Money makes the world go round.
It is almost more important than essential necessities to survive, as can be seen in the way it is prioritised over the wellbeing of nature and its inhabitants. It’s effect can be seen in the way we drill holes into the ground to get a drop of oil on the brink of nonexistence. It can be seen in the way we’ll sacrifice our oceans because we’re too lazy to walk to the nearest trashcan. It can be seen in the way people will want more and more of it, not wondering for a moment what consequences it will bring.
It can be seen in the way people change as the hands of greed take over. The way upbringing does not matter anymore to someone who has already made it to the top. The way these people will forget what got them there in the first place—the people that got them there. How they will forget their entire person, what they worked for, what they used to be.
On the opposite side of the coin lies the other story.
When the opposite takes place, and you lose everything you once had, reactions differ. From being a rich someone to a poor no-one, the people that once supported you leave as quickly as dust in a storm. Excuses after excuses on why they cannot help you. Maybe you had helped them expecting that they would be there for you in your time of need one day; but that was most likely when you didn’t know what the world of money and greed was like. The way people would push each other down unfairly just to say they made more, that they were more successful than you, better than you.
And to be the most successful of all? That was the ultimate dream.
What awaited there, at the top where no one could reach? Where you had so much money you could buy anything you wanted, go anywhere in the world, and do everything possible. Was it eternal happiness? Did the freedom of being rich give you even more freedom?
Hard to know and hard to say.
People will spend their entire lives working for it. Their morphine levels going up as the numbers rise.
Never content, but too far along to go back.
Social status, how much money you make, what you do as a job have almost become what defines you as a person.