Hardly anything in this world
is surrounded with more conflicting ideologies and beliefs, than money.
This puts us in a bit of a predicament doesn't it?
Because regardless of whether we want to or not,
money is a reality in most of our lives.
Now, obviously, in a modern day society
a lot of us have developed a resistance to money.
Because we see that it creates pain
in ourselves, and pain in other people.
And this resistance that we have has gotten bad enough
that many of us see money as the root of all evil.
You don't have to be spiritual in order to grow up with
or to develop this belief in your life.
But, spiritual circles I must say,
are probably the worst,
for the belief that money is evil.
Is Money The Root of All Evil?
There are two places
that this belief and this attitude around money came from.
The first, not from you.
The second, from your own observation.
Let's look at the first.
If you live in the Western world,
whether you'd like to admit it or not,
you have been influenced, and your culture has been designed,
and much of your language also, has been created
in alignment with the ideologies of Christianity.
It doesn't matter if you're raised Christian or not,
if you live in the western world,
you have Christianity in your ancestral memories
which you inherited when you were born.
And these beliefs have influenced the basic socialization process
and social tenants upon which society is built.
These ideas are passed down from one generation to the next.
You could be raised an atheist
and still be influenced by this religiously influenced
social belief that originated thousands of years before your birth.
The Bible says:
"For the love on money is a root of all kinds of evil,
for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness,
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
Now let's look at some more eastern world philosophies
In the buddhist faith wealth is temporary and no path to happiness
because it is seen as a form of attachment.
In Muslim faith there is a belief in most orders,
that while moderate wealth is acceptable,
too much wealth can lead to believers
forgetting their dependence on God
and becoming too attached to this world.
In Hinduism, wealth earned and spent
for one's own pleasure, is evil
and wealth earned and spent for the sake of drama, is divine.
I could spend all day proving to you
that each culture,
and the religious faiths that influence that culture
each present the idea
that there is danger inherent in money.
Even the spiritual beliefs asside,
it's completely understandable why you would come up with this idea
that money is somehow bad or somehow evil.
After all, according to statistics,
money stresses us out, more than anything in our lives.
Including terrorism.
Aside from that,
we live in a world
where, for the sake of making money,
many big companies
will actually engineer their products to break at a certain point.
And if they've created a monopoly, what that does
is force people to buy new products.
What we have in the world today,
is companies that actually make money off of people's pain,
instead of, their wellbeing.
We have new inventions
which would create a massive progression
within not only our consciousness,
but within the world itself.
But, the companies that currently hold the monopoly on the market
are preventing, sometimes even violently,
the production of these new invention.
So as to maintain the way that they currently make money.
Wars are waged to maintain financial control over resources.
We live in a world where some people own yachts
and collector cars they will never drive,
while other people are starving in the streets.
We live in a world where governments maintain control
by making their citizens a slave to taxes and required costs of living.
It isn't even an argument,
that money and corruption don't go together.
Because they do.
The questions is:
"Is this corruption because of money,
or because of something else?"
Every development in the world,
evolution itself in fact,
Is a byproduct of some being, experiencing what is unwanted
and giving rise to a desire.
And then, going in the direction of that desire.
A person, had to feel the pain of being restricted to the ground,
to desire to fly,
to create an airplane.
In the beginning,
after we moved away from our species inclination
to get what we wanted
by taking it from whoever was around us,
we came up with the genius concept of trade.
"Hum, maybe instead of bashing this person's skull in,
or getting my own skull bashed in,
if I have something he wants, and he has something I want,
we can trade and conflict can be avoided."
This is very important because,
conflict is actually quite dangerous
to the survival of both people, or species, involved in that conflict.
In other words, If I have an egg and you have honey,
but I want your honey and you want my egg,
we can trade and both be in a win win scenario.
But then we felt the pain of,
what if I have an egg and he has honey
and I want the honey, but he doesn't want an egg?
Now it doesn't seem to matter how much I want honey,
either I smash his skull in, take his honey,
or admit to the fact that I'm never gonna get honey
no matter how much I want it.
We can't live with this, by the way.
This runs counter to who we are as creative beings.
For our sense of wellbeing and happiness
we have to feel as if when we have a desire,
we have the freedom and personal empowerment
to actually get it.
So, we had to come up with something, didn't we?
In this, was the rather genius birth of the concept of currency.
If we have something that is universally desired,
because it can be universally traded
for whatever we need from someone else,
we no longer face those limits.
If I have money and everyone wants it,
because they can trade it for whatever they want,
now I can have honey, and he doesn't have to want an egg
in order for me to have honey.
Money was in the beginning, also in many cultures,
a way of using credit as a means of getting what we want.
I mean, it's obviously painful
when right now, we don't have the circumstances
to get something that we desperately need.
It's a way of saying:
"I owe you one."
Basically, money got people out of the position
of having to rely altruism direct barder and gifting,
for getting what we need.
All of which made us feel totally powerless.
Money also allowed for us to have a much wider market
and therefore, a much wider field of possibilities,
in terms of buying things we wanted.
Eventually this concept moved into the concept of symbolic money,
That is that a symbol or something of next to no value,
could be a representation of something of actual value
held somewhere else.
So that symbolic money could be,
a worthless piece of paper,
or a symbol written on a rock
that is a representation of some amount of gold
that is stored somewhere else
in a bank or a vault.
The gold standard was invented along with this type of concept
in the birth of money.
And eventually this concept expanded to the concept of digital money.
That is, there could be nothing physical or tangible
being exchanged at all.
Now, one example of this is that the governments
didn't want their amount of money in circulation to be limited
by how much actual gold they could grow and accumulate
because that was keeping economies in depression,
so countries like the united states broke free of the gold standard.
Now, there does not have to be anything of actual value
stored in another location,
which that dygital amount was representative of.
And numbers could simply be exchanged, from screen to screen.
Any progress, invention,
anything like that
that is designed as an improvement,
brings with it, inevitable down sides
along with up sides.
So, it's obvious to see,
when I just walked you through this chain,
of the birth of money,
it's easy to see how that benefited us,
but also, the potential risks inherent
in each step in that process.
For example, if we can create money to be universally barderable,
anyone could theoretically make as much money as they want.
So governments would have to take control of that
and make it illegal to make money so that only they could.
Or, if we no longer need actual gold to represent money,
that is intrinsic and worthless,
the monetary system can become totally dishonest.
This potential for all these downsides,
is not the topic up for debate.
The topic up for debate is whether money is bad
and is intrinsically evil.
And the answer is no.
When we focus on money in and of itself, as being evil,
what we're actually doing is scapegoating.
We're scapegoating a tool,
which is all money is.
Money is a tool.
But you can't look at another tool, let's say a hammer,
and say that a hammer is inherently evil
because a group of people used hammers
to blunchen people to death in a string of murders.
Because money is a tool,
it could do just as much benefit,
as it could do harm.
Depending on who and how they're using it.
So, let's look as some scenarios that one would commonly say:
"Money hurts people in this scenario."
So that I can prove to you
that it actually has nothing to do with the money.
#1.
A person spends all their time working to accumulate money
and so, their whole family feels abandoned.
The problem is not money in and of itself,
the problem might be that the person has an inaccurate view
of the actual needs of their family,
and thinks that providing, is the only means
of showing love to their family, and not quality time.
Or, the person might believe
that only way to be socially valuable
is to be successful.
So he or she prioritizes trying to gain status and social value
by making money, over everything else in his life.
#`2. Let's say that a company established a monopoly.
And begins to create business practices,
which are not actually the best interests
of the consumers that they serve.
The problem yet again here, is not money
and it isn't actually greed.
What it is, is a narcissistic view point.
The problem is that the people making the decisions with the company
are operating from a zero sum game.
Because they believe, in their state of disconnection,
that this is possible.
They do not see that they're intrinsically connected to those people.
So it is only short term success,
which will ultimately lead to a complete collapse
because they're actually opposed to the best interests
of actual people that their business depends on.
The problem is that they do not feel connected, to people.
#3. A government taxes people
far beyond what they have the capacity to pay.
And far beyond what it takes to pay for things like parks,
things like libraries, things like schools,
things like police officers, road work, and fire fighters.
The problem in this scenario is not money in and of itself,
the problem is that the people making the decisions
about how much money to collect from the public
and how that money is spent,
are motivated by all kinds of personal agendas.
Agendas like power.
The reason that people want power, is to maintain safety.
If we are not the one in power in a world such as this,
other people have the power,
and this means that we're at the mercy
of what they do and don't do.
So, this might motivate a government to charge insane taxes
so as to develop an incredible military power,
so as to be able to wage and win a war.
I'm in no way arguing
that we can't create monetary systems
or even, non monetary systems
which are way better than the one that we have today.
That's not up for debate.
We absolutely could.
What I'm arguing for
is that money in and of itself,
is not exactly the problem.
If you take any situation
where you think that money is the problem,
and instead you take this attitude of "money is actually just a tool"...
So, if money weren't the problem in this scenario,
what actually would be the problem in this scenario?
You will soon see that money is not really the problem.
The real problem,
sorry to be the bearer of bad news,
(because you've been scapegoating money)
is human.
The real problem that needs to be addressed is our beliefs,
our fears, our priorities, our needs and our feelings.
It is the reasons behind why we are using the tool of money
in the way that we are using the tool of money.
Another thing you have to see,
is that even if money didn't exist,
people would use any other tool,
at their disposal,
to achieve whatever aims they are needing.
A better way of putting this is,
if money didn't exist,
people would use other tools
to do the exact same thing they are currently doing.
When we address those things that are the actual problem
our social systems,
this includes the ways we go about
getting things we need within society,
such as monetary systems,
will automatically change.
Money does not make your character worse.
What it does is it acts as a magnifying glass,
for who you really are.
It just makes you more of what you are.
But let's play this game,
let's say that somebody really changed.
And you saw their personality totally flip
once they made a lot of money.
What's actually happening here is not the money either.
It's the way people around them act around their money
that's causing them to create that change.
When somebody gets a lot of money,
quite quickly the people around them act completely different.
People who have had nothing to do with them before,
suddenly show up on the doorstep overnight.
What happens when you get a lot of money,
is that you suddenly become surrounded by people
who are only around you for a sense of personal gain.
So it starts to be a feeling like,
nobody actually cares about you.
All they're really ever after, is what they need from you.
And like, all they're trying to do is take from you.
This naturally makes a person with money
go into defense mode and begin to isolate themselves
and hold on to what they have for fear of it being taken from them.
How people act around money makes most people with money
tighten up in terms of generosity.
And grow distrustful.
Yet again, money is not the problem.
It's how people are acting,
which is a result of their own individual egos
that is causing this behavior.
Money is not the root of all evil.
What if it isn't actually
what's really stressing us out, as well?
What's really stressing us out
is still the same thing that has stressed
every biological organism out
since the beginning of time;
And that is, how to meet our needs
consistently and reliably.
So that we can feel a sense of security.
Whether money is there or not,
we are going to have that same concern.
It is the concern of every biological organism on earth.
It is just that,
based on money becoming the universal way
for us to get what we need,
we are now convinced that what we need and want
is completely dependent upon money.
And on a side note,
and this could be a completely different episode,
so many of us,
because of the way that socialization causes us
to slip into a state of permanent shame,
feel as if we are not actually worth
our needs being met.
That's going to make it almost impossible
for us to make money.
We have to take our attention off the scapegoat which is money,
and put it onto the real problem
which is our unaware human ego.
So as to directly address those thoughts, beliefs, needs, feelings
and wants and intentions
that are a part of your individuality.
And until we do that, we will not create anything
to replace the current monetary system of today with,
that would look anything better than this does.
As idealistic as we all might want to be,
it is completely illogical
that we are going to force other people
into an altruistic society
where all people's needs are reasonably met.
You cannot force somebody into a state of altruism,
no matter how much you might want to.
Wherever a human ego in a state of awareness and unconsciousness exists,
corruption will exist with or without money.
And money, being a tool,
can do just as much, if not more good,
than it ever did harm,
depending on how we use it.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com