Capitalism and Character
...aving their pockets full of money. The Human being is a social creature. He is a mixture of social and moral values and ethics. Without these essential elements he will not be able to maintain his life. Without these factors he will feel no less than an animal, looking for his physical desires and fighting to fulfill his physical needs only, which will not result in the ultimate happiness. Social and moral values cannot be forgotten or be put aside for the sake of increasing money and having a high standard of life. Physical needs work hand in hand with social and moral needs to achieve more sustainable and happy life. As the new economic system is mainly about increasing profits, it puts any other values aside with no respect for the ethical values that exist in almost every community. It pushes the workers to do anything to increase the profits of their sponsor by any means even if it is unethical or immoral means. The pressure the new economy put on the workers to be strong competitive in the free market and to gain the maximum amount of money, creates very negative effect on their character. They will end with them being materialist because of the strict rules of the competitive market. These workers will be driven by the vices of greediness, selfishness and irresponsibility. Because they think the only major goal they have to achieve is to increase the profits of their company. They think that their success is a part of their company’s success. They consider this goal as the major purpose to achieve and put it in front of their eyes. They chose the path they are going to walk through; it is a different path that has nothing to do with the moral and ethical values, which have an extremely different path to reach. Basically, being materialist means that they push themselves farther away form their social and moral values such as commitment, responsibility and trust because such two things cannot walk together just like goodness and badness, they cannot exist together. It is all a matter of different directions and paths that have extremely different endings and goals. This will lead us to another important reason, which is the carelessness for their social community. Because the workers are driven by their greediness, and seeking for increasing the profits, they will naturally become careless about their social and real community that is based on the ethical values they lost. They only care about the profits, about the money. Their minds have no space for anything except for profits, so why should they care about the other things or the “other people”? We can say; basically, because they are merely selfish. They will tend to do their jobs in a perfect way and seeking the profit without caring of anything else. In another meaning, they may lose their social responsibility towards their community because they think that the only community they should exist and care about is their workplace. The real social community will start to disappear according to them because of the lack of respect and responsibility for its morals and values. As a result, losing the link with the real social community portrays the effect of this unethical problem on character. As explained at the beginning of the report, being “materialism” and “selfish” lead to lose the responsibility for other things except for money. Therefore, losing the social and the ethical values, which form the foundation of the real community leads to miss the connection between them and their own social community. Moreover, Richard Sannets discussed this serious problem, which resulted from the new capitalist system. He focuse...