In Midas We Trust: A Plea For The Death Of Materialism

                Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of my least favorite writers. I am not ashamed to admit this. However, recently, one of his works has caught my eye. It is a re-imagining of classic Greek myths entitled A Wonder Book For Girls And Boys. I downloaded the book and began to leaf through the cyber pages on my eBook reader. I came across a story entitled The Golden Touch, in which a king named Midas begged the gods to grant him the power to turn anything he touched to gold, and it blew my mind. The Greeks wrote this?!? The relevance of the story astounded me. The following is a brief excerpt The Golden Touch:

            "Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep or awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child's, to whom a beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any rate, day had hardly peeped over the hills, when King Midas was broad awake, and, stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects that were within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch had really come....the earliest sunbeam shown through the window and gilded the ceiling over his head. It seemed to Midas that this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular way on the white covering of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his astonishment and delight, when he found that this linen fabric had been transmuted to what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest gold! The Golden Touch had come to him, with the first sunbeam!

            "Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room, grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of the bedposts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window-curtain, in order to admit a clear spectacle of the wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand -- a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At his first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly-bound and gilt-edged volume as one so often meets with, now-a-days; but, on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin gold plates, in which all the wisdom  of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which [his daughter] had hemmed for him. That was likewise gold, with the dear child's neat and pretty stitches running all along the border, in gold thread!"

           

            At this point in the story, Midas goes downstairs for his breakfast. However, everything that he touches turns to gold, consequently, he is presented with an inedible golden feast. At the sight of his gilded meal and the sound of his growling stomach, King Midas breaks into tears. His daughter hears him crying and runs to give her father a hug........only to be turned into a golden statue. Midas is horrified at the destruction his greed has caused. However the gods grant Midas the power to reverse his gift once he renounces his greedy ways. He does so and reclaims his daughter from her metallic fate and they live happily ever after, right?

                Well, maybe not exactly. You see, I believe that Midas resides in our own country today. No, I'm not talking about the mythological king, or the actual historical king from the 8th century BC. I'm talking about the spirit of Midas, the desire to get ahead and stay ahead, to maximize our intake and minimize our output. The kind of spirit that drives us to spend billions of dollars a year on cars. The kind of spirit that drives us to spend billions of dollars a year on houses. The kind of spirit that drives us to spend little or nothing in a year to feed orphans in Africa.

                Consider what we are teaching younger generations through this lifestyle. They are learning that possessions are more important than people, temporary pleasures more important than relationships, and material lust more important than love. Leading Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau once said, "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly." In other words, the pursuit of a possession-filled life leads to the neglect of true life. When little kids would rather spend money at Best Buy than play basketball with their friends, or count their money like a greedy Scrooge than play a family game, there is something deeply wrong. The children are not the only ones at fault though. Dictionary.com defines greed in this way: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions. That sounds like a pretty accurate description of America to me. When the general population is more concerned with how to get a pay raise rather than how to provide clean water and basic amenities in third-world countries, we witness the adult stages of modern childhood's temporal disease.

                As a concerned citizen who barely recognizes the country around me, I urge you to stand with me. Let's turn the ship around, plot a new course, change the game-plan, something, anything to get our society back on track. I fear for the future of our temporary treasure-seekers and I am afraid it might be too late. In Midas We Trust the greedy souls sing; I just hope it's not the swan song of our nation. Let us look to the Greeks. They were able to foresee the tragedy caused by an off-center set of values. Why can't we?

PS -- You can download Hawthorne's book here: http://books.google.com/books?id=25woAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+wonder+book+for+girls+and+boys&hl=en&ei=F5vxTYeIOYGgtwex4YHmAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

It can legally be given away for free because the copyright has expired. Great stuff, huh? :)

Output

It's almost midnight on Christmas. I should be thinking about my presents, should be thinking about sleep, should at least be relaxing. But here I am, eye-deep in gifts I absolutely had to have--gifts I will have forgotten about in six, eight, twelve months, and I am pondering an idea.

This idea came to me out of nowhere when I was sitting at my grandma's house earlier today. My younger family members were opening presents, screaming at unreasonable volume levels when they freed something wonderful from its wrapping-paper cocoon. I was watching them intently when suddenly I was struck by a thought. A thought that turns Christmas on its head. I quickly put the idea in my mental filing cabinet.

"What if Christmas is not limited by what I receive? For that matter, what if the secret to living, the secret to thriving does not rest in the rewards of others, but in my own output?"

I looked up. My cousin was still screaming about his Knight Costume and showing it to his baby sister while she played with her new princess doll. They were carrying on as though everything was okay while the Christmas tree inside my head had just caught fire.

"What if Christmas is not limited by what I receive?"

This idea goes against much of what children are taught today. "Be good Johnny, because Santa will only give presents to good boys." Personal gain is the only motivation for being "good". It seems to me that Santa and all of his Christmas cohorts have ignored the line of the well-known carol:

"He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake.

He knows if you've been bad or good, SO BE GOOD FOR GOODNESS SAKE."

In the economy of Kris Kringle, children are not taught the true motivation behind behaving well. They are good only because they expect something in return, not because it is the best way to behave. As soon as Saint Nick's true identity is revealed, what is to stop these children from being bad? Is our society really so debased in its moral principles that the only way parents can figure out how to squeeze good behavior out of children is to bribe them? Is this really the way the world works?

"..not limited by what I receive?"

To the children who are thrilled with the prospect of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas scurrying down their chimney and rewarding their goodness, this sounds completely preposterous. "Christmas is NOT about presents?? You must be kidding me!!" No, kids, I'm being one hundred percent serious. When I consider Christmases past, I don't remember any of the gifts that I received. I do remember the fun that I had with my family. When I think back to Christmas as a kid, I remember wrestling with my uncles. I remember eating Christmas dinner with my Grandma. I remember one Christmas when my entire family was staying in my grandma's house and her plumbing broke. I remember the squirming during the two-hour car ride home that night.

You see, I only remember my output, the little contributions I made into the lives of the people around me (like the bruises I gave my uncles). Maybe that's what Christmas is all about. Maybe it's a little silly to operate on a system of bribery. After all, last time I checked, the presents aren't the reason for Christmas. It all started with the birth of a Baby, with the giving of a Gift so immeasurable that a choir of angels couldn't do it justice. It all started with Output.

All Trick and No Treat

            We've all seen kids dressed up on Halloween. It's always the same every year: ghosts, grim reapers, skeletons, Superman, and that one costume based on the painting The Scream. You've got the same kids showing up on your doorstep every year, all saying the same dopey phrase-- TRICK OR TREAT!--as if they actually expect us to sit there and make a decision on whether to trick them or give them candy. Many a year I am tempted to close the door in their faces with nothing but the word trick.

            One of those kids came to my house a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the living room watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show when I heard the sound I had been dreading all night -- the piteous squawking of the doorbell. When I opened the door, a kid no older than six or seven was standing on my porch. He had on one of those skeleton masks with the clear lining in the front of it so that when he squeezed a little "heart," "blood" would cascade down the crevices of his cadaverous mask. He expectantly thrust his already sizeable bag of candy toward me. Sure enough, when he sensed the slightest hesitation on my part, he reached for his little heart-pump, as if by showing me the "blood" trickling down his face he would form some irrevocable bond between us and I would be entitled to give him candy. I guess I'm just a sucker for little kids with bloody masks, but I gave him his candy, closed the door, and returned to my friends Barney and Andy.

            That kid got me thinking though. Thinking about how telling of our society his gruesome little costume is. You see, we all have our masks. I go through about ten (or more) masks a day. When I climb into the driver's seat of my Nissan Titan, I put on the mask of Pick-Up Truck Driver. I get to school and for the next eight hours, I rapidly switch between masks like AP Historian, Pre-AP Physicist, and Estudiante de Español Tres. Most Fridays, I step on the stage in the auditorium and wear my Guitar Player and Singer mask for about an hour before transitioning to my Quint-Player mask for the football game that night. I'm exhausted just writing about all the different people I have to be.

            But none of them are me. At least, none of them give you a complete picture of who I am. Sure, I do drive a truck and study history and play guitar and all of those things. But if that's all you knew about me then you wouldn't really know me at all. You wouldn't have the complete picture. Imagine if my tombstone read like this: Here lies a high-school Spanish student. It would be a tragedy! Because that's not who I am.

            To quote one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind, Nacho Libre, "Beneath the clothes, you find a man." Beneath the Foreign Coffee Connoisseur mask of the corporate businessman, you find a flawed man trying to purchase happiness. The second-rate politician wants to get ahead so what does he do? He squeezes his heart-shaped pump and the "blood" of empty promises and wise words he does not mean runs down the surface of his mask, distorting his image and fooling the faceless tides of his particular party into supporting him. But underneath his beautifully sculpted mask he is still just a man searching for completion in a world where completion can't be found.

            Why don't we come together as a community of travelers? Let's throw off our masks and journey together down the road to humanity. Imagine the exhilarating freedom of not having to remember which particular mask you have to wear next, of being able to just be you. Maybe we should leave the Halloween masquerading for the children. Maybe we should cut out the trick so we can experience the treat.