience is the mother of all teachers and if that is replaced by the easy exchange of money children and students will get easy access to education and not learn anything in the process. They will form the idea that to get everything in life, money is the answer and will go to any lengths to fill their pockets with paper notes and metal coins. This is very evident today as more and more of India's future generation is being lured away by call centres into earning money. Students from the plus 2 sections are being recruited and getting paid big amounts. These students lose the value of money and the need for education. They do not develop the habit of saving. When they realize what they have become it is too late for them to turn back. The Lure of Money has spoiled their and their families' lives.

It has been said that climbing a mountain is harder than descending from the summit. Similarly earning money is a whole lot harder than spending it. When the students realize this they will turn to illegal ways of earning money. This is evident from the crowded prisons and most wanted lists across the world. The various mafia dons are people who realized this and perfected the art of earning easy money. They rule a world running parallel to the real world. Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" has successfully and wonderfully detailed how the mafia world works and how it continuously touches and affects our world. As a result people like "Veerappan", "Ansari", "Dawood Ibrahim", "Chhota Shakeel", and the equivalents of "Don Corleone" have taken birth disrupting our world and hurting us all at the same time.

The profession of Medicine has been, since ancient times, the most worthwhile and the top priority profession of all. But in the third world countries and the developing nations this profession is also ruled by the all pervasive "MONEY". Currency and the lure of money also corrupted this godly and divine profession into a negative and selfish one. Today it has become a question of money to receive treatments. I have heard of many incidents where families are thrown into turmoil because of the death of the sole bread earner as they couldn’t afford the treatments. Treatments of diseases like cancer, tumours etc are so expensive that not everybody can afford them. Yes, advancements have been made and many previously fatal diseases have become easy to cure but still a good amount of treatments are out of the reach of the common man. Diseases like TB are still proving fatal to a good number of people. Government run hospitals can afford to show losses and still provide all kinds of treatments to the common man at really cheap prices but the state of these hospitals are very bad. The look, the scenario and the environment in them are not at all professional or hospital like. Top doctors refuse to go and serve in these hospitals. They all are looking towards the private hospitals that "pay more".

I congratulate the developed countries who atleast provide more and better facilities at the government run hospitals. Atleast over there the top priority is saving lives. They first attend to the patients and then take care of the formalities later. But here first and foremost u have to file an FIR then only will an accident victim get treatment not regarding how badly he is suffering. Doctors here DO NOT care a damn for the patients or victims. They are taught the delicacies of the human body and more importantly "how to earn money" rather than the value of life. Sadly people today join the medical profession only because they see the opportunity to earn truckloads of money rather than the passion to save lives. This is the reason why there are so many strikes in the doctorate profession. They would rather see a patient suffer and die rather than attend to him and save a precious life. These doctors should be given a taste of their own medicine and only then will they realize how cruel they are when they refuse treatment to a suffering person. We as a country or race will never become advanced until we learn to value "LIFE" and show compassion towards another life form.

The adverse affects of money can be seen all around us. It affects life adversely and directly. Where we talk about larger life spans and new ways of treating patients, we forget to mention the shortening of life span because of money. Very recently a friend lost his father to the call of money. A terrorist group wanted to extort money out of him but in the process they brutally murdered him. Thus we see the adverse affect of money, how it can shorten the life span of an individual while boasting about increasing another’s.

People have long since recognized the power and prestige that money can give to a person. This is often recognized as one of the many gifts of money. But on the other hand i say it is the biggest bane to humanity. The poor person sees the rich man flaunt his money in useless and unproductive areas and laments that only fools get money. This is actually the case because the rich man does not understand the value of money as well as the poor man does. It is the same feelings that a hungry man feels when he doesn’t get a morsel of food and sees another happily eating. Rich people flaunt money on personal benefits and not on teaching the poor man how to become rich. We should adopt the mentality of the rich man in the very popular story in which the rich man teaches the poor man to fish and earn his bread rather than living on charity. In today’s world the rich man will give charity rather than teach another how to earn his bread. It is as if a rich man gets a kick out of showing to another that see how rich he is. This aim is so derogatory. Instead of creating new opportunities for poor people to earn their bread, rich people bask in the show of prosperity.

We also need to analyse how money came into existence. In ancient times there was no money. There were only commodities. People got what they wanted by the exchange of commodities. Barter system was the system followed. But it was very difficult to remember the various exchange rates. So then people started to exchange shells as the common medium to purchase goods from each other. Thus, Shells became the currency of that age. Then at some point in time a king or ruler introduced the concept of money. He made coins out of some metal and gave it a certain value such that these many coins will purchase this number of such and such commodity. Thus, money came into existence. Trade became a whole lot easier and money could be stored more easily than commodities used for exchange. Economists say that the barter system died at this point of time but I’m afraid it lived on very much and is still in existence.

Money is a medium of exchange just as the shells and commodities were a medium of exchange. When we purchase a good, we pay a certain amount of money in exchange for the good. Money is nothing but another commodity. But people fail to realize this. All because money is the medium of exchange they do not realize that today we are just following a more advanced version of the barter system. If we go to a seller and tell him that we will give him a commodity useful to him in exchange of a certain amount of good equivalent to the value of the commodity we will give, i am sure he will agree. Here you see, money did not enter the picture and thus this is the barter system followed by our ancestors and so it is this barter system we are following in this present day and age.

People do not realize this and give money importance above all else. I have been taught in college that you are not a manager till u get some benefit whether worldly or monetary out of all the projects you manage. I can do nothing but refute this. A manager is not a person to derive benefit. He is a person who is trained in the art of managing people and such that all projects come out successful and beneficial to the world around him and this process he earns the reputation of a good manager. A professional is a person who works in projects to earn money. Today people are confusing Managers with Professionals. Managers manage professionals as well as skilled and unskilled labourers. They bring purpose and structure to a project. They are not there for personal benefits and they most certainly not pick up only those projects from which they can derive personal benefits. Imagine if that starts to happen. Nobody will be working towards the betterment of humanity. The Social aspect of personal as well as professional lives of individuals and businesses will be kaput. Humanity will not advance anymore. People will look only to personal gains and chaos will rule. The world will be a paradigm of Hell.

It has long been predicted that the next fall of the US Dollar will make the depression of 1929 seem like a Sunday holiday. And this fall is not far. We all can see that USA is no longer as powerful a nation as it was 10-20 years ago. It is the lure of money that has been the cause of this. The people over there live more on credit and almost everyone is under debt. Savings are non-existent as a result of which everybody will suffer a whole lot when the Dollar falls and this time the whole world will be affected as USD is like the most popular currency for exchange of goods. And there is no other Currency which can currently replace the Dollar. There is thought that the Euro will take over but the Euro has its own problems and is not as stable as it should be. The fall of the dollar will probably spark of a worldwide depression leading to more and more sufferings. This will in turn make humanity take a step back from its current position.

We need to realize that money is not everything. The humane aspect of life is so much more important than money. The people who have acquired money should use it not for personal benefits but for the improvement of mankind. It should be used for the eradication of social evils and n uplifting the living standards and positions of the common man.

The era of monetary economics is coming to an end. We will ultimately have to adopt a system in which money plays a negligible or no role at all. A system wherein all humans work together for the benefit of mankind. A system in which we recognize the value of life and work together in harmony to make life better for everyone. Where the amount of HARDWORK and not the amount MONEY determines the status of a person. Until we reach this state the world will continue to be horror-filled, unfair and insecure.