Wealth and Freedom

It has become fashionable to differentiate synonyms to adapt them to ideologies and sell any kind of advice. The examples are numerous: “loneliness” and “solitude”, “goal” and “aim” and many others. Recently, I came across a guy differentiating “rich” from “wealthy”. According to him, rich people are people with a lot of money, while wealthy people are people with a lot of freedom. The reasoning is this: true wealth is associated with freedom, with the availability of resources that allow the release from work, that open possibilities, that do not require high maintenance costs, that produce a highly positive cash flow. Naturally, the citizen then wanted to teach how to be wealthy. But let us stick to the idea: wealth and freedom, money and release. The guy is right in what he says. There is a false idea, widely spread all over the planet, that success is mostly tied to money, happiness to wealth, and value to success. I easily recognize a modern slave: someone constantly concerned, hostage to countless obligations, thirsty for security, and proud of what he can buy. Let’s say he is a millionaire. He is a millionaire, but he does not let go of the telephone, he cannot miss work, he cannot leave it and he commits himself to various obligations. He has got a big house, he changes cars often, he consumes in a very high standard. Would that be success, or would that be value? Money is only noble as a means to freedom, and skews when it leads to slavery. Accepting himself as a slave, unaware of his own condition, the millionaire is nothing more than a puppet of money, submissive to a piece of paper. In the meantime, I surrender: “value”, today, like all other words, seems to escape from my understanding…

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Violate the Rules

I have just accompanied, enchanted, a policeman driving on the opposite way, without his seat belt, and parking on the sidewalk. He parked and seemed to observe a tree on the other side of the street. Incredible! Awesome! And I could not contain the desire to replicate the action myself. I want to drive the opposite way, climb on the sidewalk and observe a tree, like checking if it is okay. Does the cop pay fines? I do not want to respect the laws! Hahaha!… I want to park, in front of a sign, in a forbidden place. And ignore the parking meter! Inspiration, idol this cop… And with this feeling, I begin today in the work of Henry David Thoreau. Tell me, master, what did you learn catechizing animals in the forest? I do not like wild animals that much, but who knows?… I want to isolate myself, not pay taxes, break all the rules. Can you teach me?

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To Be Poor or to Be a Slave?

This is a perverse question that is mandatory for all those who, born in a modest cradle, find their interests inclined to something unpopular. I ask: is it possible for an intelligence to be interested in something popular? Perhaps, though unusual. For the question remains vibrant, imposing: to be poor or to be a slave? I can only interpret it as a confrontation between freedom and desire: to answer it is to decide between independence or submission. However, good news: opening the doors to poverty does not necessarily mean that it will stay.

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Desire: the Cancer of the Human Psyche

It is possible to find rational justifications for denying the solutions proposed by the Stoics, the Buddhists, Schopenhauer and many others. But there is a universal truth, present also in Christian philosophy, concerning desire: it is the plague, the cancer of the human psyche, the endless source of frustrations. And if, after careful psychological analysis, we decide to pluck it out at its root, plucking each of our hopes with a hoe, we get rid of an immense, malignant and harmful burden. The problem is that the human being lives on dreams, supports reality in the hope of a better future. To exterminate it, therefore, is to make life lose its brightness, is to give line to indifference, is to deny nature itself, is self-mutilation. Well, that seems to be the way to peace.

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