What’s the most infamous word in the English language??
I’m not talking about an expletive. We all know this word, and it does not objectively represent a bad thing. In fact, it actually tends to make people very, very happy when it happens to them. Now I know I don’t speak for everyone, yet in my world when I was a kid, this word was almost universally suspect. To this day, within me still lies an old deep-seated conflict about this word.
I’m talking about the word “profit.”
You see, I was taught to see profit as being what those evil corporations stopped at nothing to get, even when they polluted the planet and exploited the underprivileged to do it! It was what those greedy politicians wanted to make at our expense! It was the cause of evil and poverty and misery! The quest for profit was what was destroying our world!
Charming, isn’t it?
I finally realized this association a few nights ago when my wife and I were watching a science show on TV. The narrator mentioned all the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere released by industry motivated by “short-term profit,” and how this had unpleasant implications for the future of our planet.
That’s when I put it together. I said to myself, “Aha! So that’s it! That’s what I was taught from day one! Profit is bad! Profit causes environmental destruction, greed, and threatens the future of the planet!”
I think the show was making a valid point, and I personally believe that we should protect our environment from destruction by our own actions. Yet it seems that I was taught a one-sided view. I was taught that the desire for financial profit equals greed, cruelty, and short-sightedness. Maybe in some extreme situations this might be true, but I think that usually it’s not the case. I and everyone in this country enjoy the many benefits of our American existence, which was built on a system of free enterprise where people have the right to create and sell useful products and services. There are numerous blessings we enjoy every day because of this, and I am optimistic that if there are changes to be made in how we run our world (and there surely are), in time, we will make those changes.
However, the implication of this judgmental view of all profit-seeking is that the world in which we live is somehow bad, because, after all, the profit motive inevitably leads to greed and suffering.
Clearly this is not true. Being a self-employed entrepreneur who runs his own business, I work to profit each and every day. I know that the desire for profit can and usually is a very good thing that motivates people to find ways of serving others (and then benefiting from it financially, hence the profit). Most of the food and products I have ever used, as well as the many books, movies, music, and art I have been inspired by, were created by people who benefited financially in this capitalist world of ours that helped get their products into my hands.
What is wrong with that??
Of course, the answer is, absolutely nothing! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to profit, when it is the result of providing a product or service that is valuable to others (and does not violate other people’s rights). Yet I realize now the source of this deep-seated ambivalence I have had since childhood.
Yikes. It explains a lot about my own confusion about money and success (Read more here).
In honor of this realization, I hereby make a new declaration that turns this old message on its head:
Profit (ie good works leading to financial gain, being of service to others in a professional capacity and benefiting from it financially)= GOOD.
Negative opinions based on ignorance, resentment, and closed-mindedness=BAD!