Debit affluence, credit conscience

Though I am in working in the accounting industry, I am not exactly a number person. But any accounting graduate; or even student will know the very basic of accounting. It’s called ‘double entry’. “Debit” usually means ‘inflow while “credit” usually means ‘outflow’.
One of the few things I still remember from my University days was this finance lecturer who said that the whole world functions like an account. What goes up, must come down, if there’s an input, there will be an output, when there’ a debit, there must be a credit. I find this notion very true, more apparent these days. Unless something falls from the sky, we cannot expect to gain something without losing something in return.

Looking at our society, we will all agree that we are progressing in almost all aspects as the years go by, generally speaking. People are getting more educated; we are more aware of our needs and… we have a much increased desire for luxury. As such, the motivation to succeed has been heighten tremendously. The competition to make it big and to be somebody, has reached a level no one has ever imagined before.

If the whole society is a company, we seem to be increasing our ‘revenue’; average income per capita for KL (the capital of Malaysia) folks have never been higher. We are certainly moving ahead with our way of life, just look at the amount of shopping malls and if you’re observant enough… look at the way we spend, it’s truly incredible. Also, the purchase of motor vehicle, once considered a luxury, has reached such a level where owning 1 car is already a necessity. Our society is indeed ‘debiting’ plenty of affluence.

But amidst our desire to increase our wealth… to debit our affluence, have we ever wondered what is it that we are giving away to gain what we want? Have we ever wondered what is it that we are ‘crediting’ in this big account?

Recent events reported in our local media indicate exactly what is it that we are ‘debiting’. Day after day our media reports cases of fraud, theft, robbery, murder, rape, exploitation, con-job, bribery and all sorts of other creative crime. Even cases of snatch theft resulted in death for some! And we Malaysians need not to be reminded of the gruesome murder of a little girl by her very own mother.

We may not be directly involved in such things, but can we say our hands are really clean? Just look at our daily lives, in our normal course of work, how many times have we, in the name of convenience, ignored our conscience? I don’t even dare to think about it myself. Just because our discreet deeds did not result in any lost of life (or money), doesn’t really mean we are not guilty. Perhaps guilty is a heavy word but, are we crediting our conscience to debit our affluence all in the name of convenience?

It will be a noble act for some of us to actually put our foot down and do the right thing. However, such individual will only be branded as stupid. Let’s face the fact, our hands are tied, we’ve all been hand cuffed to something we cannot live without. We all want to be affluent, and we will do almost anything to achieve that. In our quest to gain our 1st million, we don’t care if the million is going to come from a million people who probably need 1 to survive.

In debiting our affluence, have we lost of conscience? I think we are. And can we do anything about it? Looking at our history in the light of our foreseeable future, the account is definitely going to balance. As we continue to debit our affluence, we probably must continue to credit our conscience.

This affluent society is slowly losing its humanity. Robbers, murderers are rapists are no longer fearful. They seem to be having fun in their act. Just look at the news about how a break-in resulted in the son being forced to have sex with the mother and the countless rapes which happened here in Malaysia where the boyfriends were made to watch. Crime has reached a whole new level.

I once heard that conscience is the only thing that hurts when everything else feel so good. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I will admit my tolerance to his ‘pain’ has been increasing day by day and I am sure many of you will probably be developing this same immune system. So the account will continue to balance. As we continue to debit our affluence, we will continue to credit our conscience, perhaps in the name of convenience.

But I am terrified at the thought of the account running into overdraft. Or maybe, it already has.

P/S: This article has been posted by me in TheStar before. Been modified in the light of recent events.