"Now I just want to make money", this is the simple and straightforward voice of many young people at present. "Just want to make money" can be understood as a kind of single-mindedness after admitting life, but it may also be a desperate risk of "not hesitating to make trouble". If it is only used on the Internet to ridicule their own state of having nothing and having no pursuit, the self-deprecating phrase "only want to make money" is harmless, but if it floods into the universal mentality of young people, it is undoubtedly dangerous.
Making money is for the sake of life, and people are reduced to tools for making money, but they are the degradation of civilization. Is money a means of seeking happiness, or has it become happiness itself? We should all ask ourselves if we might as well re-read Marx.
(Source: Visual China)
Come on, money makers?
Recently, a real estate tycoon publicly advised young people not to rush to make money, but should first do public welfare or climb the mountain, which was sprayed by netizens. Many netizens pulled out the rich man's experience, and found that he seemed to have been making money when he was young. The "critical guidance" after fame and fortune is obviously difficult to convince the public.
I have to admit that many post-90s and post-00s people realize that they are just ordinary people earlier than their parents and teachers. In the face of the cruel competition for survival, ordinary people have to bow their heads. As a result, "just want to make money" has become a one-sided approach after confessing his fate.
Many young people are anxious about "making money" from the moment they come into contact with society. From the money for each meal, the monthly rent, the cost of maintaining basic decency, to the mortgage, car loan, the gift of affection, to the parents' pension, the education of their children... If there is no such burden, of course, you can fly yourself, but most people must pay these "fees" to fly again. Therefore, the pursuit of the so-called poetry and distance can only be considered after achieving financial freedom.
People who "why not eat meat" usually have a hard time empathizing with the "just want to make money" mentality.
Presumably in order to seek broader support for this mentality, the Internet is filled with self-deprecating performance art of the so-called "money maker", which magnifies the sadness and helplessness behind "making money" and presents a pathology after long-term repression.
On a social networking site where young people gathered, a short video called "Come on, Money Maker" received more than 50,000 likes, and the narration was quite direct: "Money people, money souls, money people can become people." Don't work hard to make money this year, how to go home for the New Year next year. Get up every day for the first sentence, and try to get money today. You can do anything Buddhist, but you have to do your best to get money..."
Some people also dug up the "money theory" of the big villain in the film and television drama. For example, Zhang Shihao's sentence in "Wings Can't Escape", "I want to make money now, what is the use of envying others, we have to act on our own, we want to become richer than them..."
Taking the most money in the shortest time as a philosophy of life, doing things in order to make money, and even falling into the abyss of crime, such a mentality is very dangerous.
Alienation and dissolution as "human"
Pandering to the "just want to make money" mentality has spawned a lot of traps for making quick money. I believe that many people have seen such a micro-business circle of friends: congratulations to 20-year-old college students for 3 months of entrepreneurship, hi mention a Maserati. Financial advertising: The second-born mother is unemployed at home, does not rely on her husband to rely on financial management, and achieves financial freedom in 1 year. There is also a targeted push "brush single" SMS based on the analysis of some magical modules: 2 hours a day, free time, mobile phone operability, earning eight hundred a day is not a dream...
As a result, some young people compete with their mentality of "only wanting to make money", and frantically test again and again on the edge of danger. Fortunately, the choice of most ordinary people is to return to their sanity after anger, return to the daily track, and convince themselves that the labor they have paid is equal to the value created, and the root of pain is only "too much to want" and "can't ask for it".
However, from the perspective of social observation, the increasing trend of "just wanting to make money" highlights the loss of "people".
Marx said that man is the sum of all social relations. If there is no money that makes it difficult to maintain social relations, it is difficult to make friends, long insights, love, and even difficult to be respected, then this society has been alienated, and "just want to make money" has changed from a means to the only purpose. In labor, man cannot get happiness and the embodiment of free will, the human body becomes a tool for making money, and the spirit is gradually lost in the compressed space, from pain to numbness, numbness to pain, and the cycle continues.
As a dynamic factor in society, young people are always the most sensitive to the crisis of such social relations. Therefore, "just want to make money" should be understood as a reverse, vigilant slogan. After all, when the physical and mental conditions are the best, when all aspects are the most suitable for the world, you can't play freely, often gray-headed, and even feel suffocated, which is probably a problem with our social operation system.
At the same time, cyberspace amplifies this hardship. "Just want to make money" is like the 3.0 version of money worship, more sharp, straightforward and cruel. Behind it is the silent cry of young people for involution, and they are crying out for a more open and fair and just social system. In such a social system, it should be to do their best, each to show their talents, as long as you work hard, there will be opportunities, as long as you pay there will be hope, "making money" is not the only way out of happiness.
Reread Marx
In the waiting for hope, young people also need to adjust themselves. At this time, how to pursue and apply knowledge to achieve self-consistency will be particularly important. One of the most remarkable questions Marx pondered at the age of 23 was "criticism." Criticism is to face up to the difference in the eyes of others, overcome the limitations of self-knowledge, listen to the call of others, and aspire to do something for others.
When "just want to make money" fills the mind, it needs a critical force to resolve the resentment and prejudice behind this. The focus is not on whether the matter of "making money" is legitimate and legitimate, whether it is rational and restrained, but whether the subject of this mentality, the "me" as an individual, is out of selfishness and selfishness, whether it is out of a refined egoistic tendency.
Re-reading Marx, you will find that if the young Marx is a bourgeois nobleman who "only wants to make money", then it is very easy for him to become "President of Marx" and "President of Marx". But he soberly rejected the fairy tales of wealth. He even devoted himself to the rescue of his "opposite", the proletariat, in order to save the vast majority of the working people from suffering.
When Marxism has experienced 100 years of development in China and witnessed the birth of a prosperous country from poverty and weakness to the prosperity of the strong country, today's young people should have more reason to believe that the dreams pursued by great men when they were young are no longer far away: the goal of striving to reconcile personal happiness with everyone's happiness than the pursuit of personal pleasures is to strive to reconcile personal happiness with everyone's happiness. To find the meaning of personal life from the life of the group, to find the greatest happiness of the individual from the happiness of everyone.
As Han Yuhai, a professor of chinese and Chinese literature at Peking University, said to young people in the book "Greatness Must Be Understood": If one day, you are tired of modern politics; if one day you ask yourself why you can't find true love anywhere; if one day you ask yourself, why we always can't control the desire to make money, to be famous, to compare, and dominate others; if you find yourself just a tool to make money; if you one day have the question of "what is the meaning of life and our world", Then read the 1844 Manuscript of the Philosophy of Economics. Marx's book was originally written for you.
Source: Half Moon Talk Internal Edition, No. 5, 2021
Author: Yu Yun
Editor-in-charge: Yang Jiannan