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Ben Franklin would weep over US consumer society
By Wan Lixin |
January 12, 2013, Saturday
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A few weeks ago I got an unexpected phone call from a former colleague whom I had not heard from for many years.
More than 20 years ago we began to teach at a county health school in the same year, and used to share the same office and dorm.
After briefly inquiring after my general situation, he sent me an e-mail in which he revealed he was in dire financial straits, and desperately in need of help.
I was not a little surprised, because although teaching had long ceased to be a job of much prestige, the income is more than enough to meet daily needs, and, probably to the envy of many, teachers at that school were always paid punctually. How fortunate he is compared with the myriad laborers who have to stage sit-ins or make a scene at their employers' home before Spring Festival to extract back wages. That's traditionally the time to settle old accounts, and some debtors will simply sneak away.
What could have been the cause of his desperate situation?
Could it be sloth? It must be confessed that getting up of a freezing winter's morning in northern Jiangsu Province is painful, but this ex-colleague had the audacity of almost never showing up in the office in the morning, even in summer, though he lived right on the campus. Often students awaiting his instruction had to knock at his door to wake him up.
He was once a big achiever in pyramid sales, which enabled him to be among the first to be adorned with a smart handset, until the government instituted a crack down.
Then I heard he became pathologically addicted to buying lottery tickets.
But all these elements cannot fully explain his despair.
It pains me to think that this former colleague, a college graduate in Chinese, had not benefited much from the teachings of Chinese sages who, without exception, preach the value of hard work, honesty, frugality, and responsibility.
Although today we generally blame conspicuous consumption on pernicious American influence, as I will illustrate below, there is evidence that Americans got hooked on their destructive way of life later than is usually believed.
They are not born profligates, but have sunk to a nation of debtors after ignoring the teachings of their forefathers, including Benjamin Franklin, author of "Poor Richard's Almanack" (1732), a book full of advice on daily life, worthy effort, human nature, fiscal habits, clothing, vanity and prudence.
It is compelling reading not only for Americans today, but also for those Chinese who have come to equate a Western lifestyle with consumption and borrowing.
"To learn the true worth of money, try to borrow. Be aware that going into debt means giving your creditors power over your life," Franklin wrote in "The Way to Wealth," the preface to the almanac.
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," he advised, meaning if you sleep late, you have to hurry all day long to have any hope of catching up with your responsibilities before sleep, and ignoring this wisdom often leads to poverty. "Industry pays debts, while despair increases them."
He warned that if you repeatedly buy things you do not need, before long you will have to sell that which you need. Vanity is a great source of foolish spending. "A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees." He cited running into debt as the first vice, even before lying.
Franklin's conception of a good life, based on diligence, industry and frugality, is informed by Puritan ethics, and his warning against indulging in fleeting pleasures is no longer heeded today because the fear of condemnation in an afterlife has been effectively removed in our modern enlightenment.
If anything, hedonism becomes the only ideal worth aspiring to today.
It is reported that over the next decade China will become the largest credit card market in the world by number of issued cards, overtaking the United States ("Consumer credit culture boom a slippery slope into enslavement," January 9, Shanghai Daily).
That will be a delight to some politicians and economists, but time will prove that we will pay for our excesses with a high price.
More than 20 years ago we began to teach at a county health school in the same year, and used to share the same office and dorm.
After briefly inquiring after my general situation, he sent me an e-mail in which he revealed he was in dire financial straits, and desperately in need of help.
I was not a little surprised, because although teaching had long ceased to be a job of much prestige, the income is more than enough to meet daily needs, and, probably to the envy of many, teachers at that school were always paid punctually. How fortunate he is compared with the myriad laborers who have to stage sit-ins or make a scene at their employers' home before Spring Festival to extract back wages. That's traditionally the time to settle old accounts, and some debtors will simply sneak away.
What could have been the cause of his desperate situation?
Could it be sloth? It must be confessed that getting up of a freezing winter's morning in northern Jiangsu Province is painful, but this ex-colleague had the audacity of almost never showing up in the office in the morning, even in summer, though he lived right on the campus. Often students awaiting his instruction had to knock at his door to wake him up.
He was once a big achiever in pyramid sales, which enabled him to be among the first to be adorned with a smart handset, until the government instituted a crack down.
Then I heard he became pathologically addicted to buying lottery tickets.
But all these elements cannot fully explain his despair.
It pains me to think that this former colleague, a college graduate in Chinese, had not benefited much from the teachings of Chinese sages who, without exception, preach the value of hard work, honesty, frugality, and responsibility.
Although today we generally blame conspicuous consumption on pernicious American influence, as I will illustrate below, there is evidence that Americans got hooked on their destructive way of life later than is usually believed.
They are not born profligates, but have sunk to a nation of debtors after ignoring the teachings of their forefathers, including Benjamin Franklin, author of "Poor Richard's Almanack" (1732), a book full of advice on daily life, worthy effort, human nature, fiscal habits, clothing, vanity and prudence.
It is compelling reading not only for Americans today, but also for those Chinese who have come to equate a Western lifestyle with consumption and borrowing.
"To learn the true worth of money, try to borrow. Be aware that going into debt means giving your creditors power over your life," Franklin wrote in "The Way to Wealth," the preface to the almanac.
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," he advised, meaning if you sleep late, you have to hurry all day long to have any hope of catching up with your responsibilities before sleep, and ignoring this wisdom often leads to poverty. "Industry pays debts, while despair increases them."
He warned that if you repeatedly buy things you do not need, before long you will have to sell that which you need. Vanity is a great source of foolish spending. "A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees." He cited running into debt as the first vice, even before lying.
Franklin's conception of a good life, based on diligence, industry and frugality, is informed by Puritan ethics, and his warning against indulging in fleeting pleasures is no longer heeded today because the fear of condemnation in an afterlife has been effectively removed in our modern enlightenment.
If anything, hedonism becomes the only ideal worth aspiring to today.
It is reported that over the next decade China will become the largest credit card market in the world by number of issued cards, overtaking the United States ("Consumer credit culture boom a slippery slope into enslavement," January 9, Shanghai Daily).
That will be a delight to some politicians and economists, but time will prove that we will pay for our excesses with a high price.
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