I. Introduction
Henry Fielding once said, "Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil".
Money presents in so many aspects of life. It seems that almost everything can be bought, with the high value attached to money. People are very addicted to money because of the idea that if you have money, you have the success, popularity, power, and acceptance. But, there is always the danger of losing values such as love for sports or being a hardworking person. A good example is the current trend in sports wherein top players in football or basketball are only interested in picking up their pay cheques more than genuinely loving sports and achieving success in terms of being the best athletes they could be (Money is not the motivation 2004). There are nagging thoughts of what the real motivation is for entering a venture as the importance of money is becoming more and more hard-hitting these days.
As the quotation above says, is money society¡¦s new god? If so, can other values such as freedom, love, achievement or even motivation also be bought? This is precisely the topic of the paper. All of these things can be pointed back to money and see how people treat it today. Besides discussing the real functions of money, this paper will also attempt to answer not just the questions above but also investigate whether money is the only thing that really motivates people today.