We spend today visiting two mansions, once owned by Mr Yeap and Mr Cheong Fatt Tze respectively. Both are elaborate, beautiful and lavish. The latter, known as 'The Blue Mansion' is particularly brought alive by a truly fantastic guide (you are not allowed in there without a tour). However, added to the Peranakin Mansion yesterday, it's very much a peep into how the other half (by which I mean the uber monied half) live.
The difference between both Yeap and Cheong Fatt Tze against the Peranakin is that both are 'self made men'. They are, as both mansions are keen to point out, rags to riches stories. They arrived destitute and penniless and got where they did through sheer hard work and ingenuity. Once they reached the stage of truly and quite literally 'rolling in it' they also both gave a lot of aid to others, in the words of separate guides and information boards in both mansions, they 'never forgot their roots'. Yeap, having got where he was with extreme (and I mean extreme) discipline and graft, donated always to education projects, giving an opportunity to those who were willing to work hard to take it. Cheong Fatt Tze donated generously to help poverty stricken individuals - oh and built the 'wings' to his mansion purely to house the myriad of people claiming to be his relatives and seeking handouts. It is likely, as he will have known, that the majority if these claims are false. Admittedly the latter aspect may have been done to save face but still. Where the Peranakin mansion felt sickeningly, somehow sinfully rich, these two, though no less splendid, feel better somehow. So what is the morality of money? When is it OK to be rich?
There is a feeling, especially among those of us that are substantially not, that being rich is somehow wrong in itself. In fact, where you have groups of people with a strong belief set, religious or otherwise, money itself, and the earning of it, starts to become a little shameful. Certainly within Christian circles it can go that way. We are not supposed to want money and therefore get to a stage sometimes, where the fact that you work to earn it doesn't get talked about and success in the workplace isn't something you admit to wanting or to having. It's crazy and non sensical, but I was talking to a very interesting Lady just before I left, who had done a study on how people felt that the church supported their work life and there was a general consensus that unless your job was in nursing or charitable industries, it wasn't talked about much. And a lot of people admitted to feeling guilty if they happened to be in a high earning role, even if they donated it generously and lived simply.
Even if....so there is some kind of code of conduct to excuse you if you are rude enough to have got rich.
It definitely seems more acceptable if you worked for it. Everyone is very been to emphasise that Yeap and Cheong Fatt Tze were self made men and that they worked long hours to achieve what they did. I remember my Mum talking to me about our travelling plans when I was saying how odd I felt because i was now one if those people I had been so horribly jealous of.
"But no," said Mum, "you worked hard for this and you saved up for years. You deserve it."
It's OK if it isn't a hand out. Or an inheritance. If it isn't taken for granted and given for nothing. Because that makes it more of a meritocracy. And it means that technically, anyone could do it. Yes?
Well perhaps that's how we think but it doesn't work like that all the time. There is an accident of birth in terms of intelligence levels and (though admittedly not in Yeap or Cheong Fatt Tze's case) often in today's society in terms of education - your parents attitude to it, your peers' response to academic or business achievement. The gift of the gab, or lack thereof. Your accent.
Perhaps it's OK to earn it if you give it away. Again both of these men did. And I came to the conclusion in Cambodia that given my skills which were more geared to earning money by working hard in the west than volunteering practically put there, I could do more good by getting on with 'winning at the system' then do a Robin Hood with my earnings.
If you do that though, there seems to be a feeling that you have to be poor yourself afterwards. It's OK for Joe Bloggs to have a middling sized house and a new car but if Cliff Richards, Bob Geldoff or anyone else who claims to donate to the poor, has anything other than a shack on a rubbish dump, well he's a fraud.
Some of it is about how you put yourself out to others. If you hold yourself out as a saint you will be judged as one. But I have heard people moan about CEOs of charities who collect a £60 grand salary, (actually very low compared to the same post in a private company, though admittedly much more than most ordinary people earn). If you work to help the poor you are not only not allowed to be rich after your donations- you are not even allowed to be relatively well off.
Some people argue that you need money and the influence that goes with it to accomplish the good works that these people do. Would Yeap or Cheong Fatt Tze be able to set up foundations and donate so much if they had never been so materialistic as to earn all that money in the first place? Like the rather horrible 'make sure you are safe first before helping others' idea we get taught every time we hear the safety announcement on a flight, it is sensible to ensure you are in a position to help without adding yourself to the number if those requiring it.
Clearly there is a balance. Who of us really needs a mansion? Unless, like Cheong Fatt Tze, you house large numbers of people in the wings of it.
Money is the root of all evil.
Or is it?
Perhaps, like a gun, it is all in the way we use it.
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