"Rich-but-poor-people" is a book that I recently read and it is worth thinking about. I say this because many of the phenomena depicted in the book about Japanese society in the 1970s and 1980s are happening or have already happened in our country, and there may be more confirmation in the future.
Advertisements for small loans can be seen everywhere, and people who are forced to borrow money are driven to jump off buildings or run away from home. There are institutions all over the country that aim to inspire and improve oneself, and white-collar workers flock to participate. The city that never sleeps, endless overtime work; under excessive pressure, women who eat excessively and then vomit...
Looking at these examples, do they seem familiar? The pain of P2P platform defaults has not yet subsided, various institutions that push children to excel have not been withdrawn, and the exhausted workers on the late-night subway...
As the book says, everyone is trapped in a huge system, striving to turn time into money, forced to live faster and more efficiently, even surpassing physical limits, and every minute and second cannot be missed. This rhythm prevents us from living according to natural time, living a vibrant life, and we only feel physically and mentally exhausted, constantly being squeezed. The external world seems magnificent, but internally it is terrifyingly fast-paced, constantly causing people to fall into it.
We all know that the economy is only the foundation that supports life, not the ultimate goal of personal pursuit. Just like we also know that work is only a part of life, not the entirety of life. We should not reverse the priorities, but under the social values, the created anxiety, and the high cost of living, we can only go along with the rolling wheels.
The title of the book itself is meaningful, "Rich-but-poor-people," how can one be both rich and poor at the same time? What is poverty? The author leaves this contradictory description in the title, which is actually the content that the book wants to tell ── pursuing better and better material conditions, but losing the essence of life. In the end, it becomes a walking corpse with material abundance but spiritual emptiness.