The Almighty Dollar
Political and technological developments are rapidly obliterating all cultural differences and it is possible that, in a not remote future, it will be impossible to distinguish human beings living on one area of the earth’s surface from those living on any other①, but our different pasts have not yet been completely erased and cultural differences are still perceptible. The most striking difference between an American and a European is the difference in their attitudes towards money. Every European knows, as a matter of historical fact, that, in Europe, wealth could only be acquired at the expense of other human beings②, either by conquering them or by exploiting their labor in factories. Further, even after the Industrial Revolution began, the number of persons who could rise from poverty to wealth was small: the vast majority took it for granted that they should not be much richer nor poorer than their fathers. In consequence, no European associates wealth with personal merit or poverty with personal failure.
In the United States, wealth was also acquired by stealing, but the real exploited victim was not a human being but poor Mother Earth and her creatures who were ruthlessly plundered. It is true that the Indians were expropriated, but this was not, as it had always been in Europe, a matter of the conqueror seizing the wealth of the conquered, for the Indian had never realized the potential riches of his country. It is also true that, in the Southern states, men lived on the labor of slaves, but slave labor did not make them fortunes; what made slavery in the South all the more inexcusable was that, in addition to being morally wicked, it didn’t even pay off handsomely.
Thanks to the natural resources of the country, every American, until quite recently, could reasonably look forward to making more money than his father, so that, if he made less, the fault must be his; he was either lazy or inefficient. What an American values, therefore, is not the possession of money as such, but his power to make it as a proof of his manhood; once he has proved himself by making it, it has served its function and can be lost or given away. In no society in history have rich men given away so large a part of their fortunes. A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothing to increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
[432 words]
行文點(diǎn)評(píng)
作者威斯特·休·奧登(Wystan Hugh Auden)(1907—1973)，英國(guó)詩(shī)人，文學(xué)評(píng)論家，20世紀(jì)30年代英國(guó)左翼青年作家領(lǐng)袖，40年代起思想向右轉(zhuǎn)變，后期詩(shī)歌帶有濃厚宗教色彩，1946年入美國(guó)國(guó)籍。
本文比較了歐洲人的金錢(qián)觀和美國(guó)人的金錢(qián)觀。文章第一段就指明美國(guó)人和歐洲人之間有文化差異，而最明顯的在于他們對(duì)待金錢(qián)的不同態(tài)度。緊接著作者先闡述了歐洲人對(duì)待金錢(qián)的態(tài)度。在第二段和第三段中，作者具體介紹了美國(guó)人的金錢(qián)觀，從而得出結(jié)論：歐洲人靠剝削別人致富，美國(guó)人靠掠奪自然資源致富;歐洲人抓住金錢(qián)不放，美國(guó)人認(rèn)為最重要的不是金錢(qián)本身而是賺錢(qián)的能力。本文又是一篇很好的comparison and contrast結(jié)構(gòu)的范文。
