Martian Notes

It is common nowadays to hear daily problems are boiled down to an inadequacy of material wealth, or in the other words, greenbacks are the antidote to grudges in everyday life. It seems both true and wrong.

Money worshipper claims that fortune could guarantee happiness as it could bring physical comfort so as to provide mental assurance. It is right to hold the ideal in relative terms otherwise we would be money avoiders. Unfortunately, mammon-worship could not be a dominant religion, evidenced by the fact that it is so much easier to rank the wealthiest person on the earth than the happiest, as the latter is too enigmatic to measure. There is simply no universal algorithm or equation to compare the level of individual happiness. The genesis of happiness is to produce a sense of fulfilment and sincerity in our inner world, as incomparable by the abundance of the outer world.

I could not help looking into the endemic of mammon worshipping. The first idea popped into my mind is the evil of simplistic thinking, or the degenerative ability of independent thinking. If there is a pair of VR glasses that could help see through the sources of daily pollutions that spoil our mind, we would be overwhelmed with a slew of contaminants, from fake news, toxic messages, biased opinions to social media rants. If we did not hold up our guards to resist the invasion of these polluting thoughts, eventually any problematic beliefs could take root on our mind, and more egregiously, be passed on to our innocent offspring. Independent think is the useful tool in our weaponry to enable us to filtrate the information inflow and judge on its merit. But I am also sad to notice our weakness in controlling the input of information, which is individualized out of business interests. Is it pathetic to realize that our mind is the product of profiteering algorithms? Where is our original creativity, compassion and personality?

We are human creatures of unique genome. Never mammon and its modern day disciples does and will spoil our body and mind.