(Advanced Student writing) Essay on Money and Ethics

Why Can’t We Be Ethical?

Essay on Ethics

Which one would you like, freedom or serfdom? Your answer will be, needless to say, freedom, and you may think you are already. But are you?

Without questioning what is generally considered to be unquestionable, you will never be free under the contemporary system in the way it is designed. The truth may be too inconvenient to face, but shying away from it doesn’t help you get anywhere because we can be who we are only when we have our free will. It is also what makes a human being a human being.

What is meant by a free will is not pseudo-freedom. You may think you are free when you can drink when you are thirsty or when you can eat when you are hungry, but it is not a free will. It is giving in to instinct. In a sense, you are a slave to your instinct.

Likewise, you may think you have a free will when you strive to earn money, which is also a basic necessity like food or drink under the current economic system, but you should question the legitimacy of your own thought. Do you really feel free in pursuit of money? No, because it is also giving in to your instinct needs of survival.

What’s far worse, the nature of money is totally different from that of food or drink. In general, the more you have, the less you want. Greed only increases at a decreasing rate, and beyond a certain point, it actually decreases. It is what mainstream economic laws are based on. At the same time, however, the mainstream economists don’t tell you - they take it for so granted that they don’t waste time explaining - that there is one exception: money.

It is like drinking salty water. The more money you have, the more money you want, which is exactly contrary to even our natural instinct. It is a “manipulated instinct.” In other words, our greed towards money doesn’t match with that of other survival needs.

The biggest issue with this is that most of us do not question it, let alone not know it, which leads to where we are completely deprived of freedom. Therefore, the question we have to ask ourselves is “What twists our arms to drink salty water, in spite of ourselves?”

The answer is simple: the money-generating system. It is the money growth that forces us to perpetuate spinning the wheel to keep up with the speed of money-generating machine and not fall behind. Think of the real estate price as an example.

We are living in a wag the dog world where money takes priority before anything else, even humans and Earth. We live as if money is the purpose and other things are just means. Ethics, philosophy and civics are said to be a waste of time in a dog eat dog society. Advocates for nature are disregarded as childish antagonists against economic development. All of these combined only contributes to a doomed destiny.

Money has been helping expedite the progress of development to some degree, and we shouldn’t downplay its role in the modern society. Yet, it is merely a steroid, and we mustn’t rely too much on it. Negative side effects are evidently abundant unless you are intentionally turning a blind eye. Hopefully, we are not so addicted to that steroid. We have the power to awaken ourselves and be a true master of our own destiny.

Comment

The strength of this piece of writing it's its coherence - the way the points lead to one another in a way that is both clear and hard to refute.

The student also uses really great analogies, especially the salty water one. He also addresses the reader directly, a good persuasive technique that forces you to reflect on what he's saying at a personal level.

The essay made me think of this quote from Karl Marx on money:

"I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary? Money is the alienated ability of mankind."

I'd say the next step here would be to try to bring a little more outside discussion into his discussion. The student could do this by selecting a couple of contrasting quotations (perhaps one that is more favourable to money and one that is less) and then examine them critically. 

A quotation requires three sentences.

1. to establish the quotation
2. to use the quotation
3. to explain the quotation

Using quotations can be devilishly hard. You have to think very carefully about where the quotation has come from, what it was originally intended to say (are you taking to too much out of context?) and why you want to use it. It can also be challenging to make the exact words work they way you want them to, because the original quote was used in another context and there may be words in there that don't work in the new context. There may be just too many words (as in the quote from Marx above)! 

Perhaps let's boil it down to this:

"Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?"

Some notes on language use:

1. Without questioning what is generally considered to be unquestionable, you will never be free under the contemporary system in the way it is designed. 

Without questioning what is generally considered to be unquestionable, you will never be free under the contemporary system, the way it is designed. 

2. You may think you are free when you can drink when you are thirsty or when you can eat when you are hungry, but it is not a free will. 

You may think you are free when you can drink when you are thirsty or when you can eat when you are hungry, but this is not a free will. 

3. Do you really feel free in pursuit of money? No, because it is also giving in to your instinct needs of survival.

Do you really feel free in pursuit of money? No, because this is also giving in to your instinctive will to survive.

4. Negative side effects are evidently abundant unless you are intentionally turning a blind eye. 

Negative side effects are abundantly evident unless you are intentionally turning a blind eye.