Some people believe they know the price of anything. They think the price for something is what you pay for it. Just as they believe the price they pay is only measured in what they pay alone and nothing else.
I guess these are the same people who said that the end justifies the means. They believe you can carefully measure what it costs you to do something, and if someone or something else is hurt in the process, it makes no difference – we got our goal.
I don’t remember who said that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. But it’s a good quote. Most importantly it has a lot of truth.
I believe that the price for something is not only what we can measure as payment, but all other effects that we cause during achieving this goal. These effect may be on us alone – for example if we have to work long hours, do bad things, etc. Or it can be on others – humans, animals, plants and nature in general.
Sometimes these effects can be positive – which is great! And sometimes they can be negative – which is why our society and our world is clearly richer than in any point of time in the history of this Earth, but also arguably not more morally evolved than the Greeks and the Romans some thousands years ago.
It is our world that is made in such a way that most negative consequences are not directly born by the person who does the deed. And other people quite often pay with their health, lives and souls so that someone could profit from it. Look at what happened in Iraq, in half Asia and almost all of Africa, even in the developed world. We are willing to accept at least one million people dead in Iraq so that our petrol can be 10 Euro/USD cents cheaper. And the same goes on in so many countries in Africa, Asia and South America – it is not easy to believe. Where small dictators, military commanders, business leaders and even government clerks, can destroy so much life to get their fair share of silver in their pockets.
It is all because they think the only think they pay is money. And the fact what other people pay for it does not really matter.
But even if we look at developed countries – quite often people do what they do because they thought about themselves as themselves and their companies as their companies, and everybody else as a resource. If it weren’t so petrol producers would care where how they get their oil, diamond ring makers would care how they get their diamonds, search engines would care how truthful their searches are in countries like China, in general – people would care about how they meet their goals.
I understand that everyone wants to succeed and that success if very important for mankind’s survival. Sometimes our success does require us to affect nature negatively – for example we have to extract fuel to maintain civilisation. But we need to do it in the best possible way and we need to constantly look for ways to improve our technology, our understanding and our actions – so as to constantly minimise our negative effects until we turn into neutral or positive effect civilisation!
In that respect I ask – what is success? Is it defined only by the money we receive for our deeds? And more importantly is the price of it just the price we pay? Is the price of a oil from Iraq just the price of equipment and salaries of workers involved? Does somehow the price of human suffering, millions dead and future destroyed count?
I believe that what people do is they see that others pay the price for their success but they believe it is not their problem, as long as they get the money. What you do – matters, but I believe how you do it matters too.
If you pay with your soul for your success, it is not a success but failure. If you demoralise yourself and hurt animals, people and nature in a serious way so that you can purely benefit from this as money – you have not succeeded, but failed. What we do – matters, but how we do it matters more.
