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It is your duty to get rich!

Let me explain…

So, in the last post I talked about how blown away I was by Wallace Wattles’ book.

One of the big things I want to do with this blog is focus on Wattles’ method of wealth acquisition.

I want to both discuss in detail Wattles’ ideas, and also talk about how they are affecting my life and the lives of others around me.

In other words, the main focus of this blog for the foreseeable future is a very in depth exploration of The Science of Getting Rich.

To begin the discussion, let’s take a look at the title of the first chapter, and its first sentence.

The title is: The Right To Be Rich.

The first sentence is: “Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich.”

When I first read this sentence, I had to stop and think about it. Actually, I had to pause and recover from having read it.

A huge part of the problem our society (and, indeed many societies) has with wealth is that it is looked down.

I’m no scholar, but I’m fairly well read.

In my mind, I’ve tried to trace the origins of this negative view of wealth.

One of my favorite classical authors is Aristotle. One of my favorite of his works is the Nicomachean Ethics.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness is the goal of life. If I remember correctly, the sort of happiness Aristotle is talking about is not only a spiritual happiness but a material happiness.

Similarly, there are several places in Plato’s dialogues where Plato describes wealthy, happy, successful older men in very positive terms.

It looks like these two classical thinkers had no problem with wealth.

The Old Testament seems to look on wealth positively. Indeed, a large part of the Book of Proverbs is devoted to acquiring and maintaining wealth.

It’s when we get to the New Testament that we find a negative attitude about wealth.

Jesus says something to the effect that a camel has a greater chance of walking through the eye of a needle than a rich man has of getting in heaven.

With the New Testament’s emphasis on the consequences of not getting in heaven, this anti-wealth stance must have had quite an effect on our culture.

Indeed, the rich are looked down upon. Most people think that rich people got that way through exploitation. The whole of Communism and Socialism is predicated on that idea.

Lest you think Communism and Socialism are relics of the past, dead after the fall of the Soviet Union, look at the American system of taxation. Beyond paying for necessary services from government (like roads and defense), our taxation system is in large part a wealth redistribution system.

Most Americans think the wealthy in our country have done nothing to acquire their wealth, an idea fueled by the media whose poster child for the rich is Paris Hilton.

Quite the opposite is true.

Only about three percent of wealthy Americans have inherited their money. The other 97% made it through business and the professions.

So, Wallace Wattles’ statement that you can’t live a full life without being rich causes a contradiction in our thinking.

One the one hand most of us deeply believe wealth is bad and selfish. But yet Wattles’ says that we can’t live life fully without it.

Who is right, and how does a person reconcile these two opposing thoughts?

Answering that question for yourself will be the first of many steps you must take in order to become wealthy.

Indeed, reconciling your thoughts about wealth is the first step in The Science of Getting Rich.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 10:58 am and is filed under Science Of Getting Rich. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.