money and life

Chapter 10 Don't live a life of debt (1)
Don't expect help from others.
Everything has to be done by yourself,
People who think 20 pounds are too little,
Another £40 is in vain,
This is a pleasure-seeker,
His desire is like a bottomless pit.

—George?Herbert

In life, every decision you make counts, whether things are good or bad.

— Gerald

Instead of worrying, take action.

—French proverb

People only respect those who are truly self-reliant, and only feel sad for vases that rely on others for support and have no appearance.

— Gerald

Everyone has vanity

Modern people seem to pay more and more attention to money. The desire for money has led people to develop many ways to make money, many of which are heresy or opportunistic behavior. People don’t care whether the method of making money is inappropriate, they just want to turn their wealth into more and more.

People's extravagance and waste can be seen everywhere in life.The clothes of the people on the street are getting more and more gorgeous, and there are more and more jewelry.Everyone is living in a mansion, eating delicious food, and many other places, so I won’t list them all here.We should realize that if we don't have much ability to enjoy a luxurious life, then we can just live a normal life, why bother to swell our face and pretend to be fat?In order to brag about their wealth, businessmen borrowed money everywhere to support the scene, and brought in businesses they were not good at to show their ability. In the end, they were sued by their creditors and charged with fraud.

People pay more attention to their appearance than their hearts, and try their best to make themselves look like rich people, so that others' first impression of them is that they are rich and born noble.In fact, this is all about using future money to support the present life.The extravagant life of Robertson and Lord Pass is probably what everyone who loves vanity wants. Although not everyone can achieve their level, there are still many people who can be equal to them.

These vain people are thinking about how to have more fun all the time. They don't care whether their income is overspending or whether their ability can deal with huge debts. Get it, get it by any means.If you lag behind others in a certain aspect, you will feel that you have no face and will be looked down upon by others.They think that people respect me because I have good taste in life, I talk well, I dress well, even though I'm pretending.They are already greedy.

Even if it's cheating, you have to make yourself look glamorous so that you can make friends with other rich people.The poor life is what they try to hide.Before the salary is paid, a pile of debts has already been owed, and then the salary has not been warmed in the hands, and it has to be paid back to everyone.One day his precarious life will collapse completely, and at that time, the so-called friends will be scattered, and no one can sympathize with his misfortune and extend a helping hand.At this time, the poor man can only silently accept the cruel reality.

In fact, as long as you boldly refuse and tell others frankly that you are not a rich person, will your burden still be so heavy?If those friends leave you because you don’t have money, you don’t have to feel sad and lose face. These people are just here for your money. They will surround you when they have money, and laugh at you when they have no money. , none of them are real friends.Success is impossible without hard work, and the impatient desire to climb to the top of the mountain of success will only drive you further and further away from it, because you are not taking action to get closer to it.Don't rush for success, or your previous efforts will be in vain.

In the play, "Mrs. Granty" gathers all the characters of contemporary people, no matter kindness or cunning, honesty or treachery, you can see your own shadow in her.She is just an ordinary character, but she represents the general public.We were deeply fascinated by her performance, watched her words and deeds anxiously and excitedly, and thought anxiously: "What will Mrs. Granty say next?"

There is no one to guide, and a law gradually forms in the society. Everyone unanimously gets rid of their own individuality and self-improvement, uniformly follows a certain person or a certain school, fills their brains with their thoughts, and carefully listens to other people's eyes. work and life.We have become accustomed to living in the past world, always drawing on past experiences, and have lost the courage to move forward.We are afraid of encountering difficulties, and the long-term inertia makes us lazy to think about problems, and only blindly take the experience and achievements of previous people.Freedom has been far away from us, and we are willing to let our minds and souls be bound, mechanically repeating the action of taking.

Therefore, we implement everything according to the rules and regulations of society, and we live according to the rules of which class we are in.It seems that as long as we do this, others will envy and respect us.We are afraid that we will be rejected and looked down upon by others. We live and work cautiously, for fear of being accused by others of doing something wrong or doing something wrong.We have lived so completely in the shadow of others that we do not realize that our accusers are even more confused, greedy and stupid than we are.They are simply talking nonsense and distorting our thinking.

William?Lord Temple once said: "No one should pursue something that is out of reach for himself. Don't try to make yourself into the person you imagined. You are what you are, and you are what you are." Countless experiences Lessons have shown this point.

People nowadays have a very common and very bad habit--vanity.Among them, people with higher status are the majority.They feel that they are superior to others, and they must not drop their prices, and must work harder to improve their status.Therefore, they deliberately show their ability and affluent life to the outside, no matter whether they can bear the huge pressure or not.

The respect of others should be obtained through hard work and certain achievements, but modern people only compete with each other in terms of living standards.Living in a good house and wearing expensive clothes, everyone thinks that he must be a rich man, so they respect him in awe.All these are just external manifestations, but people regard them as the most important condition to judge a person. It is possible that a person with corrupt moral character is respected by everyone just because he looks very respectable.It can be seen that morality and character have been forgotten by people, and some people even show their disdain for them.

The root of all this lies in people's excessive emphasis on status and money.People from all walks of life are fighting openly and secretly, trying to squeeze themselves into the ranks of noble status.Once you feel that some people are inferior to yourself, you will show contemptuous attitude.Like in a club in Birmingham, a group of people in tuxedos look down on another group of people without tuxedos.Mr. Seidler was what Coppett called "the linen man," and it was evident that Coppett despised him.And the servants who herd cows in rich people's homes also think they are nobler than the servants who work in wine shops.But Mr. Seidler was looked down upon by others and also looked down on people of lower status than himself, and then these people looked down on people lower than themselves.Mr. Seidler despises the small roadside merchants who despise the maintenance workers who despise the coolies.

People can always find people who are inferior to themselves, no matter what class or status they are in.The people in the middle position seem to be particularly embarrassed, because they are eager to distinguish themselves from the lower class, and only want to climb up, but suffer from their limited ability.The smaller the city, the more intense the struggle. People from all walks of life gather together to form a circle that prevents outsiders from entering and leaving, and does not interact with other groups of people. They feel that doing so is lowering their status.We can see that in a larger diocese there existed no fewer than six groups, with a very strict hierarchy among them.

While each group rejects those who are lower than its own status, it is still struggling to shorten the gap with the high-status group, hoping that the high-status group can accept itself. They reject others as they do, deny their participation, and sneer at their efforts.

The purpose of all means is to enter the high-class social life that everyone envies. In order to get the respect that the heart desires, everyone is desperate to climb up.People want more wealth, more power, higher status, and getting it makes everyone smile and feel cocky, but no one notices that their souls are slowly disappearing, and only the smell is left in their heads The smell of money and wealth is overwhelming.In the process of chasing fame and fortune, people no longer cherish the simple and beautiful things around them, because they are exposed to money and power every day, so they have become bored with the whole world.

The harm of vanity
In today's society, people like big things. For example, owning a big house is a testament to the superior ability of the homeowner.Because bigger things cost more money.Although a spacious house is more comfortable than a small house, the comfortable life since ancient times must make people greedy for pleasure and forget the disasters that appear at any time in life.People only compare themselves with those who are higher than themselves, and hate that their lives are not as comfortable as others, but Rousseau said: "Even if you give me the smallest house, it is very difficult to live in, and I don't want a house so big that I can spend a year." A house that can’t be finished.”

However, the self-motivation shown by people is not bad. If you want to point out the evil in it, it is something you do to achieve your goal.Once people get used to this stage of life, drinking champagne in a buggy, they cannot afford to be reduced to cheap beer in a buggy.People will do whatever it takes to keep their current lives, otherwise the masses will speculate that whether your status has really been lowered or not, the masses will only think that you are now very down.Similarly, people who already ride in a horse-drawn cart would never want to be asked to walk from their country home to work in the city, or take a bus. The behavior of dropping prices, the envy and respect of others is more important than anything else.

I think anyone can cite many examples to illustrate these truths. The so-called respected people continue to climb higher based on themselves, and after spending money, they try to find it elsewhere.Even if they are heavily in debt, they can't keep their heads up in front of everyone, but they will collapse after a long time, and their extravagant and enviable life will disappear because of the countless debts on their shoulders.I can guarantee that more than half of all bankruptcy cases in the business world are caused by people slapping their faces and living beyond their means.

If you want others to "respect" you, you have to throw away all good morals and use an evil heart to deceive and frame others.The sad thing is that people don't know what these people are doing, they are just confused by their appearance, what they need is the envy and admiration of the world, regardless of whether the way to get these is correct or not.

When they found that they could not maintain their status no matter how hard they tried, many people chose to end their lives, preferring to die than to leave the extravagant life. They took it for granted that the world would look down on them, or even laugh at their downfall. How many people are really poor enough to survive?about?Barlow said: "I have never heard of anyone committing suicide because of hunger, but I know many people who committed suicide because they could not get a piece of clothing they liked."

Many women have this tendency.They have been instilled with a wrong idea since they were young, thinking that a person's appearance is the most important thing, and wisdom and moral character are just an accessory.So they don't pay much attention to their self-cultivation, and only focus on fashion, power and other things that are popular in the society, so as to gain people's approval and find their place in the society.They can tolerate crime, but they cannot tolerate others ignoring themselves.In such a social atmosphere, the unique simplicity and kindness of women have become beyond recognition, and happiness will not come to them.

Therefore, people who appear to be rich or who are rich in society can always convince people that they must have good morals, because people always associate appearance with heart.But are those who appear to be poor, or who are actually poor, necessarily bad?The answer is no, we cannot rule out the occurrence of accidents.For example, a girl who was originally born noble, her family fell apart due to misfortune, she had to rely on her own efforts to support herself, so she also lost her noble identity and status, and was excluded from the upper class, but she didn't care about these .If it were someone else, I'm afraid they would rather borrow money to support themselves than lose their status and identity.

It is conceivable that women's pursuit of status is comparable to that of men. Like men, they have an almost fanatical love for extravagant life. The only difference between this love and men's is that it is mainly manifested in clothing accessories.Today's British women have higher and higher requirements for clothing accessories, which can only be compared with the Louis XV era in France.When people talk about women, they no longer look at their moral character, but only pay attention to their clothes. The quality of clothes directly affects people's judgment of a woman.Rusticity has been replaced by gorgeousness. We should not expect to find what Wadsworth called a "noble and cultivated woman" from these women who can only dress up and party. After removing all false decorations, there is only blank space left.Although they are born as human beings, they do not know the basic requirements of being human.

Luxury can get you into debt

In the middle class, people's income is only enough to maintain life, but this cannot stop them from pursuing a high life. They also need a lot of gorgeous clothes to dress themselves up, and their income is far from satisfying their desires.They also borrowed money to buy luxurious villas, held parties at home from time to time, and often watched plays.The money is spent as soon as it is in hand, and it will be borrowed when it is tight.There is no insurance, and the family still owes a lot of debts. If the man in charge of the family dies suddenly, what can such a family leave for the wife and children?The poor family can only struggle in poverty, because all the money the man earned during his lifetime was used to decorate the "facade"; if he saves a little, he can have a beautiful funeral.

Husband asked, "Have you paid for your clothes?" Wife replied, "No." Husband said, "You are using other people's money to satisfy your desires." No one would agree with a wife borrowing money without telling her husband buying clothes.If she borrowed money to buy clothes, it was the clothes manufacturer paying for her.Spending money freely by a wife can stress out a husband and make him resentful of his wife.The family can never make ends meet, and I don't think any husband or wife can live with that for long.

Letting go of your own and your wife’s borrowing behavior will only put you in a more embarrassing environment. You don’t have the courage to speak face-to-face with the person who lent you money, and he can use the reason of debt to disturb your life at will. .When there is a knock at the door, you will tremble and think that the creditor is coming to demand the money you owe.If you can't come up with the money, you have to make up a lot of excuses and try to get away with it.Slowly you go from lying occasionally to lying often, and people stop believing a word you say.As the saying goes: "A lie always follows a debt."

It is very unwise to borrow money to satisfy one's own desires.It takes us half a year or even a year to repay the debt just for those expensive items that are beyond our ability to buy.The bosses always have a way to lure us to shop, and we are willing to jump into it knowing that it is a trap.Why are we not firm in our hearts?Why can't we treat our bosses as our enemies as the Romans treated their slaves?Women suffer from insufficient money when shopping, so they owe it first, and the boss is also happy for them to owe debts, because the more they owe, the more interest they will pay, and the more they will pay.These cunning merchants conned the wives of decent men into taking them into debts, and increasing them at will.Long-term debts have made people vague about the amount of their debts, plus a lot of interest, as long as the amount of changes is not particularly large, no one will know.

In this regard, Professor Newman made a particularly pointed remark. He said: "I hope the country can enact laws to curb the spread of this phenomenon. It is stipulated that shop owners can no longer collect arrears after a certain period of time, so as to prevent businessmen from They lend money endlessly, but moderate credit is not a bad thing for those who can pay back on time. Therefore, people can only buy and sell in cash, and the price of goods will not be ridiculously high. This way In the future, people’s debt ratio will be greatly reduced, and it will also prevent merchants from raising prices and asking others to compensate for their losses because they cannot collect money back. The credit system that has trapped countless people will be completely abolished.”

(End of this chapter)