June 22nd, 2009 Something for Nothing
As I go from site to site on the Internet I’m bombarded with enticing offerings. Buy this product and it will quickly and easily make you more successful in attracting mates. Buy that product and it will explode the volume of traffic to your web site or your money back, no questions asked. Still another site offers a download that gives you five ways to make you more money virtually risk-free.
What all these offerings share in common is that they are promising benefits that are easy and immediate. They’re all based on the irresistible lure of the good deal. The seduction of getting something for nothing.
We all say we know that nothing in life comes for free – but our actions speak otherwise. In the movie “The Flim Flam Man,” the con man says to his young protégé, “You can never cheat an honest man.” We blame people for being greedy and living beyond their means, yet our whole economic system is based on just that premise. Few of us will own up to fact that we wish to have more than our due. The good looking or talented seek to leverage their gifts to get the most they can while offering the least in terms of their own effort. Ironically, the more we get for what we can give, the higher we esteem our own value and the more we demand in the future. If we don’t get it, we feel wronged, cheated in some way. We might even say to ourselves and to our friends that they’re trying to get one over on us, to get something for nothing.
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