JOURNAL #14

14. Please describe your reactions/ideas to the following quote: "He does not possess wealth, it possesses him."

Many people strive to be wealthy in terms of abundant amounts of money at their hand, especially in hoping to eliminate suffering the consequences of debt. Once obtaining too much to spend, their lifestyles change for the worst if not utilized correctly. The opportunity to obtain luxury goods is available for the upper middle class, as for the the higher class, they are constantly living a life of spending. "Possess" in the second part of the quote can be taken as negative connotation, akin to being possessed by evil spirits and in this case, lacking in moral. Greed is one of the deadly sins in folklore, and greed for money can be similar to addiction, controlling the way the person lives to aspire in obtaining money in vain. When a person acquires material goods they desire for more luxury and material goods as they gain a taste of sophisticated living. Soon, they forget living their past life as a possibly hard worker in the lower class, if that was how they started off in before acquiring profound amounts of wealth, and then they have become so accustomed to the lavished life they forget what suffering was like so they try to run away from the hardships of life by buying more luxurious goods to hide from the truth. Because of their greed for money, they become more curropt. Say for instance, if a person climbed to the top of a business syndicate to become a boss then they would follow a curropt system and justified right to enacting in decisions that only strive for their own company to gain more money, rather than for the sake of the enviroment or the poor. The wealth shrouds the person's vision from seeing what is morally right and rather have motives just for gaining their own wealth. I agree with Benjamin Franklin's quote and that it is accurate as he instructed instructed the for the common people with words of wisdom.