In my experience, rich people seem to cop a fair bit of stick (criticism). In my view, much of that may well be justified - of the very few well off people I've met (and I have never met anyone - in this lifetime - who was a millionaire), some are very tight-fisted. Not all have been stingy, and some have actually been quite pleasant and reasonable people. There are, of course, also rich people like the philanthropist Elisabeth Murdoch.
It is the stinginess and materialism that I object to - NOT the fact that they are rich and I am not. My experience of many people is that the objection they have to rich people is it isn't themselves who are rich, it is someone else.
Keep in mind here that there has been research which found that, once you had enough money to meet your needs, having more money didn't necessarily make you more happy. So ... once you have enough to live reasonably comfortably, money doesn't buy you happiness. Conversely, it is vital NOT to be living in poverty in order to be happy!
The saying about money doesn't buy you happiness doesn't apply to those in poverty.
This attitude of - effectively - hatred towards the rich probably had an extreme in the stories told to me by a former work colleague who came from difficult circumstances in southern China [1]. There, if someone was involved in a car accident, people would not help them because of the anger they felt that someone else was rich enough to have a car. That sort of attitude is not good karmically, or from any other spiritual perspective.
Nevertheless, it is refreshing to come across rich people like Warren Buffett, who has taken a pledge to give away most of his fortune (mostly via Bill Gates' Foundation), and urged other rich people to do likewise.
When I started writing this, it was in response to some newspaper articles. The links may be dead, but here they are, for what (if anything) it is worth:
- Buffett's call to billionaires, The Age 17th June, 2010
- Billionaires vow to give away half their fortune, 5th August, 2010
- A reply based on the notion that the rich do contribute through things like paying taxes: There are two sides to the coin with billionaires' philanthropy, 9th August, 2010
Interesting food for thought on an aspect of materialism.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
Notes:
- Once, when my friend's sister was crying with hunger, he tried to steal a chicken for her, was caught, and spent the day strung up in chains.
This post's photo is of my palatial "office" - note the 3/4 screen that I use, as a result of the screen being closed on a crystal some years ago :) The timber is so I can finish building a table (which I have been a bit slack about). I enjoy woodwork - one of the results of trying to sail competitively on a tight budget as a kid: the shelves you can see are my work. It's a fairly confined space, and my working tools are imperfect: nevertheless, I can get things done. I consider too many people make excuses that they cannot do stuff because situations or tools are imperfect. Well, learn to improvise and make do - MAKE it work with what you have!
Tags: aggression, anger, attitudes, China, ethics, materialism, personal characteristics, society, poverty,
First published: Saturday 20th November, 2010
Last edited: Saturday 20th November, 2010
