Morality and Money

In 2007, almost every newspaper in my hometown published a strange and ridiculous story. This story soon became the center of public topics.

On 20th November 2006, an old woman called Xu was knocked down in the stream of people near a bus station. Xu was identified as 8th-level disability. Later on the court, she accused the man called Peng, who sent her to the hospital, of knocking her down. Finally, Peng gave Xu 18,000 dollars as medical fees because he could not prove that he had not knocked her down. In fact, Peng was not the culprit but a kind pedestrian.

Consequently, Xu’s behavior did a big harm to society. One day, I was on my way to a super market. At one crossing, I stopped because of the red traffic light. I saw an old man sitting on the sidewalk. He seemed fallen and in a lot of pain. Many people passed by without stopping or helping him. Some others who stood around just watched him and talked with each other. One of the pedestrians went up and wanted to help him, but his friends stopped him. I think all the people standing around were kind and wanted to help him, but everyone knows the news above and is afraid of being blackmailed by the old man. Because I was in the car, the only thing I could do is calling the police and medical center. Fortunately, the ambulance soon arrived and sent the old man to the hospital. To my surprise, this old man was identified as a swindler later in the TV news. His name is Wen. He usually pretended to fall and waited for kind people to help him. Then he would blackmail those people for money, just like the old woman Xu did in the above news.

Between morality and money, Xu and Wen chose money but dropped morality. They make use of people’s sympathy to cheat people out of money. Undoubtedly, they did make a lot of money but crossed the bottom line of morality in the same time. Eventually they will be pricked by their own conscience and contempt by people. They lost the most important thing to live in this...