How?

Talent is a matter of quantity.
Morality too.
On the first question, French writer Jules Renard spoke: “Talent is not to write one page, but to write three hundred pages.” Oh yes! With the combined volume of this column, there is nothing more hilarious and pathetic than a young talent running around in editorial and hangouts with two stories.

And in the second question, centuries of experience spoke. Beginning with the ancient Greek instruction “Meden agan!” (not much) – and it ends with the lines of a modern poet:

when someone is killed
everybody asked who?
When? for what?
soldier or officer
When ten people were killed
everyone loudly shamed the murderers,
to remember positively
killed in his name.
When a hundred people were killed
no one asked the name
no victims, no murderers,
but is it just us? is it yours?
When a million is killed
they all fell into death sleep,
to be fed up,
because the dream was in your hand.
(Alexander Velichansky, 1940-1990)

It could be even shorter: “The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Anatoly Rybakov attributed this phrase to Stalin in The Children of the Arbat. Although in this form, Remarque sounded in The Black Obelisk (1956). The original is also in German – Kurt Tucholsky wrote it in 1932. True, they do not have millions, only “one hundred thousand dead”. However, philological research in no way changes the essence of the matter – the moral assessment of many situations is mysteriously connected with the quantitative side of what is happening. “If you steal a train track, you go to jail; steal the whole railroad and you’ll get into Congress” – this old American aphorism says the same thing.

Maybe it’s dialectical. Transition from quantity to quality. The leap in which a vile thug becomes a respectable entrepreneur.

There are strange loops. Killed a person – in the end it could be an accident, circumstances, a coincidence of many factors, a state of passion or acute psychosis. The murderer almost becomes a “victim of circumstances”. He killed several dozen people – a cruel maniac, a degenerate, “just like the world wore it.” He killed several thousand people – “he was just following orders.” So, morally speaking, it’s safest at the extremes of the distribution – where there is little and there is much (victims, money, written books, social capital and whatever). you want).

A quantitative transition can play a deadly joke on a person. Especially in property matters.

Once, in Soviet times, I had a friend who needed money. Everyone needs money, what’s so weird about that? But – as he himself believed – he had a special case. He didn’t need money to avoid starvation. And not for some urgent business. He needed a permanent source of income. He dreamed of living freely without forcing himself for a penny. Because he had very interesting and promising ideas in the field of economic theory. He thought: it would be 250 rubles. just like that a month, in the form of some kind of rant – sitting in the library and writing a great review, a new Capital in five years!

It was 1980, as dear readers understand. Two hundred and fifty was a good salary back then. God doesn’t know what it is, but you don’t need to be too small. Yes, but where to get such a rent?

My friend thought the only legal way was to “time deposit” at a savings bank: 3% a year. So how much should be deposited into the account to get 250 per month, ie three thousand per year? That’s right, one hundred thousand Soviet rubles. And where can I get them? In the eightieth year? Nowhere. How to win? Not possible. The academician, who was the director of the research institute at that time, received 1000 rubles. And even less looking.

But then the nineties came. He, this friend of mine, for a long time could not decide to leave science for business. But I thought: All you need is a million dollars. Why? Why? Yes, because you can put in the same Sberbank at 7% (at that time there was such a rate) – and you have seventy thousand dollars a year. Minus the tax, then the tax was not what it is now – almost four thousand a month in total. Just like it came from the sky!

Oh yes. You have to pay taxes on a million, so you need to earn about four hundred million. And that’s it. Freedom.

Good. Won. It’s like no crime.

He takes the money to the bank, deposits it, and thinks: Hell, there’s still a whole year to wait for this idyllic life to come! And then you literally have a penny left in your pocket. Okay okay. You have to work harder for one more year.

A year has passed.

Here it is, happiness! So, butter figurines. You need a good flat. How crazy is it to live a “piece of dog” on a panel and get four grand a month? What to spend them on? For the books? He didn’t even have a decent office where he could put a good bookshelf. Four pieces are great, of course, but you can’t buy a flat. Nothing to say about the car, the clothes and his girlfriend.

In general, it turned out that he desperately needed a second million. And the third too. And ten years later, he felt with all his heart that if he didn’t have a billion he would have died or gone mad. Interesting and promising ideas in the field of economic theory, where it all began, have long been forgotten.

You won’t get anywhere.

First people make money, then money makes people, and finally money makes money and people are attached to the process.

“Money, like vodka, makes one eccentric,” wrote Chekhov.

TRUE. But we just need to clarify – not the money itself, but their amount.

Remember Stanley Kramer’s great movie It’s a Mad World? Four adventurers and a police captain race to find the $350,000 bag hidden by the deceased criminal. It’s a 1963 movie – like two or three million in our time. Finally, the police are in front of everyone and they have a valuable briefcase. He opens it to make sure the money is there – he sees these bundles of banknotes and … and loses his mind. A smart, kind, respectable middle-aged cop (played by 60-year-old Spencer Tracy) – like a young dumb thief, holding this ridiculous amount to his chest no one knows where he’s going. Mine! won’t give it back! And in his mind, probably, shiny blocks of fantasy are piled up. New house. New car. Even two or three cars. Villa by the sea. Travel to Europe in a luxury cabin. Expensive education for grandchildren. Safe old age. well.

It is unlikely that he would have gone crazy if he had a thousand dollars in the bag. Even ten thousand. It probably has a threshold that deprives it for some reason.

There are smaller but much more despicable cases.

More than once or twice I have heard women complain that:

“We lived very well with my husband. Two kids. Both worked. The apartment is really small. They started to accumulate. It was hidden for five years. The money was not stored in the bank, but at home, the old-fashioned way, in a tin box under the biscuits. They saved up for a mortgage down payment (in another story – as much for an apartment; in the third – for an additional fee to sell it and buy a new spacious one). And then the husband says: “Dasha, we are getting a divorce. I do not love you anymore. I have a new destiny planned. She leaves and takes the money with her. Everything! Until the last hundred! So I was left alone in an old apartment with two kids and insufficient alimony. And the feeling that I was not only abandoned as a woman, as a wife, but also robbed as a business partner … “

Do you really think you’re in love with him? Did you really fall in love with a young lab assistant from the next episode?

Dudki-s. One day he opened this box and the tight bunches of oranges blinded him. Sparkling fantasy blocks about a new life with a new suit and a new wife in a new apartment. It is possible that one of his friends will say: “How wisely you did it, Ivan Petrovich! Well done!” And it will be the same person who sincerely despises his friend, who stole five hundred rubles from his wife’s wallet. He will say: “Vanya! Dirty. Ah!” Stealing five hundred rubles is dirty. It’s smart to steal five million. Fifty or more is usually a high class.

The dialectic of quantity and quality also manifests itself in the public consciousness.

French sociologists discovered the secret of the influence of the press more than a century ago. Especially when the newspaper has a high circulation. A certain shift of perspective occurs in the reader’s mind – and it begins to seem to him that a hundred thousand people are speaking together, not a publisher who conveys his opinion to a hundred thousand readers. The amount itself is convincing.

If a very strange thought is expressed by one, ten, a hundred people – this is nonsense, nonsense, this is for psychiatrists.

If a thousand or ten thousand are the whims of the marginals, do not pay attention.

Million-two-three is an alternative social trend to consider when developing this, fifth and tenth.

If a strange idea is shared by twenty or fifty million people, then it is a new national idea. Hang on, the psycho-marginal opposition – they will be swept away.

I am not calling for great modesty in money matters and zealous individualism in socio-political matters. Number. The rich are also conscientious and the majority is right.

But we must remember the old motto: “Nothing much.” There is no need to enjoy material power or the joyful feeling of unity with the majority. Because God will judge us individually. Each one separately. Whatever his political affiliation and amount of money, it doesn’t matter if it was stolen or honestly earned.

And if a person does not believe in Allah, he will be even more bored in the grave.

I’m still alone, sorry for such a strange word.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.