The epidemic of peniaphobia

I grew up in a time and space when and where humility was socially advised. It was so important as nowadays it is to avoid a loss of face situation in Indonesia. 

 

We should adjust our speech to our interlocutor, avoiding complicated words, such as promiscuity or consumerism, when talking with people without education. Similarly, we should avoid talking about our achievements to a person who didn’t have the same opportunities.

If I went out with a driver or a maid dressed in uniform, I would be the butt of jokes for weeks. The ‘nouveau riche’ had to be restrained to avoid being targeted by the phrase: “money tends to get in his/her head”.

It was important to have money and keep it, but there was no pressure to achieve it as happens today. The planet produces enough to feed all its occupants, but as much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to 2bn tonnes – ends up as waste every year.

In Jakarta, I realized that even the air is not free, insofar as I need a mask to walk more than one hour by day without getting sick. Even social life requires money because everything ends in food or drink. A simple walk in the park must involve a picnic with food to share.

We stopped being humans. We accepted nullify ourselves as people and base our lives in what we have. We prostitute ourselves all the time. We should congratulate all the defenders of consumerism and marketing professionals for their job convincing us.

Nowadays, money is so important that even on of the more genuine feelings – love - is for sale. We can buy the ‘love’ of someone or use money to protect ourselves in a relationship: if our partner ‘invests’ more in the relationship than us, he/she can feel less responsible or guilty for his/her mistakes.

There are people who prefer to spend two hours in traffic jam to travel 20 minutes by bus to show their cars. In Portugal, I heard a story about a teenager who only ate bread and butter to save money to buy clothes at Zara and Mango.

To what extent money enslaves you? Peniaphobia (fear of poverty) has become epidemic. The numbers of suicides have increased in several countries in crisis. Suicides doubled in Greece in the 2009-2011 period. Do you remember the 77-year-old Greek pensioner who shot himself because he could not face the prospect “of scavenging through garbage bins for food” and becoming a burden to his child? Do you remember the 18-year-old man who hanged himself in Jakarta after a spat with his parents because he wanted soft contact lenses?

The roles are reversed. Now the crazy is the one who gives up on a job that would kill him or her throughout life, but it could offer a comfortable life in the eyes of a consumer society. We turned off our brilliance and ran away from our mission and our dreams to be more like a machine and just one more number. 

Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net/digitalart

 

My grandfather could have been seen as just one more nouveau riche. When he was a child walking barefoot and carrying heavy materials to building trade, he must have dreamed countless times with a more fruitful and comfortable life.

But in the meantime the Second World War brought hunger. The richest person of his village had no privileges in the breadline, where people, often after waiting for hours, ended up with an even bigger pain in the stomach.

My grandparents are octogenarians and they still work in agriculture and mend their clothes. Their food comes mainly from their own production and they don’t care about luxuries or new sensations, such as flying. 

They already faced so many terrible situations, such as the loss of two children, but they never regret the past and they keep the faith and a good mood. After all, achieve happiness can be so simple and easy.

We just know they have money because when a family member or an acquaintance needs a financial help, that person ask them. Besides, from time to time they give large amounts of money to their children.

I consider myself a rich person because I know them. ¿What can I ask more than to have people who teach me the true meaning of wealth?

Likewise, I am a privileged because I live in a country that has set an example to the world by choosing for president a man who grew up in slums and who continues to wear shirts of 100,000 rupees, despite being a new rich.

In fact, a man who was born in a cradle of gold will never end up as a beggar because he can always ask help to their relatives or friends and a self-made man is normally just the sum of lucky factors.

Therefore, each one of us should assess our own level of responsibility by realizing how free and rich we are, especially if we believe that God lives in each person. At least, we should assess how we are educating our children by our example and our beliefs. 

 

Note: If it took you five minutes to read this text, since you started 60 hungry people died.