English
Winning or losing money, to have or to need money, to take or to steal money, to spend or to save money…How many times a day do we think of this word? Since the global economic crisis was declared, we are totally obsessed with money. If we think about it for a moment, it’s only paper.
Can you imagine a world without money as Jean-Jacques Rousseau dreamed with his noble savage concept? This wouldn’t eradicate greed, the sin that takes one to the excessive and inordinate desire to possess and acquire wealth or properties. As a purge to greed, the penitents of The Divine Comedy (by Dante Alighieri) had to kneel on a rock and recite examples of greed and their opposite virtues. Wealth is not always synonymous with success.
It seems that if you suffer from this sin, it will own you too. And if not, you only have to look at the famous miser Harpagon of the play The Miser of Molière , who lived a poor life so he could die rich, accumulating money and riches for no reason except to satisfy his madness. Greed is a condemned sin by the Catholic Church because it usually leads to other vices like envy, anger and pride.
Greed is inner poverty because one is never satisfied with what he has, and one loses the value of objects, feelings and knowledge. Being greedy is not just about money matters, but it also has to do with things one wants to acquire and store for no further use: one can be also an intellectual or emotional greedy. Collecting instead of giving and receiving is like no having civic responsibility, according to the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater.
Our society today is increasingly encouraged to be greedy by casinos, Internet gaming, lotteries, and the crisis! When you read a newspaper you can read words like “stock, market, purchase, loss, market power” and on TV you can see Quiz shows like Who wants to be a Millionaire or even when you where a child you may remember seeing Scrooge McDuck or Uncle Scrooge : these are stories that make us think of materialism and its dangers.
The American film “Greed” (1924) by Erich von Stroheim tells the tale of how greed can lead to total destruction. The plot follows a dentist whose wife wins a lottery ticket, only to become obsessed with money. When her former lover betrays the dentist as a fraud, all of their lives are destroyed.
Many people want money to buy a house or to travel. But you don’t have to be a millionaire to get away for a few days to unknown lands. If you rent apartments in Berlin, you will enjoy a cheap and comfortable stay.
