Greedy saviors: how "bad people" make the world a better place

Vladimir Guriyev, blogger (Germany)

I was born in the Soviet Union, studied in a Soviet school, grew up in an engineering and medical family, not counting my grandmother, who was a teacher, and it has been hammered into me since the childhood that a good person in a normal situation will not go into trade.

This does not mean that only bad people work in trade, but those good people who are there, firstly, can quickly deteriorate, and, secondly, they simply did not find themselves. and instead of treating people or teaching children, they are forced to sell sausage or something worse.

We had a woman in our house who did time for speculation: she was selling jeans at the clothing market. Everyone treated her with some caution. The fact that her son was the main dealer in the area, of course, did not help much, but it seems to me that the logic here was more likely about an apple that fell not far.

Of course, we had to maintain relations with merchants. If you wanted to buy smoked sausage or boots or a good book, you needed someone to help you get it all.

(For people who know about the USSR from serials and stories: the USSR had its advantages, but many things that today seem to us for granted were simply not on free sale).

But at the same time, the people who got it all were treated not only with contempt, but with some shade of pity, envy and disrespect at the same time. This is how the reader relates to the heroine of Maupassant's short story.

(It was, of course, also impossible to simply come and buy a book with Maupassant's stories).

It was assumed that a real person does not think much about money at all. he makes the world a better place. goes to virgin lands, to BAM, builds houses and roads, treats people.

As a last resort, a geologist, but always with a guitar.

And so that, if necessary, he could, without hesitation, tear his heart out of his own chest and light the way for them.

(By the way, you could buy a book about a heart that glows, defying all the laws of anatomy and physics, without any problems).

Many years have passed since then, but children's ideals cannot be drunk away. even now, I sometimes catch myself thinking that the resale business seems second-rate to me. he brings nothing into this world.

At the same time, the entire history of mankind available to me as a direct observer suggests that it is these “bad” people, these despicable merchants who were once expelled from the temple — it is they who help the world lick its wounds when wars end.

Deprived of holy ethical imperatives and driven mainly by greed, they force the construction of new roads, cafes, restaurants, paid clinics, markets, they cross borders, they begin to talk even with those who cannot stand them - and the thirst for money often allows them find a common language even where, it would seem, dialogue is impossible.

It is they, not the idealists, who ultimately make the world a better place. make the world a world.

They are not able to win wars (and some can even unleash them), but after the war they are like living water.

They don't know how to make the world a better place, and most likely don't even think about it too much. But it is they who are the cure, it is their random efforts that turn out to be less injustice and evil in the world, although all the accompanying rhetoric has long been appropriated by other people.

It is always interesting to talk with a romantic, but the world will be saved by a boring merchandiser, and not one of the most honest ones.

I have a lot of romantic friends, and they are very good people, idealistic, but with all my love for them and the idea that you have to fight evil every second, I'm not sure that they are the main soldiers in this fight.

In this sense, the withdrawal of Western brands from Russia is, of course, a bad sign. If people do not want to deal with you, on whom there is nowhere to put a cross, this is a reason to think.