Level Ground, 8. Slaves.

There are people who don't seem to understand anything without thinking of it in monetary terms. People who think that if something is worth having, it's because it's very expensive. People who, seeing what the neighbor has, wants something better and bigger, because if what they have is more expensive, they are better than the neighbor.

That is what has ruined the world, not capitalism per se. Too many people think in terms of worth, making monetary worth the most important aspect of their lives. Perhaps it comes from Calvin's ideas that wealth was a sign of God's grace bestowed on a person, and evidence of the person's predestination to be saved. With the extension of ideas and commerce from northern Europe, the idea of wealth being a sign of grace became rooted in Catholic southern Europe, with the results we see now.

There is a person we know, like many others, that is obsessed with making money. The more that comes into the household, the better. This person once berated me for buying a €1 house plant as a frivolous purchase. They look up to rich people, thinking they deserve praise for having acquired money. Any activity they partake in has to bring them influence or wealth of some kind. Counselling our daughter, they told her to take up some study that would be "useful" and bring her a good job. Culture, to them, either has a euro sign on it, or it isn't worth bothering about.

This person worships people like Amancio Ortega, saying that he was very generous donating certain machinery to a couple of public hospitals. They didn't understand our criticism of him that he spent a couple of million in charity, while taking up every loophole he could to avoid paying taxes that wouldn't make a dent in his income, yet supply each hospital in the country with the same material he donated to a couple of them. This person simply repeated, in the heated argument, that Ortega was under no obligation to donate what he did, that he did it out of the goodness of his rich heart. 

So many people we know are just like this person, small in their souls, concerned only with what they can buy, or what the neighbor buys. Some conversations are only about things that can be bought, who bought what, and admiration of people who acquired millions simply because they acquired millions. 

And let's not get into politics. These people with blinders on that see only silver, worship the political parties that promise to cut taxes, not understanding that their taxes are not the ones getting cut. They later complain about the road outside their house being full of potholes, or the school their child goes to having leaks in the roof, and don't tie the two together. These people have more confidence in a white gloved thief wearing shirt, tie, and thousand euro suit, than in someone with their same or similar background wearing a denim jacket, who wants to change things and make them more equitable. 

Mammon has too many followers around here, and they make me sick to my stomach. So, rant over. Today is a beautiful day, though windy and chillier than last week. We did a small drive to the seaside, and climbed to a hill overlooking the dunes at Corrubedo, some of the largest in western Europe, though from up there they looked like nothing. When we drove close to the sea, the water at the edge was deeply turquoise, and deeper blue further out, with whitecaps dancing over the waves, swept over by the strong northeast wind. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a day as beautiful, and bring more riches like those we saw this afternoon into our lives.

Life continues.