Faculatea de Geografie An I

Relationship between freedom-work-money

Sometimes we disregard the dullness that surrounds us: people dont seem to smile anymore and take on a bedraggled countenance, as if something was afflicting them. Could it be that people feel fettered to some extent by the social system that we live in? Our seemingly purpose in life is to amass as much money as we can. This would make us the slaves of money, wouldnt it? From ancient times, mankind has been looking for perfection; it had set out to conquer the Universe and to uncover all its secrets. To do so, one has to work in an organized system- we are after all pack animals. So, to survive and to prosper, man is looking for the perfect social system; it had experienced many and today it had come to democracy: the form of government in which power is held by people under a free electoral system. Free seems to be the keyword here: freedom gives man the possibility to discover and perfect himself, consequently, freedom would make mans purpose in life- the reason for which there had been carried out so many wars with so many human losses. I have mentioned earlier that on a daily basis people think only of money: in consequence there can be pointed out a discrepancy between ones mission in life and ones attitude. This would make us hypocritical or stultified by the society in which we live. Here is how I see things: one works for his monthly wage and the greater the wage, the greater the satisfaction. Of course there are people who are referred to as entrepreneurs, who dont depend on a wage, and who live from the profit of their business. Even so, these latter persons depend on others, on the so-called labour supply. I see it all as a vicious geometrical figure: a circle describing a trajectory formed by two points- one of them is man, the other is money, the perimeter of the circle is work and the centre of the circle is freedom. According to this description, man will never get off his track and so will never reach freedom. With all this, there are certain people who keep their integrity and refuse to become the slaves of money. We see them every day on the streets, but we tend to contempt them and to consider them inferior us- tramps. We often mistake them for beggars, because they are poorly dressed and dirty.

These are the martyrs of the society, who act by own example in the quest of freeing their fellow men from the psychical jail in which they carry out their lives. The only question remains: how do they survive? They probably work no more than is necessary for food and live their lives under the open sky. There are also other less dramatic ways for an individual to keep his freedom. I believe that artists and scientists join this category: they are free to create, free to discover, free to affirm themselves. These are the kind of people who are driven in life by a calling. They may be the only ones who keep focused on mans true mission- the mission earlier mentioned- who can truly say that they have done something useful during their lifetime, something which may revolutionize future generations. On the other hand there are the professions which represent the current social system, based on money: economists, bookkeepers, administrators, managers and so on. The only satisfaction that these professions bring is the material reward. They also help administrate the economical society. In my opinion, these people seem to have long ago forgotten the concept of freedom, becoming the blind slaves of money. One must grow up in a particular environment to become interested in asking oneself questions about mans true identity. This is another great problem of the twenty-first century: moral values abolished by the family. Man hasnt been focusing upon these moral values for the last centuries in favour of setting rules and laws for keeping order in the society. Some laws are of common sense: one has no right to take another mans life, or to filch from him. Still, there are hundreds of other laws which enclose ones freedom. We can never know which of them are flawless because for one thing, laws are different in every country and a common person does not have the necessary abstract vision to separate right from wrong. Laws assure indeed order among people, but they back up the concept that man has to work for the society to earn money and so to survive. The truth is that Homo sapiens is a species that lives in groups. There have been cases of coming across teenaged children who had been abandoned at birth in isolated woods, who made it on their own, but could never stand up to the intellectual level of fellow teenagers who grew up in a social environment. Those individuals enjoyed all the freedom one can get. That is not the freedom I wish for and I believe that no one dreams of that truly accomplished freedom. Why through away thousands of years of development to discover the world on your own, without the help of teachers, books and so on? One should be thankful of what great treasures

our forefathers had left us and should do ones best to contribute to the expanding of these treasures. By and large, everything you take you give back in another form. Nothing is free of charge. If one wants to enjoy the advantages that the modern society holds, one must accept the terms that the society imposes. As it has been maintained before, nobody is obliged to become the blinded slave of the economical system: there are many professions which bring material benefits, but remain true to the principles regarding freedom. One can live life with dignity, working in an organized system and still holding on to ones freedom.