Esquire's Charles Pierce quotes Fred from A Christmas Carol, posits why Scrooge may have been such a...well, scrooge, and hammers down on today's humanity:
God, I am tired of the transactional. I am exhausted by it. The cynicism and obviousness of it have drained me. The lack of creativity and the dearth of imagination has enervated me, body and mind and soul. I hunger for something that exists only for its own sake, something that cannot be coined or bartered. I am sick unto death of calculating the cost of every small action and every minor event—who's up and who's down, how will it play in Congress, or in Iowa, or on the cable news programs that evening. I am tired of living in an emotional counting house.
I think that's what made Scrooge vulnerable to the Spirits. I think
that's what Fred saw in him that Christmas Eve afternoon. His entire
life had become transactional—literally, as far as his business was
concerned. He was a played-out human being. There was nothing left
behind his eyes.
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