Considering money as the end is the tragedy

Ma must have forgotten that he would never be able to use that much money if he maintained the way of life he was leading, to say nothing of the risk of losing all the money once he was caught.

For him, extracting money from work units wanting drinking water also seems to have become the total meaning of life. Again the means and the end have been turned upside down.

In the most recent case, four members of a family jumped from a mountain to their deaths in Northeast China's Shaanxi province after the husband and wife were found to have swindled several hundred million yuan from about a dozen of people. The wife reportedly left a note behind asking the police to dispose of their corpses.

I guess they must have regretted cheating other people of their money. The two aforementioned people too must have regretted their crazy acts of obtaining illegal gains by the abuse of power. But what is done cannot be undone.

A Chinese saying goes that a man will risk his life for wealth as a bird for food. This is exactly true for them.

Would they have given up the dirty business had they known that they would finally be caught one day? No one can answer this question. They must have gambled from the very beginning that there was the possibility for them to get away with the dirty money they have made.

As far as their mentality is concerned, they were too obsessed with imagining the happiness that money can bring about to realize that the imagined happiness would never come true as they regarded the making of money as both the end and the sole meaning of life.

For an ordinary person who has no power to abuse, considering making money as the end, rather than the means, of life, will probably result in losing the opportunity to enjoy life. For those who have power to abuse, such an attitude will be much more consequential. It may mean risking one's life.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn