The financial crisis is a crisis of people's faith. People's imagination of life and the lifestyle and social scale built on this basis will be human issues that need to be paid attention to in recent years.
Adolf Merkel, the fifth richest man in Germany, committed suicide recently. This entrepreneur who rides a bicycle to work started from scratch, owns 120 companies and employs 100,000 people. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the 74-year-old Meckler has made investment mistakes and constantly negotiated with the bank about the period and method of credit repayment. He still cannot stop his corporate kingdom from disintegrating.
Since the financial turmoil, Meckler is not the first capitalist to choose suicide. Three days before Christmas in 2008, Wall Street tycoon Madoff broke out a shocking financial scandal. The noble French capitalist De La Villechet lost $1 billion and lost the family funds. So he locked himself in the 22nd-floor Manhattan office, swallowed sleeping pills, and cut his wrists with a utility knife; pursuing perfection, he also used a trash can to catch his blood so as not to stain the carpet.
Before the crisis broke out, these people who were calling the wind and rain in the market were like Greek gods living on Mount Olympus, all handsome and powerful, and unattainable; but now they have fallen into fragile mortals and are vulnerable.
Suddenly, the era in which we are alive has changed again. Once, magical numbers were flying in the sky, wealth accumulation was beyond imagination, capitalists, entrepreneurs, and bankers with golden wings could be seen everywhere, just like legendary mythical figures flying freely. Their story is the success story of this era. But in just a few months, we have come to an era of collapse of the gods: corporate bankruptcies, bank failures, Wall Street tycoons are actually no more than fraudsters, and multinational listed high-tech companies have exposed scandals of fraudulent accounts for many years.
If their success was the success of our time, their failure also represents the failure of our time.
This may be the reason that drove those capitalists to a real ruin. Because they once believed in this system, strived for the top in the system, and were rewarded. They are the believers and advocates of this system. They practice by themselves, uphold the rules of the game, and refute any doubts. In their old age, they encountered such a difficult crisis of faith, which was really unbearable.
Many knowledgeable people point out that it is greed that makes our time become what it is today. However, greed is the basic human nature, and any system is probably unavoidable from the erosion of human nature.
I think that in this financial tsunami, what is really being tested is not our long-awaited humanity, but our faith and lifestyle. Most modern people do not believe in God, their family relationships are loose, the depth of friendship is difficult to determine, and their status changes at any time. For most people, work is the new religion, and work ethics is the new social morality. The object of our long-term relationship is not relatives, but colleagues; the object of our daily loyalty is not the country, but the company. Work defines the scope of our activities, determines the content of our daily lives, and divides our interpersonal circles. Work performance represents an indicator of achievement. A promotion and salary increase will increase self-confidence, while a downgrade and unemployment is a life dilemma. The failure of work is often equal to the failure of life.
For the business gods like Meckler in Germany and Bai Wenzheng in Taiwan, work is everything. Work defines their lives.
Without work, there is no purpose and meaning of life.
At the same time, we do live in an environment where money is piled up. It does not mean that people only look at money, but that most people on the surface live in a highly urbanized and sophisticated mechanized environment. We don’t hunt ourselves, grow vegetables, or draw water. We rely on sheets of paper money in exchange for the basic substances that can sustain our lives.
In his novel "The Life and Times of Michael K.", South African writer Ke Ci described how an African could not understand how the free sky, the vast wilderness and the natural caves became forbidden. The living space where natural resources were at hand was due to war, Private property and national boundaries have set many obstacles to him; on the contrary, urban people who are accustomed to industrialization of life can hardly imagine living in the world without any long objects. If there is no bank account, there is no apartment and endless heat. Water, how does one live?
The financial crisis is a crisis of people's faith. People's imagination of life and the lifestyle and social scale built on this basis will be human issues that need to be paid attention to in recent years.
