Those who devote their entire intellectual discipline to the pursuit of wealth will have, at the end of life, if they are lucky, what others have at the beginning through no effort of their own. But no one has virtue without effort. No one has wisdom without effort. No one has piety without effort. Ecclesiastes is troubled by the ultimate futility of human life. But the erudition and beauty of his lamentations testify to the dignity of a life spent in pursuit of virtue and wisdom. In the end, this too is vanity, but it is sublime vanity, a vanity that gives dignity and depth to human life.
The apostles of greed are supremely confident that pursuit of wealth is what is serious and important in life. Any talk about higher ideals seems to them a manifestation of intellectual laxity. They may listen politely, but inside they are laughing. In those rare moments when their perpetual quest to overwhelm others with their power and magnificence begin to seem pointless, when their efforts to pamper, groom and entertain themselves begin to falter, when the vast array of distractions they have prepared to conceal the true nature of human life from themselves begin to fail—then they too are faced with the vanity and meaninglessness of their existence. But, unlike Ecclesiastes’, theirs is not a sublime vanity, but a merely ridiculous one.
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