Many scholars, when mentioning the term “money worship,” often simply treat it as a “label” — especially from the standpoint of humanistic scholars, “money worship” is obviously a bad thing. This is somewhat like “idealism,” “agnosticism,” and so on: for example, when a thought has an “idealistic” tendency, it is tantamount to saying that it has a “bad” tendency, and in the case of an idealist philosopher’s agnostic thought, this sort of criticism is almost as good as saying nothing at all and can simply be ignored. Likewise, criticisms of money worship, relativism, and nihilism must avoid falling into this kind of childishness.
In certain groups where rejection of money worship and similar ideas has won broad agreement, one need not repeat the argument every time in discussion; however, if what we face directly is precisely the money worshipper, then we must directly address the discussion of “money worship” itself. And in fact, it is precisely in modern times, when money worship, relativism, and nihilism are all wildly fashionable, and when a fairly large portion of the populace is in practice, whether knowingly or not, supporting a money-worshipping stance, that scholars can no longer forever amuse themselves in the ivory tower; these concepts themselves must eventually be clarified. Let me then say a few words about “money worship.”
Before launching into the discussion, I should first preannounce my position on “money worship”: first, for me, money worship is obviously “superficial”; second, though superficial, money worship is not necessarily undesirable for the individual; finally, although money worship is a choice available to the individual, given that excessively rampant money worship is of no benefit to the health of society as a whole, and given that there are equally desirable or even deeper and more transcendent alternatives, money worshippers have reason to reflect on their beliefs and no reason to peddle those beliefs to others.
What is “money worship”? The dictionary definition is “the worship of money, the idea of extremely taking money as the purpose of all action.” It is precisely under this definition that I am discussing it.
More specifically, money worship refers to such an attitude toward life: when answering the question “what is the meaning of life,” the money worshipper takes “wealth” as the ultimate goal of the pursuit of meaning. Generally speaking, we can also fold into the category of “money worship” the attitude toward life that takes “power” as the ultimate pursuit. In fact, one very popular modern idea is: money’s purpose is power, and power’s purpose is money!
For many people, refuting money worship is easy enough — is it not utterly absurd to make money just for the sake of making money? But the matter is by no means that simple. For instance, these same refuters often say on another occasion: “The meaning of life can only be found within life itself” (see my reading notes on Zhao Tingyang’s On Possible Life) — so why is “living for life” reasonable, while “making money for money’s sake” unreasonable? To this kind of question, the answer may be: because life and money are different concepts, the concept of life is “higher” than money, human beings are always “within life,” and one can transcend “money” but cannot transcend “life.” Yet the problem still cannot be resolved so simply, because the money worshipper can still quibble as follows — if money is within life, then my abstract pursuit of the meaning of life can be expressed through the concrete, real, and quantifiable pursuit of money and wealth; and if money is outside life, then I have all the more found a pursuit that transcends life!
We are forced to return to a more fundamental question: “What is the meaning of life?”
The questioning of life’s meaning arises from such a mood — “I must pursue something”; otherwise, my life will sink into confusion and chaos. Everyone hopes to have something to hope for; losing anything that can be hoped for will undoubtedly be painful. Whether one seeks the other shore, seeks immortality, seeks truth, seeks the highest good, seeks some kind of “realm,” or seeks “democracy,” “freedom,” “the all-round development of human beings,” and so on, any theory about the meaning of life is an attempt to set for people an “eternal,” “absolute,” or “infinite” — in short, “ultimate” — “pursuit” or “hope” (see my reading notes on Luckmann’s The Invisible Religion). And when people have not yet found a suitable idea in which to entrust their ultimate pursuit, they always tend to keep looking for secondary, temporary, limited objects of pursuit for themselves; for example, middle school students take the college entrance examination as their pursuit, college students take finding a job as their pursuit, young people take getting married and starting a family as their pursuit, adults take raising their children to success as their pursuit… The common feature of these pursuits is that they are brief and accomplishable. Yet if a person’s life can always find these secondary goals of pursuit, it may also present a state of fullness, since “busyness” replaces “searching” and thereby evades the ultimate question.
However, such evasion is never all that reliable. When major setbacks occur in life, or when life is too smooth and leaves one with nothing to do, or even merely when, in a moment of bodily and mental serenity, one cannot help but think about the questions of life and death, people inevitably still fall into pain and confusion.
So, even if only to fool oneself, many people still tend to “design” an ultimate pursuit for their own lives; while others, even if they have not actively specified some pursuit and have not taken some absolute thing as the lever by which to measure value, will still, knowingly or unknowingly, reveal their latent answer to the question of “ultimate meaning.”
At this point, let us look again at the implication of “money worship” — money worship takes “wealth” as the ultimate object of pursuit, as the lever for evaluating value — compared with those attitudes toward life that constantly seek transient pursuits, the pursuit of “wealth” is infinite and eternal, because clearly the increase of wealth is endless, and it can fully serve as a pursuit that fills an entire life; and compared with concepts such as truth, the highest good, and a realm, “wealth” is extremely real. It is not abstract, elusive, or even meaningless, but something within reach, something plain and clear! Seen this way, “money worship” possesses both sufficient “reality” and a certain kind of “infinitude”; the combination of these two advantages makes money worship appear so attractive, and it is no wonder that the money-worshipping attitude toward life has become the first choice of a considerable number of modern people!
The above discussion gives one the feeling that I seem to be defending “money worship,” and in fact that is indeed one possible way to understand it! — even though I myself am unquestionably a rejecter of money worship. What I am trying to show is that, like relativism, nihilism, and the like, “money worship” is not something so easily refuted or persuaded away; an overly self-assured and therefore arrogant tendency to denounce “money worship” as if it were simple will only make the genuine money worshipper dismissive. The usual way of criticizing money worship will only be effective for people of this sort — they did not originally wish to reduce the meaning of life to money, yet part of their views do more or less bear a money-worshipping tendency, and when others point out these problems, they deepen their views through self-reflection. However, for those who have already stubbornly identified with “money worship,” just as with those thoroughgoing skeptics, thoroughgoing relativists, thoroughgoing nihilists, and so on, rational argument often does not easily prevail! Aside from the option of reaching reconciliation under certain conditions, if one wishes to try to guide the most thoroughgoing money worshipper, a more reasonable approach is not to “persuade” by “scientific” methods, but to “induce” by “religious” means. In any case, the chief deficiency of “wealth” as the ultimate pursuit is that it lacks “sacredness.” Even if money worship can be said to bring lasting “fullness” to life, it is difficult for it truly to bring lasting “fullness” to the soul.
February 1, 2006
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply